The heroes were plentiful. Will Klein, the last man out of the Dodgers’ bullpen, a reliever who had topped out this year at two innings and 30 pitches, threw four innings of one-hit ball and struck out five on 72 pitches. The last of them, an 86-mph curveball, induced a swing and miss from Tyler Heineman and a primal scream from Klein, who understood what had been asked of him and knew he’d delivered.
Games don’t become classics without efforts like Klein’s. He recorded the final out having walked the previous two Toronto batters. Yoshinobu Yamamoto — who had thrown a 105-pitch complete game two days prior — warming up in the bullpen. The sight of that alone illustrated the anarchy of Game 3, a funhouse mirror of a ballgame, with everything out of order.
Moments like this abounded over the game that featured 615 pitches, the most ever in the postseason since MLB began tracking pitches in 1988. In the 14th, Will Smith lofted a fly ball to center field and dropped his bat, thinking it was a game winner. The ball died on the warning track. Teoscar Hernández, who, like Ohtani, had four hits, did the same in the 16th. It wound up in a glove, too.
Freeman’s did not. He had struggled much of the postseason, entering the game with only one RBI. His first two games had looked a far cry from his World Series last year, when, nursing a number of injuries, he hit a walk-off grand slam in Game 1 and won series MVP. It wasn’t just the lack of production. He wasn’t hitting the ball particularly hard, either.
On the final pitch, he finally did. This is the kind of thing that happens in 18-inning games. They are uncomfortable and scary and can end with the crack of a bat. It is terrifying. It is beautiful. It is everything.
Those lucky enough to bear witness will never forget it, either. They squirmed and flinched and closed their eyes and prayed and squealed and cringed and, in the end, saw 31 hits and 37 runners left on base and 19 pitchers and one particularly majestic swing that, 10 minutes shy of Monday turning into Tuesday, ended one of the best World Series games ever — and gave the Dodgers a 2-1 advantage in this year’s series.
They’ll return to the stadium Tuesday — less than 18 hours later — and do it again. It won’t be the same, because baseball games never are — but that’s perfectly fine. Game 3 had everything.
LOS ANGELES — The game that had everything ended at 11:50 p.m. PT on Monday. For the previous 6 hours, 39 minutes, Game 3 of the World Series played out like a fantastical dreamscape of baseball, filled with tension and drama and madness, with happenings the game had never seen before and won’t ever see again. It was delightful, and still, when the 18th inning ended and the Los Angeles Dodgers had beaten the Toronto Blue Jays, 6-5, it was, in a way, a relief, because holding your breath for hours on end is not a sustainable way to live.
Such is the price we pay for an affair like Game 3. The Dodgers and Blue Jays competed at an exceptional level in the second-longest game in World Series history. They punched and counterpunched, emptied their benches and bullpens. They executed with wizardry and found pieces of themselves they didn’t know existed. And in the 18th inning, it was Freddie Freeman, already the hero of last year’s World Series, who deposited a center-cut sinker from Brendon Little over the center-field fence 406 feet away.
At that point, Blue Jays manager John Schneider had seen enough. In the ninth inning, Ohtani became the first hitter intentionally walked with the bases empty in the ninth inning or later of a postseason game. The next three times he came to the plate — twice with the bases empty — Schneider held up four fingers and gladly gave Ohtani a free pass. In the 17th, with a runner on first, the Blue Jays opted to pitch to him — and Brendon Little promptly deposited four balls nowhere near the strike zone.
Schneider’s decision-making earlier in the game, in which he tried to scratch across runs by substituting in a cadre of pinch runners, left the Blue Jays’ lineup crippled for most of the second half of the game. Against a Dodgers bullpen that had been a sieve for most of the postseason, Toronto managed just one run in 13.1 innings. Los Angeles used 10 pitchers — including Clayton Kershaw, the future Hall of Famer. Kershaw came on in the 13th with the bases loaded, ground through a nine-pitch at-bat against Nathan Lukes and induced a dribbler to second base that Tommy Edman scooped with his glove to Freeman.
Game 3 of the World Series featured…609 pitches (LAD: 312, TOR: 297)37 runners left on base25 position players used19 pitchers used pic.twitter.com/MBHReOJ16x
Freeman walks it off with a HR in marathon 18-inning Game 3 (1:17)Freddie Freeman sends Los Angeles into a frenzy as he launches a walk-off home run in the bottom of the 18th inning. (1:17)