MILWAUKEE — The only sound inside Miller Park, at least the only sound loud enough to hear, was coming from the Los Angeles Dodgers’ dugout, from two dozen or so screaming men, from a baseball team that may have realized, right then, deep into the 20th night of October, that this fall may not end like all the others.
Maybe a refrigerator hummed behind a concession stand on the concourse. Maybe a few fans turned and cursed to each other somewhere in the stands. Maybe there was that smiling beer vendor, the one from before the game, back when there was reason to hope, still yelling, “See you on Friday!” to whoever would listen, as in see you in the World Series, as in this Milwaukee Brewers team isn’t finished quite yet.
But out on the field, where a decisive Game 7 was being played, it was getting harder and harder to believe that. The silence, blanketing everything outside the Dodgers’ dugout, said as much. Yasiel Puig was circling the bases, having just hit a home run to left-center field, having just given the Dodgers a 5-1 sixth-inning lead that held as the final, fateful score on Saturday night. And it was that margin, after spring training, after the 162-game regular season, after all the batting practice and bullpen calls, and after a pair playoff runs converged here, with two seasons on the line, that sent the Brewers home and the Dodgers back to the World Series, where they will face the Boston Red Sox starting Tuesday.
Advertisement
All of that was poured into one game. And only one team, the team that hit the timely home runs, and got just enough from its starting pitcher, and had the sharper bullpen when it mattered most, came out on the other side.
“This series could have went either way,” Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts said. “And they gave us all we could handle.”
The Dodgers returned most of last year’s pennant-winning roster, so this group was already conditioned to face outsized expectations. They knew in May, when they slipped 10 games below .500, that they had too much talent, and too high a payroll, to be playing so poorly. They knew in July, when the front office traded for star shortstop Manny Machado, that it was again World Series or bust. They knew that Los Angeles, a city with options, home to LeBron James and the undefeated Rams and a whole lot of beaches, could find another interest if they did not succeed.
They knew, because they have been told over and over, and then over again, that the franchise’s last title came in 1988, and that each passing season lends fuel to a can’t-finish-in-October narrative. They knew they carried that into Saturday night. And they knew only they could change it.
Advertisement
“No disrespect to 1988, we hear about that a lot,” Dodgers ace Clayton Kershaw said earlier in the NLCS, before he pitched the ninth inning Saturday night and ended up at the center of a bobbing celebration to the left of the mound. “And I’ve said it before, but we are sick of it. And it’s up to us to do something about it, obviously. We need to create some of our own history.”
But before they could do that, before they could even think about what’s next, they had to best the Brewers, the unlikely contender, the team that extended the National League Championship Series with a convincing 7-2 win on Friday night. The Dodgers fell behind early in Game 7, on a solo home run by Christian Yelich in the bottom of the first, but Cody Bellinger flipped the momentum in the next frame. Bellinger hit his first home run of the postseason into the upper deck in right field, scoring Machado, hushing the Brewers crowd for the first time, and giving rookie starter Walker Buehler a second chance to settle into the game.
And Buehler did, using his high-90s fastball to work through 14 outs before issuing a two-out double in the bottom in the fifth. Roberts then called on the 22-year-old Julio Urias to face Yelich, a matchup that looked to favor the Brewers in a critical spot. Yelich, the front-runner to win NL MVP, the pulse of the Brewers’ offense for the last six months, had not been himself in this series, collecting just four hits in 29 at-bats across the first six games. But now he had homered in the first and, here in the fifth, lifted a Urias fastball to left-center, where there was so much open grass, and the fans jumped to their feet, and Lorenzo Cain was already rounding third, and ...
Advertisement
Where did Chris Taylor come from?
“When it was in my glove,” Taylor, the Dodgers soft-spoken left fielder, said of when he knew he had turned a sure game-tying double into the most-critical out of the series. He then laughed shyly, as if there was nothing else to it, as if it were not the kind of play that will be remembered forever.
Taylor sprung into the gap once Yelich connected, slid at the foot of the warning track, reached behind his head to grab the sinking liner, and punctuated it by pumping his fists as he knelt at the base of the wall, baseball secured. Buehler raised both his arms in the dugout. Yelich coasted into second, stared out to where Taylor had made the catch, removed his helmet and banged it hard with his left hand. The Brewers’ offense never generated another threat.
“That was the catch of the year,” Bellinger said. “I don’t know what happens if he doesn’t make that catch.”
Advertisement
The Dodgers won’t have to. Puig smacked his three-run homer, in the top of the next inning, and Miller Park’s disbelief turned into to quiet despair. Once the blast cleared the fence, and caromed around like a lottery ball, Puig celebrated around each bag, chopping at his midsection in a way that defies description, flexing his biceps, running a finger along his throat as he rounded third base, pronouncing the Brewers dead before the Dodgers’ bullpen ushered them into their offseason.
That celebration soon spilled into the Dodgers’ clubhouse, where players soaked each other, and the carpeted floor, and anything in reasonable range, with bottles and bottles of alcohol. Bellinger stood next to Tommy Lasorda, now 91 years old, once the manager of those 1988 Dodgers, and slowly poured a Budweiser onto Lasorda’s head as he yelled, “Yeah Tommy!” over and over. Enrique Hernandez ran around shirtless, bottle of champagne in hand, and sprayed teammates from behind. Bellinger, when told he had to go address reporters as the NLCS MVP, for his walk-off single in Game 4 and towering homer on Saturday, had one important question: “Can I bring my beer?”
And so it went, because these Dodgers know how to throw a clubhouse a party, because they have thrown many before. That is when happens when you win six straight division titles, when you advance past the National League Division Series in four of those seasons, when you win back-to-back NL pennants to give yourself another shot at it all. You almost get used to nights like this.
But what these Dodgers have not done, what no Dodgers have done for 30 years, is finish as the last team standing. Now they have a second chance to. Now the hard part begins once again.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7uK3SoaCnn6Sku7G70q1lnKedZMCxu9Gtqmicn5m0pr7SZqmeqJWWwW6t0malpWWTna6uvNJmn6iklGK8p7KMm6mer5WnwG61zWaemqWVYoRuu8VmpaWbo2R%2FcX2XaGhpZ2JlfKJ%2FxGuccJ5iYrF1rZdmaGqdaGKFpH6RZp2aapWbhHWuw2%2Bbb5ejqbyzxY2hq6ak