by Nathan Carter

Try this: Wait twenty years, and then ask a Kansas City Royals fan, “Should Gordon have gone home?” You’ll probably get a passionate response. Despite an incredible playoff run that invigorated a Midwestern city starved for postseason success, producing countless highlights and unforgettable moments, the most talked about play was the one that didn’t happen. For some, it was a baseball fairy tale setup without the fairy tale ending: In Game 7 of the World Series, down by one run, with two outs in the bottom of the 9th inning, Alex Gordon got a hit on unhittable Giants pitcher Madison Bumgarner, which was then errored and kicked around the outfield for an eternity before finally being thrown back as Gordon was passing third base. In a split-second decision, Gordon and third base coach Mike Jirschele made the call to stop Gordon at third and hope for a follow-up hit by Salvador Perez. Bumgarner played Perez like a fiddle, forced him to pop one up in the infield, and the World Series was over.

There is absolutely no way in hell Alex Gordon would have made it home and tied the game. That’s what some people are telling themselves, at least. Giants shortstop and cutoff man Brandon Crawford had the ball secured. He was making the turn to throw just as Gordon was crossing third base. Taken completely out of context, in any routine game, the decision to hold Gordon is an easy one. Gordon isn’t the fastest player on the roster, Crawford is a great shortstop who would have likely made a good throw, and it would have been going to Buster Posey, one of the best catchers in the game who almost certainly would have made an easy tag. For their part, everyone within the Royals organization supported the decision, including manager Ned Yost and Alex Gordon himself. Most sportswriters are in the same camp, with some saying Gordon would have been out by several feet. The one major exception is Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight.com, who argues using statistical analysis that, though his chance for success was unlikely, it was still a higher percentage play than Salvador Perez getting a second hit in the 9th inning on Bumgarner.

I am not a sportswriter or a baseball statistician. I’m certainly not a baseball expert by any means, and I don’t have a particularly decorated experience of playing the game. What I am is a “grand narrative” type of guy. I’m also firmly in the minority on this matter and probably an idiot. But I will say, unequivocally, in that situation, Alex Gordon should have absolutely gone home.

To start, we need to look at some visuals to give us a better idea of the distances we’re talking about. The image most people have seen, and the one that was tweeted in the hours after the game to show that Gordon and Jirschele made the correct decision is on the left. It shows Crawford turning with the ball in hand as Gordon is stopped at third base. Indeed, this picture made it look like an obvious decision. However, this photograph is taken at about eye level, and both Gordon and Crawford are slightly out of focus, which doesn't help us with depth perception. To get a better idea of where they are on the field, take a look at the picture below, captured an instant before the one above, when Crawford was mid-turn and Gordon was just approaching third base.

As you can see, Crawford is halfway into the outfield. He had to go out that far because Giants’ outfielder Gregor Blanco let the ball go all the way to the wall (keep in mind, Kauffman Stadium is one of the larger ballparks in the MLB). As he is a shortstop, our assumption becomes that Crawford was turning with the ball in approximately the same area that a shortstop is usually positioned. In fact, he is more than twice the distance to home plate than Alex Gordon is.

“So what?” you might be saying. Crawford is still a great shortstop. He had a longer distance to throw, but the ball speed from his throw to home plate would have been much faster than Alex Gordon would ever be able to run. Even if they had to go through a second cutoff man, the ball would likely get to Posey in plenty of time to make a clean tag.

The issue with that thinking is that it completely ignores the major x-factor of this play; the x-factor that caused the ball to bounce by Blanco, and made Juan Perez jittery enough to literally kick the ball around the warning track before finally picking it up off the ground: The crowd. Watch the video of the play again. I didn’t notice as it happened live on TV because of my own screaming, but the crowd goes absolutely insane when the ball gets by Blanco. Several friends who were at the game compared it to Arrowhead Stadium, which seats 35,000 more people and consistently ranks as one of the loudest outdoor sports stadiums in the United States. In other words, those Giants players were experiencing a sound louder than anything they have ever heard while playing the game of baseball. The sheer magnitude of the moment sent the Royals faithful into a frenzy, and it clearly rattled the Giants’ defense.

Every argument I’ve heard for not sending Gordon home is based on the assumption that a perfect throw would have been made to home plate. The opposite end of that assumption is that if Gordon would have run through the stop sign and headed home at full speed, the entire Giants organization would have lost their collective shit. The throw would have been coming from a long distance away, and it would have been headed to Buster Posey, who many will recall is already shaky in these situations due to a season ending-injury in 2011 that involved a collision with former Miami Marlins outfielder Scott Cousins. In a game where everything was going right for the Giants, Gordon should have taken advantage of the one play where absolutely everything was going right for the Royals. If it’s a panicked throw home, it could have been a few feet off, and Gordon would have coasted in easily. Again though, that’s a quick judgement call for a player and third base coach to make, and they couldn’t have been expected to consider the crowd noise when deciding to hold Gordon at third.

However, that judgment call could have been made before the play if the Royals had chosen to factor in the absolute mind-boggling amazingness of Giants’ pitcher Madison Bumgarner. Let’s just get this out of the way: Madison Bumgarner single-handedly won this World Series. I’m not an expert, but everyone knows baseball isn’t supposed to be a sport were you can single-handedly do anything, but Bumgarner did. Without Bumgarner, the Royals win the Series in five games, six at the absolute most. I’m sure they’ll give everyone on the roster a ring, and they’ll probably hang a banner, but Bumgarner beat the Royals by himself. If he had started in Game 7, he probably would have shut the Royals out completely and we wouldn’t be having this conversation. The only reason we can discuss the idea of Gordon going home is because there were certain innings where Bumgarner wasn’t on the mound.

With that acknowledged, Ned Yost could have told third base coach Mike Jirschele, and any potential baserunner, “It’s the bottom of the 9th, we’re down by one run, and Bumgarner is not going to allow any type of hit. If by some crazy chance he does allow a hit, and if by some crazy chance you are rounding third and think there’s even the slightest possibility you could make it home, go for it; cause there’s no way Bumgarner is giving up two hits in an inning.” It’s not the craziest advice in the world. The night before, in Game 6, Omar Infante was in a similar position rounding third. He got the stop sign from Jirschele and ran through it because he thought he had the momentum to make it home. Infante was called safe at home plate on a play when the throw home was made from a closer distance and the Giants weren’t nearly as panicked.

With all that said, there is still one argument for holding Gordon at third I agree with, and that has to do with the role of a third base coach. A friend more knowledgable on baseball matters pointed out to me that no matter what, Jirschele could have never sent Gordon home in that situation, because it is simply not his job to decide the outcome of a World Series. The job of a third base coach is to determine if a player can make it home or not, and if he thinks he can’t, he has to hold him. As this friend stated, “Can you imagine how furious we would be if the third base coach, the THIRD BASE COACH, would have waved Gordon home and he was called out by a mile?” He’s right; the entire rhetoric would have been altered, Jirschele would have been fired before he reached the dugout, and we would have all wondered if Salvador Perez, who hit a home run off Bumgarner in Game 1 and knocked the game-winning walk-off single in the AL Wildcard Game, could have sent Gordon home by simply getting the ball in play. For all eternity, Royals fans would have placed the blame of a World Series loss on an overzealous third base coach. Jirschele, as a coach, has to let the players on the field win or lose the game, which is why he never could have sent Gordon home.

Which means (yeah, you know where I’m going with this) Gordon should have run through the stop sign.

Let me be clear: I’m not knocking Alex Gordon. Gordon is a player I love and was a big reason the Royals were in the position they were in at the end of the season. He didn’t have the best postseason performance, but he may have been the Royals’ best all-around player this year, and there’s honestly no other guy I wanted at the plate in that moment. The fact that he still hit a triple and kept the game alive is a testament to the impact he can have on games. I’m not mad at Gordon for not going home, and I’ll never hold that against him as a player. But yes, I think he should have definitely gone home.

What got the Royals wins this year? It wasn’t home runs. The Royals had the fewest home runs of any team in baseball. As has been observed time and again, the Royals won games because of “small ball,” their unique combination of targeted hitting, selective bunting, stolen bases, and “That’s what speed do” mentality. They didn’t knock it out of the park. They took advantage of every tiny opportunity that was given on the field, and they always made opponents pay for their mistakes. In Game 7, at the most crucial moment of the season, the Giants made crucial, almost Little League-like mistakes. It was the exact type of mistakes the Royals have banked on all year, and when the card came up at just the right time, Gordon abandoned the mentality that this Royals team embodied and settled for the smart play.

Gordon probably wouldn’t have made it home. I know that. I see the evidence like everyone else, and smarter people then me are probably right. But ending Game 7 on a close call at home plate might have been the most exciting end to a World Series ever, and every single one of us would have loved that we forced that cutoff man to make a throw on an impossible play. In the grand narrative, it would have been the most Royal way to lose. And maybe, just maybe, he could have made it. That’s what I’m telling myself anyway, and it’s probably what I’ll be telling myself in twenty years. Wait a couple of decades and ask me again.