Giants rock Royals in first game of the Series

KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Fans of the Kansas City Royals waited 29 years to get back to the World Series. Kauffman Stadium seemed ready to implode as it reverberated with their cheers — for one inning.

That's how long it took for the Giants to score three runs against the American League champions in Game 1 of the World Series, and for San Francisco starter Madison Bumgarner to assert himself as the game's dominant postseason pitcher.

'It got pretty quiet,' Giants first baseman Brandon Belt said. 'I think that's something this team lives for. We love playing in front of our home crowd, them getting loud. And we love playing in front of the away crowd and them getting silent.'

The Royals and their fans won't roll over in Game 2 Wednesday, that's for sure. But Kansas City now must rely on 22-year-old Yordano Ventura to stave off disaster. Should Ventura falter, the Royals could be in a two-game hole when the Series moves to San Francisco on Friday.

Bumgarner was sensational, which should surprise absolutely no one. He now owns the Giants' franchise record (including the years the team played in New York) with six postseason victories. Three of those have come in the World Series.

Bumgarner wound up pitching seven innings and allowed just three hits. The last was a home run by Salvador Perez that ruined Bumgarner's shutout, but it hardly tainted his aura. Sportswriters sometimes forget the lefthander is just 25 years old.

'You're not the only one that forgets he's 25,' said relief pitcher Javier Lopez, who pitched a scoreless eighth inning against the Royals. 'When I saw him in 2010, he was a young kid doing incredible things, and now he's just been able to take it to another level when you don't think he can get there. He's doing it again. … He accepts the challenge.'

Behind Bumgarner, the Giants were able to accomplish something no one else had done in the 2014 postseason. They beat the Royals.

Kansas City had swept the AL wild card game (as A's fans remember in vivid detail), AL division series (against the Angels) and AL championship series (Orioles) without dropping a game. Now we'll find out if they have the ability to take a punch.

The Giants roughed up Kansas City starter James Shields for three runs in the first inning, stunning the crowd. Shields carries the nickname 'Big Game James,' but that is largely a piece of mythmaking. Coming into Game 1, he had a 3-4 career record and 5.19 ERA in nine postseason starts. (He made the playoffs three times with Tampa Bay.) He also was coming off a 10-day layoff between starts, his last having coming in Game 1 of the ALCS at Baltimore.

The Giants pummeled him in the first inning. Their five hits included an RBI double down the right-field line by Pablo Sandoval and a high-speed two-run homer to center by Hunter Pence.

The Giants chased Shields in the fourth inning, after he surrendered a double down the right-field line to Pence, a walk to Belt and an RBI single to Michael Morse. Shields' replacement, Danny Duffy, looked just as shaky. After a sacrifice bunt by pinch hitter Perez, Duffy walked Brandon Crawford and Gregor Blanco to force in a run.

That gave San Francisco a 5-0 lead. Unexpectedly, Duffy then settled down and got eight straight outs to give his team a chance. Well, the ghost of a chance. The Royals simply couldn't crack Bumgarner until Perez's homer.

The Royals had one prime shot at scoring, in the third, when Giants shortstop Crawford uncharacteristically booted a ground ball to start the inning and No. 9 hitter Mike Moustakas followed with a double into the right-field corner that sent Omar Infante to third base. But Bumgarner, who had not struck out a batter to that point, got Alcides Escobar swinging at a fastball at the letters and fooled Nori Aoki on a curveball in the dirt.

'Those strikeout situations, we were going for them and trying to keep them off the board,' Bugmarner said. 'That's nice. That is one of my favorite things to be able to do in baseball is to work through a situation like that.'

After Lorenzo Cain worked Bumgarner for a walk, Eric Hosmer grounded harmlessly to second base to end the inning.

The Giants added two more runs in the seventh when Blanco started the inning with a walk against Duffy and Joe Panik followed with a drive to right-center that got over sliding right fielder Aoki. The kid wound up with an RBI triple, and he scored two batters later when Sandoval lined a ball past Kansas City's drawn-in infield against reliever Tim Collins.

So now the Royals are at a decided disadvantage in this fight of underdogs — the first non-strike-year World Series to feature two teams with fewer than 90 regular-season wins each, and just the second matching two wild-card entries. Game 1 winners have gone on to hoist the trophy 63.3 percent of the time, and Kansas City has lost its home-field advantage.

Tuesday, one of the Royals' perceived advantages, their speed on the bases, never emerged as a factor.

'That disrupts a lot of things when you don't get on base,' Kansas City manager Ned Yost said. 'The old adage is you can't steal first, and Bumgarner did a great job of keeping us off base.'

Wednesday, Giants starter Jake Peavy will do the same.

You can reach Staff Writer Phil Barber at 521-5263 or phil.barber@pressdemocrat.com.