LOS ANGELES – When it was over, finally, the guy slated to pitch for the Dodgers the very next day had reached base so many times he needed an IV, and the guy who had hit a Kirk Gibson-like grand slam in the World Series just one year ago had somehow crafted another epic ending.
Freddie Freeman’s homer off lefty Brendon Little in the bottom of the 18th – yes, 18th – inning of Game 3 punctuated the Dodgers’ 6-5 victory over the Blue Jays and gave L.A. a 2-1 edge in this best-of-seven World Series.
It was an affair that lasted 6 hours, 39 minutes, and it tied another Game 3 at Dodger Stadium – the Dodgers’ 3-2 win over the Red Sox in 2018 – for the longest, by innings, in Fall Classic history.
“It’s one of the greatest World Series games of all time,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said matter-of-factly.
But what made this game so unusual – beyond its sheer length – is that the player who once again lived out the stuff of backyard dreams very quickly reminded everyone that, even though he had just become the first player ever to hit multiple walk-off homers in World Series history, someone else was the real star of the almost endless evening.
“Shohei’s game,” Freeman said. “I hope we don’t lose sight … our starting pitcher tomorrow got on base nine times tonight. Just incredible.”
Shohei Ohtani inspires that word a lot. And while his performance in Game 3 can’t rival the two-way triumph of his six scoreless innings and three home runs in the Dodgers’ NLCS clincher against the Brewers, what he did to Toronto in this one will also go down in postseason lore.
On the eve of his Game 4 start on the mound, Ohtani became the first player in a postseason game (and only the fourth player in any game) to reach base nine times, the second player (joining Frank Isbell of the 1906 White Sox) to have four extra-base hits in a World Series game and the first to be intentionally walked four times in a postseason game.
“What I accomplished today is in the context of this game,” Ohtani said afterward through an interpreter, “and what matters the most is we flip the page and play the next game.”
When any best-of-seven postseason series has been tied 1-1, the team winning Game 3 has gone on to also win the series 70 of 101 times (69.3%). In series with the current 2-3-2 format that have been tied 1-1, teams winning Game 3 at home have gone on to also win the series 29 of 48 times (60.4%).
It was Ohtani who hit the seventh-inning solo homer that tied the game at 5 and put it on the path to legendary lengthiness.
“After that,” said Blue Jays manager John Schneider, “you just kind of take the bat out of his hands.”
The Blue Jays put a bat in the hands of every position player on their roster in this game, and it didn’t help their cause that their ALCS hero, George Springer, had to be replaced in the seventh because of right side discomfort that required further testing. Toronto’s 67 at-bats in this game set a World Series record, and the Blue Jays regrettably stranded a Series-record 19 runners.
The Dodgers set a Series team record, too, using 10 pitchers in all, including the retiring Clayton Kershaw in a relief role for a key out in the 12th. We knew we’d see one future Hall of Famer in this game with Max Scherzer starting for the Blue Jays, but Kershaw’s presence was definitely unscripted.
The Dodgers’ biggest outs, though, came from little-known reliever Will Klein, who was summoned to their World Series roster after mainstay Alex Vesia was ruled out due to a personal matter. Klein wound up giving the Dodgers four scoreless innings in extras in the longest outing of his professional life.
“I was sitting at home in Arizona the last month, you know?” Klein said. “I never thought this would happen, so I just stayed in it mentally and good things happened.”
The game was a mental and physical grind for both teams.
It saw six runners thrown out on the bases, including multiple plays at the plate — Freeman nabbed by a beautiful Addison Barger throw from right field in the third and Jays pinch-runner Davis Schneider caught in the top of the 10th by a perfect relay from right fielder Teoscar Hernández to second baseman Tommy Edman to catcher Will Smith.
It had one of the more peculiar pickoffs you’ll ever see, as batter Daulton Varsho and runner Bo Bichette were both confused by home-plate umpire Mark Wegner’s slow strike signal on a 3-1 pitch. Bichette, thinking it was a walk, began heading to second and was picked off first by pitcher Tyler Glasnow.
And it saw several would-be walk-off Dodger blasts die at the warning track … until, of course, one didn’t.
Most of the game’s runs came early.
The Dodgers jumped out to an early 2-0 lead thanks to solo shots from Hernández and Ohtani off Scherzer.
The Jays, who had been scoreless since the third inning of Game 2, roared back in the fourth, taking advantage of an Edman error to put two on before Alejandro Kirk smashed a hanging curveball from Glasnow over the left-center-field wall for a three-run blast that put Toronto ahead, 3-2. The Jays manufactured insurance later in the inning to make it 4-2.
With a runner aboard in the fifth, Schneider pulled the 41-year-old Scherzer to bring in lefty reliever Mason Fluharty for the handedness advantage against Ohtani.
Ohtani’s third extra-base hit of the night was a lofted RBI double the opposite way to the gap in left-center that cut the score to 4-3. And when another lefty, Freeman, ripped a ground-ball single through the right-hand side, Ohtani motored home with the tying run.
In the top of the seventh, Vladimir Guerrero Jr.’s hustle all the way home from first on a Bichette groundball single that ricocheted off Dodger Stadium’s side wall and away from the right fielder Hernández momentarily gave the Jays a 5-4 lead.
But then it was Ohtani Time. Again.
After a mound visit with one out, Toronto reliever Seranthony Domínguez made the grave mistake of not only throwing Ohtani fastball in the zone, but middle-middle. Seconds later, it was in the left-center seats — an oppo blast on another otherworldly evening for the player who can’t stop making history.
“You know, we’re trying to pitch around him,” Schneider said. “You trust Seranthony to make pitches to do that. Sometimes for pitchers it’s hard to do that when you’re kind of trying to throw a ball and didn’t put it where you want to put it.”
Between the clutch plays betraying baserunners and clutch outs from some unexpected sources on the mound, both teams squandered multiple opportunities to break the 5-5 tie. The combined 37 stranded runners set a new World Series record. (Yet, bizarrely, there were no double plays turned.)
Finally, in the 18th, Freeman, who had his Gibson moment in Game 1 against the Yankees last year, had seen enough. He led off against Brendon Little, worked the count full and lifted a sinker over the center-field wall to end one of the greatest World Series games you’ll ever see.
“To have it happen again a year later, to hit another walk-off, it’s kind of amazing, crazy,” Freeman said. “I’m just glad we won and we’re up 2-1, and we got our Shohei on the mound [Tuesday].”
