TORONTO — Late Sunday night, a group of weather-beaten ballplayers filed into a charter bus after touching down here in Toronto. Bleary-eyed from a flight delay in Kansas City, tested by another postponed game, they had a short commute down a Canadian highway to the team hotel. Most were ready for bed.

Third baseman Mike Moustakas trudged to the back, his usual spot. Reliever Kevin McCarthy buried his head in his phone. Blaine Boyer, a 36-year-old relief arm, chose a seat at the front, near Alex Gordon, Ian Kennedy and Drew Butera.

Here sat the 2018 Royals. In 18 days, they had won just three times. In all, they had played just 13 games, the season ravaged by a brutal Midwestern spring. They had weathered snow-outs and frigid wind chills and wet days in which they could not feel the baseball. They had stood frozen on baseball fields in Detroit, Cleveland and Kansas City. On Monday, they would lose a chance to play when the roof at Rogers Centre was damaged by falling ice from the nearby CN Tower.

It has been that kind of season.

Yet, none of that could compare to the story of late Sunday night. In the minutes after the Royals’ traveling party headed out into the night, a large chunk of ice would smash into the windshield of the players’ bus. A bus driver, a local named Fred Folkerts, would be blistered by shards of glass. And Boyer, acting on instinct, would hop up and grab the wheel, hoping to make sure Folkerts could still see.

“He was bloodied up,” Boyer said. “The whole bus was rocked. It seemed like we got hit by an IED or something crazy.”

What actually happened, the full story of how a piece of ice smashed into the bus’s windshield, is still not totally clear. Yet a basic sketch was culled together on Monday, in interviews with players and coaches who shared the harrowing story with The Athletic.

“It was insane,” Moustakas said.

“That could have been real serious,” third-base coach Mike Jirschele said.

“We’re lucky that we’ve even got a team,” manager Ned Yost said.

Yost’s tone was mildly flip. The situation produced no serious injuries. Folkerts, the bus driver, was examined by paramedics and released at the scene. Yet in the context of this season, an unmerciful run of horrid weather and freak mishaps, it was a bewildering moment, Yost said.

In the minutes before impact, he was sitting on the traveling party’s first bus, which is usually reserved for coaches, staff members and members of the broadcast media. As the two busses chugged down the highway, the first one zoomed under an overpass. Two large “ice boulders,” as Yost described them, appeared to jar loose, flying backward at the second bus. Sitting in his seat near the front, Boyer had a perfect view. He could see a larger chunk fly to the side. He saw a second chunk headed right for the windshield.

Inside the bus, the sound of the impact stunned the players. Starting pitcher Jason Hammel thought the bus collided with the overpass. McCarthy thought it sounded like a thunderous “gust of wind.” Kennedy looked up from his seat, and Boyer was already at the wheel, his arm reaching toward Folkerts.

“He got up there and was like, ‘You all right, sir?’ ” Kennedy said.

Blaine Boyer (Photo: Ed Zurga/Getty Images)

The bus was traveling close to 55 mph at impact. The crash sprayed shards of glass shrapnel back to the third row, landing near outfielder Jorge Soler. Moments later, Butera joined Boyer at the front as they helped Folkerts guide the bus to the side of the road.

“The fellow that was beside me, he kept talking to me,” Folkerts said of Boyer, recalling the scene from his home on Monday night. “He was asking me silly questions: ‘Are you a hockey fan? Do you follow baseball?’ But now that I’m sitting here with my wife, I think he was keeping me from going into shock.”

Boyer downplayed his role in the near disaster. He is in his first season in the Royals’ bullpen and his 13th in the majors. He is here to offer guidance to a young bullpen and experience and professionalism to a clubhouse. As he spoke about his role, he sought to heap praise on Folkerts’ composure.

“He was a stud,” Boyer said. “That guy Fred was a trouper. He had shards in his face, and he was locked in on trying to get the bus slowed down.”

Boyer did not seek attention, of course. Yet inside the clubhouse, the image of him at the wheel was burned into his teammates’ minds.

“He saved us,” Gordon said, smiling as he walked toward the batting cage on Monday afternoon.

“Talk to Blaine,” Moustakas said.

In the minutes after the crash, after Boyer had helped Folkerts guide the bus to the side of the highway, they waited for an ambulance and police. Folkerts called his company, asking for another bus.

“We pride ourselves in making sure the players are taken care of,” he said.

Folkerts has driven a coach bus for nearly 25 years here in Canada, he says. He’s semi-retired now. But he has spent the last six years working for Pacific Western Transportation. He enjoys shepherding athletes around. Good hours, interesting people. So, as he was treated by paramedics on late Monday, his head still bleeding, he worried about his next shift.

It will come on Tuesday. Folkerts is set to drive the Royals to Rogers Centre for a doubleheader, a result of Monday’s postponement. He would like to offer thanks, he said.

“These guys were phenomenal,” he said. “They guys basically helped take over.”

(Top photo: Provided to Rustin Dodd)