There have been other Game 7’s in the World Series, and there have been other World Series to remember and replay across baseball history. But there has never been a better Game 7 than we got in Toronto on Saturday night and into Sunday morning. And there has never been a better World Series than this one.
But this one at the Rogers Centre, after a World Series that already had Freddie Freeman and Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and — oh by the way — those 18 innings last Monday night that ended with Freeman’s home run, had more of just about everything in the end. It finally did end with Yoshinobu Yamamato, a Series pitching star for all times now, finishing a Game 7 after starting and winning a Game 6 the way Randy Johnson did for the Diamondbacks in 2001. Johnson was something to see that night. I was lucky enough to be there in person to see that one. But he pitched 1 1/3 innings at the end of his Game 7.
Yoshinobu pitched 2 2/3 innings, getting out of an inherited jam in the bottom of the ninth and pitching all the way until Mookie Betts — one of the best all-around players we’ve ever seen, on a night when he’d win his fourth World Series — started the 6-6-3 double play to finish off the baseball season in such style.
So let’s just list some of the plays in a time-capsule night like this, in some kind of rough order:
1. We had two likely future Hall of Famers as starting pitchers for Game 7, Ohtani and Max Scherzer. Ohtani was going on short rest. Scherzer, at 41, was going on memory. Still one of the unlikeliest matchups we might ever see.
2. Bo Bichette, on one good leg, launched a three-run homer off Ohtani that seemed as if it might be the kind of swing that would win the World Series for the Blue Jays the way Joe Carter had 32 years ago.
3. The benches even cleared in a Game 7, when Justin Wrobleski hit Andrés Giménez with a pitch after he clearly thought Giménez might have stuck a hand out trying to get hit the pitch before.
4. Later we had the first of three big-fly swings from the Dodgers, from Max Muncy, bringing his team back to 4-3 in the top of the eighth with a shot off the facade in right off Trey Yesavage, the breakout pitching star of October, who began the season in Single-A.
5. But this was a night when everybody seemed to pitch; a night when Dave Roberts ultimately called on four members of his rotation in the same Game 7. That’s right: Ohtani, Yamamoto, Tyler Glasnow, and Blake Snell all pitched in this one, making the Dodgers’ look like a distant memory.
6. In the top of the ninth, the Dodgers two outs away from losing their title, utility man Miguel Rojas – whom Roberts had inserted in his lineup for Game 6 — hit a home run off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman, joining the long list of unlikely World Series home run heroes. And we were tied at 4-all. And it was as if Game 7 had started all over again because …
7. The Blue Jays loaded the bases in the bottom of the ninth and bottom before the ball and the night found Rojas again. It was a ground ball hit by Daulton Varsho on which Rojas stumbled and nearly double-clutched before his throw barely beat Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Even then, it took replay to show us that the call on the field was right, or we might have had a World Series end on an overturned call.
8. The bottom of the ninth still wasn’t done with us even then. Because right after Roberts (there has never been a better managed Game 7 than the one we got from him in Toronto) had just sent Andy Pages out to play centerfield, there was an Ernie Clement shot towards the wall in left-center, Pages and Kiké Hernández converged on it — and Pages ran Hernández over before catching the ball. Hernández? He was facedown out there, not because he was hurt but because he thought the ball had fallen and his team had lost.
9. Eventually in the top of the 11th, Dodgers catcher Will Smith – after catching more innings in a World Series than anybody ever had – made his own home run swing and became a part of Dodgers’ lore and legend forever. And for the first time all night and all morning, the Dodgers had the lead.
10. Even then Vlad, after his own unforgettable October, wasn’t ready to go home. He led off the bottom of the 11th with a double into the left-field corner and then moved to third on a sacrifice bunt. But he never got home. A few excruciating minutes later, Alejandro Kirk grounded that ball to Betts and he came flying across second and threw it to Freeman and it was over.
Dodgers 5, Blue Jays 4. Dodgers, four games to three. They faced their first match point in Game 6, and won on a dramatic game-ending double play. They did the same in Game 7, this time trailing with two outs left in their season. A game and a Series that will be talked about forever. Finally today, baseball is resting. So are we.
