Another year has brought another promotion for a rising star in baseball’s coaching ranks. The Brewers on Thursday hired Darnell Coles to be their hitting coach, continuing the former utility man’s swift rise up the instructional ladder.

Looking back on it a decade later, it’s almost amazing how little fear the Red Sox had of the Cardinals, the team they would dispatch in the World Series. Sure, Boston had made that historic comeback against the Yankees in the ALCS. But that didn’t provide any guarantees, particularly when you consider St. Louis had been the best team in baseball during the 2004 regular season, winning 104 games.

The service Royals manager Ned Yost required of Wade Davis and Greg Holland in Game 2 of the World Series differed a bit from what he usually asks of baseball’s best eighth-ninth inning combination. But their performances were no different.

Omar Infante hit a homer, Hunter Strickland started yelling in English, Salvador Perez yelled back in Spanish and both dugouts momentarily braced for a skirmish that never occurred. After the Royals’ 7-2 win over the Giants in Game 2 of the World Series, everyone was still confused.

At the end, they roared with every single pitch. They stood, too, screaming and pleading and cheering. You could feel how badly they wanted it. Some of these fans had waited 29 years for a moment like this one. So they held nothing back as the Royals won Game 2 of the 2014 World Series, beating the Giants, 7-2, on Wednesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

Billy Butler doesn’t want to go anywhere. He loves being a Royal and would be one forever if it were up to him. Unfortunately, it’s not up to him, so he is doing everything he can to bring joy to Royals fans for as long as possible.

For five years, United States Naval Academy graduate Mitch Harris sailed around the world and watched his dreams of playing professional baseball grow even more remote than the exotic locales he visited. Now, he’s back on the mound, weeks away from his 29th birthday and a level or two from the Major Leagues.

By the time the sixth inning was over, Kelvin Herrera had thrown a 101-mph sinker, Billy Butler had given a curtain call after a single, the benches had cleared, Omar Infante had gone deep and four Giants relievers had been summoned, all pretty much in vain. So yeah, the sixth inning was a bit wild Wednesday night.

When the Giants’ Hunter Pence hit a ground ball into the hole in the sixth inning on Wednesday night, it provided another highlight-reel opportunity in Game 2 of the World Series. But as Statcast tracking technology shows, the numbers were working against Royals shortstop Alcides Escobar.

Noah Wilson, a 6-year-old cancer patient, was at Kauffman Stadium on Wednesday night to see his beloved Royals play the Giants in Game 2 of the World Series, courtesy of Major League Baseball.

Even the normally unflappable Yordano Ventura may feel the heat of the pressure cooker raise a notch tonight. He takes the ball in Game 2 of the World Series with his Kansas City Royals down 1-0 to the San Francisco Giants.

New Rangers manager Jeff Banister is in Surprise, Ariz., this week for organizational meetings and to continue the process of putting together his coaching staff.

When Jake Peavy takes the mound to start tonight’s Game 2 of the World Series (4:30 p.m. PT airtime/5:07 p.m. PT gametime on FOX), he will be pitching on 10 days’ rest, but while such a long layoff can sometimes be difficult for a pitcher, the Giants right-hander thinks it will work to his advantage.

Long before the 100-mph fastball, the dynamic 2014 season and the opportunity to start Game 2 of the World Series was a tryout in Guerra, the Dominican city that houses the Royals’ academy on that baseball-rich island. It was the summer of 2008. Yordano Ventura came in slightly taller than 5-foot-10, weighing 143 pounds and throwing no harder than 88 mph, sticking out for the wrong reasons.

Yordano Ventura, the 23-year-old with the triple-digit fastball, is perfectly positioned to do what No. 1 starter James Shields could not as the Royals’ rookie right-hander gets the ball for Game 2 of the World Series against the Giants tonight.

If there’s a formula for beating the Royals, the Giants found it. Actually, it’s the formula baseball teams have been using for more than a century. First things first. The Giants put up three runs in the first inning and cruised to a 7-1 victory over the Royals in Game 1 of the 2014 World Series on Tuesday night at Kauffman Stadium.

Madison Bumgarner padded what was already an impressive World Series resume in Game 1 on Tuesday night, allowing just three hits and one run in seven innings to lead the Giants to a 7-1 win over the Royals in Kansas City.