By ALEX AGUEROS
Sports Editor

(WARRENSBURG, Mo., digitalBURG) — Some days, especially near Halloween, I feel like I’m living in a bizarro world. It’s like I have entered a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man. A dimension as timeless as infinity, where Warrensburg is installing a car wash from space next to the new IHOP, and the university is installing turf on the baseball field. In which the community is watching Kansas City Royals in the World Series, again.

If Tuesday night’s 5-hours 9-minute rollercoaster Royals victory wasn’t enough to convince you we’re in the Twilight Zone, consider the weirdness that was the playoffs.

The Chicago Cubs, led by staff ace Jake Arrieta, beat the top-seeded St. Louis Cardinals. The Cards owned the best record in the MLB, but were fending off the next best teams, the Cubs and Pittsburgh Pirates, in their own division. Arrieta, whose ERA was 4.48 going into 2015, finished 2015 with a 1.77 ERA and is one of three pitchers worthy of the NL Cy Young award, depending on what stats you value.

It’s almost unfair that the other two pitchers worthy of this year’s NL Cy Young are on the same team. Zach Grienke and Clayton Kershaw both enjoyed exceptional seasons, even by their own impeccable standards.

If you ask Grienke, he’d say Kershaw is the best pitcher in the game. Kershaw led the league in strikeouts, innings and games started. If you ask a Las Vegas bookie, they’d say Grienke win the Cy Young. He led the league with a 1.66 ERA and pitched 43.2 consecutive scoreless innings from June 13.

It’s only almost unfair for Los Angeles, because the New York Mets, who were about 3.5 games behind first place in the NL East at the time, ended Grienke’s streak in July and later ended the Dodgers’ World Series hopes in October.

The Mets, of course, relied on the least secure investment in baseball: young pitching prospects and middle infield power. Noah Syndergaard, Jacob deGrom and Matt Harvey lead the New York rotation, while Daniel Murphy homered in six straight games to overcome the Dodgers and Cubs on the way to the World Series.

Which brings us back to Kansas City, host of the World Series yet again. This time, they defeated the Houston Astros, a franchise that seemed to be losing games on purpose for the last four years, firing a manager and botching a couple draft signings along the way.

This year, Houston was a fearsome, hyper-charged “Moneyball” type team taking walks and mashing homers. Their ace, Dallas Keuchel, is the likely AL Cy Young award winner.

After defeating a formidable offense in Houston, the Roy’s faced the Toronto Blue Jays, the only team in the league better than Houston at taking walks and mashing homers.

Troy Tulowitzki, Jose Bautista and Josh Donaldson were a ridiculous lineup worthy of the AL Pennant. This dimension being as it is, the Royals worked against logic on their way to victory. Stringing together singles is an inefficient offensive strategy compared to the Blue Jays’ longball ability, but a Twilight Zone-esque nightmare meltdown from David Price in Game 2 saw four singles and a double on the way to a Kansas City victory.

So, it’s only natural this year’s World Series opener was full of bizarre, unexplainable happenings. Fox lost power to their broadcast truck. Jeurys Familia blew a save for the first time since July. Some happenings recalled darker times. Eric Hosmer definitely Bill Buckner’d that grounder in the eighth inning — just the Royals’ second error in the playoffs.

And Alcides Escobar’s inside-the-park home run felt like Gordon’s unfinished business from last year’s Game 7. I don’t care what Joe Buck or the Rockhurst baseball team says about holding Gordon at third. I wish Gordon had been sent home. In fact, I grew up Brett Marr, the shortstop Rockhurst used in their Alex Gordon 2014 Game 7 recreation, and he would never grow anything similar to the greasy mane Brandon Crawford sports. The experiment is moot!

Of course, Gordon tied game 1 in the ninth with a more traditional, out-of-the-park home run in the ninth. It was an incredible moment in a playoff run already dense with moments unbelievable anywhere else… but the Twilight Zone.