The last time the Kansas City Royals clinched a division title Back to the Future reigned at the box office. The team, which won the World Series in 1985, hopes to go back to the future by doing it again.
The Royals clinched the AL Central with a 10-4 romp over the Seattle Mariners Thursday night. Johnny Cueto logged his first win in over a month, Seth Smith and Mark Trumbo knocked in two, and Logan Morrison hit a solo shot in the victory.
The triumph made the Royals the first team to clinch their division. Both the Cardinals and the Cubs clinched playoff berths in the last week.
Boasting a 7-0 record out of the gate, the Royals sat in the AL Central driver’s seat for most of the season, with the Twins briefly challenging them for divisional supremacy. They hope the driver’s seat controls a DeLorean DMC-12 using 1.21 gigawatts of electricity through the flux capacitor to bring them right back to where they were thirty years ago. In 1985, George Brett, Bret Saberhagen, Frank White, Willie Wilson, and the rest of the Royals won the Missouri Series World Series over the Cardinals (St. Louis currently boasts the best record in baseball).
Most of the current Royals team lost in seven games in the World Series to the San Francisco Giants last season. They entered the postseason as a wild-card team in 2014. At 89-63, they enter the season’s final ten games as the best team in the American League.
“I’ve felt all along we would win this division,” manager Ned Yost told the press last night. “I’ve got my eyes on a much bigger prize. This is the first step of it.”