KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Out came Johnny Cueto, the toast of this baseball-mad town, and he hopped over the first-base line, did a little shimmy-shake and loped toward the mound he had owned for the previous eight innings. He was finishing Game 2 of the World Series. If it was his last time pitching in a Royals uniform, Cueto wanted the city to remember him like this.

Over the three previous months, Cueto was a contradiction wrapped in dreadlocks, frustratingly brilliant one start and brilliantly frustrating the next. In his previous two playoff outings, he saved the Royals' season and detonated a nuclear stink bomb. By the ninth inning Wednesday, he answered with conviction which version of him would show up. The New York Mets' puzzled looks and feeble swings confirmed: This wasn't Good Johnny Cueto; it was Great Johnny Cueto.

View photos Johnny Cueto is dunked with a cooler of water after pitching a complete game. (USA Today) More

And when his 122nd pitch settled into the glove of Paulo Orlando and the Royals cinched a 7-1 victory that gave them a two-games-to-none lead over the Mets in the World Series, Cueto tapped his heart, pointed to the sky and soaked in the admiration of 40,410 at Kauffman Stadium who walked through the turnstiles with low expectations and exited having witnessed a historic outing.

The Mets mustered two hits, both by Lucas Duda, one an infield squibber and the other a dink into left field, neither of which left the bat at a velocity that would warrant a speeding ticket. The other Mets went 0-for-25 against Cueto, leading to the first World Series complete game with two or fewer hits since Greg Maddux in 1995 and the first by an American League pitcher in 48 years.

"That's what they brought me here for," Cueto said. "To help win a World Series."

When Kansas City traded three hard-throwing left-handed pitching prospects to Cincinnati for Cueto in late July, it expected the comfort and security of a frontline starter. Instead, the Royals got the comfort of walking on hot coals and the security of a bank vault held shut by a twisty tie, Cueto so inconsistent, so maddeningly frustrating, that he lost his spot atop the rotation and necessitated the Royals line up their World Series staff so he could pitch at home, where the team believes he's calmest.

Before Game 2, Cueto went through a routine he couldn't in Toronto. He spent most of the afternoon at his residence and got a long massage from his trainer, Aquiles Torrealba. He was relaxed – not so relaxed that he was snapping Instagram selfies, as he's wont to do, but enough that when he arrived at Kauffman Stadium and started warming up, the Royals sensed the Cueto who gave up eight runs in two innings during the ALCS wasn't showing up.

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Neither, for that matter, did the Mets who pilloried the Chicago Cubs in the NLCS. Cueto spent most of the night working outside of the rulebook strike zone, putting just 50 pitches in the rectangle. Only 23 were in the bottom half of the zone, where he typically tries to work. Cueto struck out only four and walked three, his outing more excellent than dominant. Even he admitted that he was better in Game 5 of the division series, when he retired 19 straight Houston Astros hitters to cap off an eight-inning statement in a win-or-go-home affair.

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