The Kansas City Royals are in the World Series!

The Kansas City Royals, which taught me to love baseball long ago, have hit the fewest home runs in the major leagues, relying on speed, defense, and pitching.  But they swept the mighty Orioles, after also sweeping the mighty Angels.  And now they are in the World Series.

From World Series bound: For 8 glorious games, Royals did it their way – CBSSports.com:

The Royals waited 29 years, and all they give their fans are repeats. But, oh, what wonderful repeats they were.

Every day and game, the same.

Every day, another similar win. And every day, a beautiful celebration of a young, seemingly unstoppable team that has stolen the hearts of this lovely and patient mid America city.

Just the same, they are loving it in the Show Me state, where the Royals are showing us all, day after day, that they are a special group and team — full of energy, underrated and determined to make October their own.

Now we all know what the abbreviated Mo signifies for Missouri: momentum. And man do the Royals have it in spades. They beat the Orioles 2-1 Wednesday in Game 4 to sweep them out of the ALCS, and the Royals now ride an eight-game winning streak into the World Series. Their journey is built on four extra-inning wins, and all but one win by one or two runs.

Lots of guts led to this unexpected glory.

The team hardly anybody figured would win beat the stacked Tigers in its division, erased a late four-run deficit in the wild-card playoff against the A’s, then wiped away the best-in-baseball (at least by record) Angels and second-best-in-the-AL Orioles in stunning back-to-back sweeps.