OKCtober breaks away from Rocktober

WASHINGTON — Before the World Series began, I predicted one thing in particular: Whichever team won the game following the Kansas City Royals’ first loss would win the series. The Royals staked that claim Wednesday night, pulling away from the San Francisco Giants for a 7-2 victory in front of a raucous home crowd.

While it would have been nice for the Royals to storm out to a 2-0 lead, this was the next best thing. The riotous, worry-free party atmosphere was sucked out of Kaufmann Stadium after Royals ace James Shields was punched in the mouth for three runs in the first inning of Game 1, taking his team out of it before they ever had a chance against Giants world-beater Madison Bumgarner. So to come back in Game 2, after allowing a first-inning run and letting San Francisco tie the game at 2-2 in the fourth, showed a lot.

We don’t have a good comparison for the matchup in this World Series. The frenetic, win-or-go-home, one-game Wild Card was only introduced last season, and we haven’t seen any teams involved advance to the World Series until now, when suddenly both made it in the same year. But there is one team the Royals have most clearly resembled, which is why Wednesday night’s win was so crucial: the 2007 Colorado Rockies.

Whether you remember specifically what the Rockies did seven years ago, if you’re a baseball fan, the term “Rocktober” probably still rings a bell. It was the slogan coined to encompass the crazy run the Rockies put together, from the last couple weeks of the regular season, all the way to the World Series.

Colorado was stuck at .500 through 100 games, and just 78-72 after a 10-2 loss on Sept. 15 that left them 6.5 games back in the division and 4.5 in the Wild Card with just 14 regular-season games remaining. All they did from there was rip off wins in 13 of them, forcing a Game 163, which they won in walk-off fashion, overcoming a 2-run, 13th-inning deficit.

The Rockies swept the NL East Champion Philadelphia Phillies in three games in the Division Series, then mowed down the NL West Champion Arizona Diamondbacks four straight in the Championship Series. After getting a week off before the start of the World Series, they came out and got pancaked by the Boston Red Sox, 13-1, in Game 1 and never really recovered. The Rockies took an early lead in Game 2, but saw Boston push in front and could never claw even. They were eventually swept.

Which brings us back to Wednesday night. After that humbling 7-1 defeat in Game 1, the Royals needed to win, not only to have any chance in the series, but even to entertain thoughts of getting the series back to Kansas City, least their season die 1,800 miles away from the energized believers in blue on the field at AT&T Park in San Francisco.

Now, they have every reason to believe once again. The 2014 Giants are weaker than their previous iterations, especially in the bullpen. One need only look at a single sequence in the sixth inning to see exactly how.

Giants manager Bruce Bochy left starter Jake Peavy in a 2-2 game to start the frame, which Lorenzo Cain opened with a single. With no lefty ready in the bullpen, Peavy faced left-handed batter Eric Hosmer, whom he walked to put two on with none out. Only then did Bochy go to the