The seats were full, but the atmosphere was lacking.
For most of Friday night at Dodger Stadium, a 49,399-person crowd booed loudly for Fernando Tatis Jr. and Manny Machado, cheered wildly every time the Lakers’ score was flashed on the screens, but sat quietly for most of the action in between.
For the first home game of the year against the rival San Diego Padres, the scene at Chavez Ravine was somewhat subdued.
At least it was until Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman came to the plate in the seventh.
Moments after the Padres had tied the score with a two-out rally, the Dodgers’ two biggest stars electrified the night with back-to-back home runs that sent the Dodgers to an eventual 4-2 win.
Betts went deep first, blasting a solo drive to left that broke a 2-2 tie.
Freeman doubled the Dodgers’ lead two pitches later, turning on an inside fastball for a moonshot to right.
The Dodgers (24-15) seemed unlikely to need the extra offense earlier in the night. After Freeman opened the scoring with a two-run double in the third, starter Dustin May got on a roll.
The right-hander didn’t give up his first hit until the fourth inning and let only one base runner reach scoring position through six scoreless innings.
With two outs in the seventh, though, May ran out of gas. Xander Bogaerts stung a double to center and Matt Carpenter walked. Then Ha-Seong Kim tied it with a two-run double down the line.
For a brief moment, the buzz in the stadium fizzled.
But then, Betts and Freeman produced their seventh-inning frenzy, sparking a rivalry-game celebration that would last the rest of the night.
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