The October roar is back. The October chills are back. The October Dodgers are back.
In a wild ending to the wildest of wild-card playoff games, the Dodgers’ Chris Taylor drove a two-out pitch from the St. Louis Cardinals’ Alex Reyes into the left-field pavilion to break a lengthy 1-all tie and give the Dodgers a 3-1 victory Wednesday night.
Cue the bouncing Dodgers’ home-plate mosh pit. Cue Dodger Stadium rocking from its ancient core. Cue “I Love L.A.!”
And, yes, yes, yes, bring on the Giants!
The Dodgers will now meet those gawd-awful San Francisco Giants in a postseason series for the first time in the teams’ 131-year rivalry.
It’s taken 2,535 games, but finally they will meet in playoff October when they begin a best-of-five National League Division Series on Friday at San Francisco’s Oracle Park.
All this, on the 70th anniversary of Bobby Thomson’s infamous “Shot Heard ’Round The World” that gave the Giants a pennant-winning playoff victory over the Dodgers.
Wild, wonderful October indeed.
The Dodgers faltered early in this game, Max Scherzer wasn’t himself from the start, allowing a run in the first on a single, stolen base, walk, fly ball and wild pitch.
Scherzer figured it out enough to prevent further trouble and keep it at that one run while the offense struggled against Cardinals’ starter Adam Wainwright, managing just a couple of infield hits until Justin Turner led off the fourth with a game-tying home run.
That’s how it stood, each team scuffling for baserunners in seemingly every inning but each team failing to score them.
The only constant was the emotion pouring through Chavez Ravine, 53,193 fans letting loose long-awaited playoff screams in the first-attended Dodgers postseason game at Chavez Ravine in two years.
It was Russell Westbrook leading cheers on the scoreboard. It was the Washington Nationals’ Juan Soto leading cheers from behind home plate while wearing a throwback Trea Turner jersey. It was Magic Johnson waving a blue towel next to the Dodgers’ dugout.
The emotion reached a peak when both teams threatened in the ninth.
The Cardinals put the go-ahead run on second base with one out against Kenley Jansen when Tommy Edman singled and stole second. But Jansen struck out Paul Goldschmidt looking then, after running the count to 3 and 1 against Tyler O’Neill and watching a sure double fall a few feet foul in the right-field corner, struck out O’Neill on a 93-mph cutter.
O’Neill threw his bat. Jansen pounded his chest. The stage had been set.
With the crowd wailing to “Seven Nation Army,” T.J. McFarland took the mound and retired Albert Pujols and Stephen Souza Jr. before inexplicably walking the .165-hitting Cody Bellinger. Then, on a 1-and-1 pitch to Taylor, who began the plate appearance with a wild swing, and was in the midst of an eight for 72 slide, Bellinger stole second.
On the next pitch, Taylor went deep, and the place went crazy.
Before that hit, the game had tilted forever in the Dodgers’ favor in the fifth inning, when manager Dave Roberts was faced with his first postseason decision, and he made the right one.
With runners on first and second and one out, he pulled Scherzer for Joe Kelly. It was such a monumental move, ensuring that Scherzer would have his shortest postseason start in 10 years — that Roberts literally had to take the ball out of Scherzer’s glove.
The move was immediately questioned in this press box seat, as Scherzer had thrown 93 pitches but had allowed only three singles.
But Kelly, one of the most popular Dodgers who is known as Mariachi Joe after he traded his Dodgers jersey for a Mariachi jacket worn by a visiting musician, made the sweetest music.
He had allowed only two of 20 inherited runners to score and, sure enough, he retired Nolan Arenado on a grounder and struck out Dylan Carlson after falling behind 3 and 0 to end the threat.
It was a weird night for Scherzer, who allowed one run in 41/3 innings with three walks and four strikeouts. Entering the game, he was 7-3 with a 2.63 ERA in 14 career starts at Dodger Stadium and 7-0 with a 1.98 ERA with the Dodgers despite giving up 10 runs in his last 101/3 innings. In fact, the Dodgers were 11-0 when he pitches.
The Dodgers will worry about Scherzer another day. On this night, the pitching focus was on the bullpen.
After Kelly, Brusdar Graterol retired the Cardinals in the sixth after he hit Harrison Bader in the back, striking out Wainwright to end the inning. Then Blake Treinan survived the seventh after walking Tyler O’Neill and watching him steal second, as he ended the inning by getting Arenado on a foul pop to first base. Treinan was followed by nifty Corey Knebel, who then surrendered the mound to Kenley Jansen, an October hero for the first time in a long time.
It was fitting, incidentally, that Justin Turner tied up the game with a homer. He has a Dodgers’ record 13 career postseason homers. He is money in October, as he batted .320 in the World Series against Tampa Bay, .333 in the World Series against Boston, and he had the memorable three-run, walk-off home run in the 2017 NLCS against the Chicago Cubs.
This home run, on a 2-and-2 pitch after he fell behind 1 and 2, was also extraordinary. He hit it off a Wainwright curveball from a pitcher who had thrown 550 curveballs as a starter in his postseason career without giving up a home run, according to Inside Edge.
This whole exercise was crazy, by the way.
By winning 106 games and finishing with the second-best record in baseball, there’s no way the Dodgers should have been thrown into this one-game madness, they earned a full series.
Before the game, Roberts agreed.
“Can I sit here and say this is not ideal after winning X amount of games? It’s not ideal,” he said. “But it is what it is and I don’t want or expect our guys to think otherwise.”
They didn’t. There were no hard feelings, only serious hardball in a game in which the Dodgers scratched and scraped and hung in there until their October magic reappeared and was blasted over the left-field fence.
Bring on the Giants!
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