The World Series reached levels of epic not seen before in Los Angeles

Since the World Series shifted to Los Angeles on Monday night, the Dodgers won a game that will be considered one of the greatest in the history of the Fall Classic. The next day, the Blue Jays won a very boring game by comparison, but they both count the same and we are tied 2-2 heading into a pivotal Game 5 on Wednesday night.

So how did we get here? It has a lot to do with Shohei Ohtani cementing his legacy as an all-time baseball legend and setting a Postseason record by reaching base nine times during the Game 3 marathon that ended on Freddie Freeman’s walk-off home run off of Brendon Little to lead off the bottom of the 18th. If nine times on base with no outs made wasn’t amazing enough, Ohtani’s first four plate appearances resulted in extra-base hits, and the last two led to the Dodgers coming back and tying the game. His double in the fifth inning drove in Enrique Hernandez to make the score 4-3 before Freeman singled to get Ohtani home with the equalizing run.

Then, after Bo Bichette’s single down the right field line got Vladimir Guerrero all the way from first to home with the go-ahead run in the top of the seventh, Ohtani answered with his second home run of the game to tie the score at 5-5, where it would stay for the next 11 innings. Part of the reason the game stayed tied for so long was that Toronto intentionally walked Ohtani during his next four plate appearances and then walked him conventionally in his final plate appearance to mix things up. That last walk by Little in the 17th inning was so noncompetitive that it looked like an old intentional walk from back when you had to throw the ball to the catcher. The craziest part of the five Ohtani walks was that only one of them came in a typical intentional walk scenario with first base open and a runner on second or third. On the other four occasions, Blue Jays manager John Schneider either put Ohtani on as the winning run or to push the winning run into scoring position. The strategy worked.

We also wouldn’t have made it to the 18th inning without a couple of relief pitcher heroes in Eric Lauer for Toronto and Will Klein for Los Angeles. Lauer is a former Padres and Brewers southpaw who split his time between starting and relief pitching this season with the Blue Jays. He threw four and two thirds scoreless innings after entering the game with one out in the 12th. Klein’s four shutout frames were even more surprising because he had never started a game before in his two-year big league career. In his 22 regular season appearances, he never went longer than two innings before, and yet here was Stein taking the Dodgers deep into the night when they didn’t know if they even had another pitcher available.

If Little had retired Freeman in the 18th, we might have seen something as incredible as Stein’s great outing. That’s because Yoshinobu Yamamoto was warming up in the bullpen after throwing his second straight complete game of the Postseason just two days before! Just when I thought I would never see a pitcher save his team on short rest again, Yamamoto was willing to come back on one day of rest! It’s kind of a shame that Freeman ended the game when he did, because that would have been something to see. It REALLY would have been a shame if Toronto won, but at least that didn’t happen.

Monday night’s cathartic Game 3 victory made it seem like Los Angeles had all the momentum, especially with Ohtani on the mound to start Game 4. Could he possibly grow his legend even more? It turns out that no, he could not. The Dodgers grabbed a 1-0 lead in the second inning when a Max Muncy walk and a Tommy Edman single led to a sac fly by Hernandez, but Shane Bieber would keep Los Angeles off the scoreboard for the rest of his five and a third innings. Toronto struck back and took the lead in the third when Guerrero Jr. launched a two-run home run off of Ohtani.

The Dodgers’ best chance to retake the lead came in the sixth when Freeman and Teoscar Hernandez singled to set the table with one out, but Mason Fluharty came on for Bieber and got Max Muncy to fly out before striking out Edman to end the threat. The Blue Jays started the seventh with two straight hits to chase Ohtani and went on to rally for four runs with RBI hits coming from Andres Gimenez, Bichette, and Addison Barger. That was more than enough for Toronto, and it went on to win 6-2.

It feels like we’ve already had enough dramatic events to fill a whole series (probably because the Dodgers and Blue Jays have played five games’ worth of innings in four games), but there are still at least two more games left to play in the 2025 season. I can’t wait to see what happens in Game 5 tonight with Blake Snell on the bump for Los Angeles against Trey Yesavage for Toronto.

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