Eric Hosmer turned from villain to hero as the Kansas City Royals won a record-breaking game to take a 1-0 lead over the New York Mets in the World Series.
Hosmer's sacrifice fly in the 14th inning gave the Royals a 5-4 home victory and settled the longest World Series opener in history, which took a marathon five hours and nine minutes to complete.
The game started on a sad note as news spread throughout the crowd that Royals pitcher Edinson Volquez's father Daniel had died at the age of 63 after suffering a heart attack.
The news was broken to Volquez after he had made it through six innings, giving up three runs to match Mets starter Matt Harvey, who had been stunned by an Alcides Escobar inside-the-park home run off the very first pitch he delivered.
Harvey settled down and did not give up another run until the sixth when Hosmer's first sac fly of the night and an RBI single from Mike Moustakas levelled the scores at 3-3.
Hosmer mis-played a Wilmer Flores grounder in the top of the eighth, allowing Juan Lagares to score and give the Mets a 4-3 lead heading into the final innings.
But Mets closer Jeurys Familia, who blew five of his 43 save attempts in the regular season, could not hold on to the lead with Alex Gordon smashing a home run to deep center field to extend the game.
The first four extra innings produced no runs and little in the way of threat, but Bartolo Colon loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the 14th - not helped by an error from third baseman David Wright - and Hosmer hit a sacrifice to right field to plate Escobar for the winning run.
"I wanted to redeem myself from earlier. That's the beauty of this game. You always have a chance to redeem yourself and I can't thank my team-mates enough," Hosmer said.
As for his team-mate Volquez, Hosmer added:Â "Your heart goes out to him and his whole, entire family. The way he went out there and battled for us, you hate to hear news like that. But it's another angel above watching us, behind us the whole way."
Game two of the World Series takes place on Wednesday at Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City.
