Giants rip Royals 7-1 in baseball World Series opener

A pitching masterpiece by San Francisco left-hander Madison Bumgarner sparked the Giants over the Kansas City Royals 7-1 in Tuesday's opening game of the 110th World Series.
The 25-year-old left-hander improved to 3-1 in this year's Major League Baseball playoffs by baffling Royals batters, scattering three hits over seven innings while striking out five and issuing only one walk for his third career victory in as many World Series starts.
"I felt pretty good and the command was good," Bumgarner said. "It was just about making pitches and executing. I know it's a boring answer but for me that's all it is. I'm just trying to make pitches and take all that other stuff and push it aside."
The best-of-seven final continues Wednesday in Kansas City before the scene shifts to San Francisco. Opener winners have taken the World Series 62 percent of the time, including 10 of the past 11 years, and won every playoff matchup this year.
The Giants seek their third championship in five seasons after having snapped a 56-year drought in 2010 while the Royals, in the playoffs for the first time since winning their only World Series in 1985, saw their major league record win streak to start a playoff run snapped at eight games.
"Bumgarner, he was dynamite. Man was he good," Royals manager Ned Yost said. "He just held us down and did a great job. We just couldn't do anything with him."
Bumgarner stretched his major league record streak of scoreless playoff innings in road games to 32 2/3 over the first six innings.
Staked to a 3-0 lead in the first inning, Bumgarner overcame a fielding error that helped load the bases in the third inning by inducing a ground out from Royals playoff batting leader Eric Hosmer to end the threat.
"One of my favorite things to do in baseball is to work through a situation like that one," Bumgarner said.
"I was really impressed with the way he fed off our aggressiveness and just worked out of that jam," Yost said.
Bumgarner, who shared the major league lead with 11 road wins this season, retired the next 11 batters he faced over the following four innings.
But Kansas City's Salvador Perez snapped Bumgarner's record scoreless inning streak with a two-out solo homer to left field in the seventh inning, the first playoff run Bumgarner had surrendered away from San Francisco since a 2010 first-round game.
"It's tough not to pay attention to a streak when you've got it going," said Bumgarner. "I'm not here trying to set records and keep streaks going but you do know about it. A World Series game is not something you exactly forget about. So you remember what they were. But that was the last thing on my mind. I'm just trying to compete and go after guys and be aggressive."
Bumgarner, who threw 71 of his 106 pitches for strikes, just missed matching Giants legend Christy Mathewson's 1905 record of hurling shutout triumphs in his first three World Series appearances.
Bumgarner had blanked Texas in game four of the 2010 World Series and Detroit in game two of the 2012 World Series with a combined 14 strikeouts and only four walks over 15 innings.
- Giants shatter Shields -
Royals starting pitcher James Shields, who blanked San Francisco on four hits back in August, was tagged for three runs off five hits in the first inning, Pablo Sandoval hitting a run-scoring double that was followed by Hunter Pence's two-run homer.
Sandoval reached base in his 24th consecutive playoff game, matching the fourth-best streak in major league history.
Pence scored on a Michael Morse single in the fourth and Royals reliever Danny Duffy issued a bases-loaded walk to Gregor Blanco to put San Francisco ahead 5-0.
Blanco walked again to open the seventh and scored on a triple by Panik, who later scored on a Sandoval single.
Source: AFP