LOS ANGELES (AP) – \u2014 Eighteen innings in Game 3 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Again.<\/p>\n
And this Hollywood rerun had a similar ending.<\/p>\n
Freddie Freeman homered leading off the bottom of the 18th, Shohei Ohtani went deep twice in another record-setting performance and the Los Angeles Dodgers outlasted the Toronto Blue Jays 6-5 in an instant classic Monday night.<\/p>\n
The defending champion Dodgers took a 2-1 lead in the best-of-seven matchup and still have a chance to win the title at home \u2014 something they haven’t done since 1963.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat could go down as one of the greatest games of all time,\u201d manager Dave Roberts said.<\/p>\n
Freeman drove left-hander Brendon Little’s full-count sinker 406 feet to straightaway center field, finally ending a baseball marathon that lasted 6 hours, 39 minutes, and matched the longest by innings in postseason history.<\/p>\n
\u201cOh gosh, just pure excitement,\u201d he said. \u201cThat\u2019s as good as it gets.\u201d<\/p>\n
The only other Series contest to go 18 innings was Game 3 at Dodger Stadium seven years ago. Freeman\u2019s current teammate, Max Muncy, won that one for Los Angeles with an 18th-inning homer against the Boston Red Sox in a game that took 7 hours, 20 minutes.<\/p>\n
It was Freeman\u2019s second World Series walk-off homer in two years. The star first baseman hit the first game-ending grand slam in Series history to win Game 1 in 10 innings last season against the New York Yankees.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis one took a little longer,” Freeman said. \u201cBut this game was incredible. Our bullpen was absolutely incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n
Will Klein, the last reliever left for the Dodgers, got the biggest win of his career. He allowed one hit over four shutout innings and threw 72 pitches \u2014 twice as many as his previous high in the majors.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe weren\u2019t losing that game,\u201d Klein said, \u201cand so I had to keep going back out there.\u201d<\/p>\n
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw 105 pitches Saturday at Toronto in his second consecutive complete game, was warming up in the bullpen as Klein worked out of trouble in the 18th.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know how I kept going, but I just knew every inning that I went out there, it was going to be another zero. If I had to keep going out, there were going to be more zeros,\u201d Klein said. “I was sitting at home in Arizona last month, you know? This is crazy.\u201d<\/p>\n
A total of 19 pitchers \u2014 10 for the Dodgers \u2014 combined to throw 609 pitches in a game that ended at 11:50 p.m. on the West Coast. Three-time Cy Young Award winner Clayton Kershaw came out of their bullpen to escape a bases-loaded jam in the 12th, pitching in extra innings for the first time in his illustrious career.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe Dodgers didn\u2019t win a World Series today,\u201d Blue Jays manager John Schneider cautioned. \u201cThey won a game.\u201d<\/p>\n
As the hours crept by, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. munched on an apple at the dugout railing. A staffer brought a fruit tray into the dugout and the Toronto slugger helped himself to another piece.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe tried. We did everything we could. They did the same thing,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cBut in the end, they came away with the victory.\u201d<\/p>\n
Most of the 52,654 fans who stuck around were on their feet deep into the night, including 89-year-old Hall of Famer Sandy Koufax, and only sat in between innings.<\/p>\n
Will Smith flied out to the left-center fence leading off the bottom of the 14th. Long drives by Freeman and teammate Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez also died on the warning track with the temperature dropping in Chavez Ravine as the night grew late.<\/p>\n
Ohtani\u2019s second solo homer tied it 5-all in the seventh. The two-way superstar, scheduled to start Game 4 on the mound Tuesday, also doubled twice and became the second player with four extra-base hits in a World Series game. Frank Isbell had four doubles for the Chicago White Sox in Game 5 against the Chicago Cubs in 1906.<\/p>\n
After getting four hits in the first seven innings, Ohtani drew five consecutive walks \u2014 four intentional. That made him the first major leaguer in 83 years to reach base safely nine times in a game. Nobody else has done it even seven times in a postseason game.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat matters the most is we won,” Ohtani said through a translator. “What matters the most is we flip the page and play the next game. … I want to go to sleep as soon as possible so I can get ready.\u201d<\/p>\n
Dodgers rookie Roki Sasaki induced consecutive groundouts with two runners aboard to end the eighth. He stranded two runners in the ninth, too, after second baseman Tommy Edman made a terrific defensive play for the second out of the inning.<\/p>\n
Edman also threw out a runner at home plate to end the 10th on a perfect relay from Hern\u00e1ndez in right field as pinch-runner Davis Schneider tried to score on a double by Nathan Lukes.<\/p>\n
\u201cCrazy, crazy, crazy, crazy game,\u201d Blue Jays starter Max Scherzer said.<\/p>\n
With two outs in the Toronto seventh, Guerrero singled off reliever Blake Treinen and scored from first on Bo Bichette\u2019s sharp single down the right-field line for a 5-4 lead.<\/p>\n
The ball appeared to deflect off a television sound man along the low retaining wall in foul territory before caroming into shallow right field. Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez\u2019s throw home was wide, and Guerrero narrowly beat Smith\u2019s tag by slapping the plate with his hand for a 5-4 lead.<\/p>\n
Scherzer went 4 1\/3 innings and became the first pitcher to appear in the World Series with four teams. His first Series came in 2012 with Detroit.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe came out on the wrong side of this and it stings and it burns,\u201d Scherzer said. \u201cYou want to win that game, but so proud of everybody\u2019s effort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Home runs by Hern\u00e1ndez in the second and Ohtani in the third staked the Dodgers to a 2-0 lead.<\/p>\n
Toronto rallied with four runs \u2014 two unearned because of Edman\u2019s error \u2014 to take a 4-2 lead in the fourth.<\/p>\n
Alejandro Kirk hit a three-run homer off Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow and dashed excitedly through the Blue Jays dugout holding their home run jacket. Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez added a sacrifice fly before Glasnow completed a 29-pitch inning.<\/p>\n
Los Angeles tied it at 4 in the fifth.<\/p>\n
Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez singled leading off against Scherzer and scored on Ohtani\u2019s double to left-center off reliever Mason Fluharty. Ohtani scored on Freeman\u2019s single down the right-field line.<\/p>\n
Up next<\/p>\n
Toronto RHP Shane Bieber makes his first World Series start and fourth of this postsesaon in Game 4 on Tuesday.<\/p>\n
Ohtani hit three homers and struck out 10 batters over six-plus scoreless innings in Game 4 of the National League Championship Series against Milwaukee.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"LOS ANGELES (AP) – \u2014 Eighteen innings in Game 3 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium. Again.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":403541,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2288],"tags":[5,377,39,642,815,2335,2328,2304,4,2305,2303,1595,468,1039],"class_list":{"0":"post-403540","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb-postseason","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-blue-jays","10":"tag-dodgers","11":"tag-extra-innings","12":"tag-freddie-freeman","13":"tag-home-run","14":"tag-major-league-baseball-playoffs","15":"tag-major-league-baseball-postseason","16":"tag-mlb","17":"tag-mlb-playoffs","18":"tag-mlb-postseason","19":"tag-postseason","20":"tag-shohei-ohtani","21":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/115451627046173138","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403540","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=403540"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/403540\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/403541"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=403540"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=403540"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=403540"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}