Royals take advantage of blunders, beat Mets, 5-3, in Game 4 of World Series

The kids took the field before Game 4 of the World Series, all sorts of kids who played ball. There were kids from six academies across the country, and from championship youth squads, and from a United States junior national team. This would be their night to enjoy, and to watch the best players in the world demonstrate how the game should be played.

Meet the Mets.

Yoenis Cespedes was doubled off first base to end the game, four innings after literally kicking a fly ball instead of catching it. Bartolo Colon tossed a pickoff throw into center field. Tyler Clippard walked the tying and winning runs on base in the eighth inning, and each of those runs scored on consecutive poor plays by second baseman Daniel Murphy.

In the immortal words of the first manager of the New York Mets, Casey Stengel: Can’t anybody here play this game?

Not these Mets, not on this Saturday night. They were five outs from tying the World Series. Instead, they are one defeat from elimination, less because of the heroics of the Kansas City Royals but because of their own foibles.

“Devastating is probably not the right word,” Clippard said. “We’re still in it.”

Yes, but barely. The Royals happily capitalized on the festival of foibles, scoring three runs in the eighth inning and securing a 5-3 victory. Kansas City leads the series, three games to one.

The last team to overcome a three-games-to-one deficit in the World Series? The Royals, in 1985.

The Royals have not won the World Series since then, but they could do it Sunday. And what a story it could be. Their starting pitcher, Edinson Volquez, rejoined the team Saturday night, after a trip to the Dominican Republic to bury his father.

“I’m pretty sure my dad is going to be proud of me when I pitch tomorrow,” Volquez said.

Clippard, the fifth Mets pitcher, inherited a 3-2 lead when he entered to start the eighth inning, facing the top of the Kansas City lineup. He got the first out, then walked Ben Zobrist on five pitches. Clippard got ahead of Lorenzo Cain 0 and 2, then walked him, on the eighth pitch of the at-bat.

That forced the Mets to rush in their closer, Jeurys Familia, to face cleanup batter Eric Hosmer. The Royals would use their closer for a six-out save, but the Mets would not.

Hosmer tapped a soft ground ball toward second base, not hard enough for a double play, certainly easy enough to get the out at first base. However, the ball trickled under Murphy’s glove. The Royals should have had two on and two out, but they had tied the score.

“I tried to one-hand it,” Murphy said. “It probably deserved to be two-handed.”

To point the finger solely at Murphy would be unfair, Mets third baseman and captain David Wright said.

“That’s just one of many plays that, if we got a chance to go back and redo, we would,” Wright said.

The next batter, Mike Moustakas, singled past a diving Murphy — an out with two out and the infield back, an out in any case for a good-fielding second baseman, but a hit against a defensively challenged one with the infield in.

That gave the Royals another run, Salvador Perez singled home a third run, and Wade Davis delivered the six-out save that left Kansas City one victory from a parade.

There was one kid that could play, one of the Mets kids. The kid played college ball last year, at Oregon State. On Saturday, 22-year-old Michael Conforto made history at the World Series, becoming the third-youngest player in the 112-year history of the World Series to hit multiple home runs in a game, behind Andruw Jones (19) for the 1996 Atlanta Braves and Tony Kubek (21) of the 1957 New York Yankees.

The veterans, well, not so good. Wright is batting .211 in the World Series, Cespedes and Murphy .176 each.

“Anybody that can give me the answers of why we’re not hitting in certain situations,” Manager Terry Collins said, “I’d like to hear them.”

You could almost hear the sound of winter approaching, all too cruel and all too soon for the Mets.

Follow Bill Shaikin on Twitter @BillShaikin