Tag Archives: Mookie Betts

Kerkering Agonistes

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Orion Kerkering

Kerkering’s mistake throw home sailing wide left of Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto as Hyeseong Kim hits the plate with the Dodgers’ NLCS ticket punch. (ESPN broadcast capture.)

In Greek mythology, Orion is the mighty hunter who was felled by either the bow of the goddess of the hunt Artemis or by the sting of a giant scorpion. In National League division series Game Five, Orion was Kerkering, the Phillies relief pitcher stung in the bottom of the eleventh by the gravest mistake of any 21st century Phillie, ever.

If Kerkering wanted immediately to scream for help, you wouldn’t have blamed him. If the next place he really wanted to be was a Himalayan cave at altitude high enough to stop anyone from finding him, you wouldn’t have blamed him for that, either.

Baseball players and other professional athletes are human enough to make grave mistakes on the field. Many of them play for teams whose fans run the gamut from entitled to fatalistic to . . .

Well, put it this way. Again. Those playing in Phillies uniforms represent a city about which it’s said, often enough, that a typical wedding finishes with the clergyman pronouncing the happy couple husband and wife before telling the gathering, “You may now boo the bride.”

So let’s say a prayer, or three, or ten, for Kerkering. Let’s pray that, no matter how the rest of his baseball career goes, he has the heart and soul to stand up, count himself a man, acknowledge that he blew it bigtime enough, and stare the infamous Philadelphia boo birds down without giving in to the temptation to hunt them down for Thanksgiving dinner.

With the bases loaded and two outs Thursday evening, Kerkering served Dodgers center fielder Andy Pages a sinker that didn’t fall from the middle of the strike zone. Pages whacked a two-hop tapper back to the box. Kerkering sprang forward and knocked the ball down, then reached to retrieve it with his bare hand.

Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto stood fully erect and pointed to first base, with Pages about halfway up the line and Dodgers pinch runner Hyeseong Kim hurtling down the third base line. In a single instant, Kerkering went for what he thought would be the quickest out, as opposed to what every soul in Dodger Stadium expected to be the sure, guaranteed-not-to-tarnish, twelfth-inning-securing out.

He threw home, where he had no shot at bagging Kim, instead of to first baseman Bryce Harper, where he still had a clean shot at bagging Pages. The throw went wide left of Realmuto at the moment Kim hit the plate with the Dodgers’ National League Championship Series ticket punched by his spikes.

Thus ended a game during which neither the Phillies nor the Dodgers flashed anything resembling their usually powerful offenses, while both teams fought a magnificent pitching duel. Whether the 2-1 final was the Phillies losing or the Dodgers winning, take your pick.

Kerkering didn’t duck, either, once he arose from his haunches in front of the mound while the Dodgers celebrated and then let a teammate urge him out of the dugout into the clubhouse for comfort. Then, facing reporters, Kerkering owned up without hesitation.

“I wouldn’t say the pressure got to me. I just thought it was a faster throw to J.T., a little quicker throw than trying to cross-body it to Bryce,” he said. “It was just a horse [manure]  throw . . . This really [fornicating] sucks right now.”

Until Kerkering’s mishap, the Dodgers’ sole score was a bases-loades walk Mookie Betts wrung out of Phillies reliever Jhoan Duran in the bottom of the seventh. And the Phillies’s sole score came in the top of that inning, when Nick Castellanos sent Realmuto home with a double down the left field line.

Other than that, neither side had any real solutions to the other guys’ effective starting pitchers, Tyler Glasnow for the Dodgers and Cristopher Sanchez for the Phillies. These lineups, full of MVPs and big boppers and rippers and slashers, never landed the big bop or rip or slash.

Until Pages swung at Kerkering’s second service of the plate appearance, the story of the game figured far more to be the Dodgers’s Roki Sasaki, the starter who ran into shoulder trouble early in the season, returned to finish the season as a reliever, and now found himself the jewel of a Dodger bullpen about which “suspect” was the most polite adjective deployed.

Sasaki merely spent the set appearing in three games, allowing not one Phillie run, and keeping his defense gainfully employed. The record says he pitched 4.1 innings in the series. He pitched three of them Thursday, the eighth, ninth, and tenth. Whatever he threw at them, not one Phillie reached base. Two struck out; four flied, lined, or popped out; three grounded out. If the Dodgers could have won it in the tenth, Sasaki had a case as a division series MVP candidate.

The Phillies’s usual closer, Jhoan Duran, found himself deployed earlier than usual, relieving Sanchez in the seventh. After Betts’s RBI walk, Duran settled, ended the seventh, and pitched a shutout eighth. Matt Strahm succeeded him for a shutout ninth, and Jesús Luzardo—who was supposed to have been the Phillie starter if the set got to a fifth game—worked a shutout tenth.

Alex Vesia took over for the Dodgers in the top of the eleventh. He walked Harper, then wild-pitched him to second with two outs. Then he fought Harrison Bader—usually the Phillies center fielder but reduced to pinch hitting thanks to a bothersome groin injury—to a full count and a tenth pitch before he pulled Bader into a swinging strikeout.

Luzardo went back out for the eleventh. The tone of the game still suggested it wasn’t going to end too soon. Then Tommy Edman rapped a one-out single down the left field line, with Dodger manager Dave Roberts sending Kim out to run for him. Will Smith lined out deep enough to center field, but Max Muncy grounded a base hit past the left side of second base, pushing Kim to third.

Phillies manager Rob Thomson lifted Luzardo in favour of Kirkering, the 24-year-old righthander who’d become one of their more important bullpen bulls as the postseason arrived. He’d gone from untrusted to unimportant to invaluable in one year.

Now the Phillies needed him to push this game to a twelfth inning in which both teams were all but guaranteed to throw what little they had left at each other until one of them cracked. First, he had to tangle with Enrique Hernández. While Muncy helped himself to second on fielding indifference, Hernández worked out a six-pitch walk.

Up stepped Pages. Into the night went the Phillie season.

J.T. Realmuto, Orion Kerkering

Realmuto was just one Phillies teammate trying to make sure Kerkering could shake it off and not do as Kyle Schwarber advised, let one bad moment define his career and life. (ESPN broadcast capture.)

Kerkering sank in front of the mound as the Dodgers poured out to celebrate around and behind. Nothing mattered to him or to the Phillies now. Not even the unlikely fact that the Phillies had kept Shohei Ohtani, the Dodgers’ best hitter and the best hitter in the game who isn’t named Aaron Judge this year, toothless, fangless, and clawless throughout the set, 1-for-18 with a single RBI hit and nine strikeouts.

The Dodgers weren’t sure what to think, either. “That,” Vesia said postgame, “was a badass baseball game.” Through ten and a half innings, yes. What to call the bottom of the eleventh would probably take time. Even “disaster” seemed like a disguise.

But Thomson and the rest of his players had no intention of throwing Kerkering under the proverbial bus. Realmuto made sure to be the first to embrace and try to comfort him. Castellanos, who’s endured his own share of trials and tribulations, sprinted in to get to Kerkering with brotherly comforts.

“I understand what he’s feeling,” said the Phillies right fielder. “I mean, not the exact emotions. But I can see that. I didn’t even have to think twice about it. That’s where I needed to run to.”

The same mind set overtook Schwarber, who’d done more than enough to push the Phillies toward Game Four after losing the first two in Philadelphia, especially his space launch of a home run in the fourth to tie the game and start the Phillies toward the 8-2 win. (He helped the piling-on with a second bomb, too.) “One play shouldn’t define somebody’s career,” said the Schwarbinator in the clubhouse. “I’ve had tons of failures in my life.”

Just how that team will be defined going forward is up in the air for now. Realmuto, Schwarber, and pitcher Ranger Suárez can become free agents come November. But the Phillies are expected to push to entice Schwarber to re-up, and Realmuto is still too valuable behind the plate for the team to let walk without trying to keep him, too, especially since the organisation is considered very lacking in catching depth.

“I’m thinking about losing a baseball game. That’s what it feels like right now,” said Realmuto after Game Four. “The last thing I’m thinking about is next year.”

Schwarber, too, preferred to stay in most of the moment. “This is a premier organization,” said the designated hitter who sent 56 home runs into orbit during the regular season.  “And a lot of people should feel very lucky that you’re playing for a team that is trying to win every single year, and you have a fan base that cares and ownership that cares and coaches that care. You have everyone in the room that cares. We’re all about winning, and it’s a great thing. That’s why it hurts as much as any other year.”

These Phillies lost the 2022 World Series in six games, the 2023 NLCS in seven, a division series last year in four, and a division series this year in four. What’s up in the air right now just might turn to finding where and making changes enough. Especially since the average age of their regulars this year was 31. (The two youngest regulars, Brandon Marsh and Bryson Stott, are 27.)

Right now, they’re entitled to lie down and bleed. None more so than one young reliever who may not find comfort in knowing that he wasn’t the sole reason the Phillies fell short yet again. He may not find comfort yet in knowing that his teammates outscored the Dodgers by two runs across the entire division series but still couldn’t cash more than one scoring chance in in Game Four to make a difference.

“I feel for him,” Thomson told the postgame press conference about Kerkering, “because he’s putting it all on his shoulders. But we win as a team and we lose as a team.”

His sole comfort for now might be his teammates having his back. “Just keep your head up,” he said was their collective message to him. “It’s an honest mistake. It’s baseball. S— happens. Just keep your head up, you’ll be good for a long time to come. Stuff like it’s not my fault—had opportunities to score. Just keep your head up.”

The question is whether the more notorious side of Philadelphia fandom will try to knock his head off while he tries keeping it up. Maybe—as happened so notoriously to Mitch (Wild Thing) Williams after he surrendered a 1993 World Series-losing home run to Joe Carter—Kerkering’s refusal to hide and willingness to own up should help.

Or not, unfortunately. Even if Kerkering didn’t throw a World Series-losing pitch but committed only a division series-losing error.

If not, it’ll come to whether the worst sides of Philadelphia fandom compel the Phillies  brain trusts to decide, however good his pitching future might be, that it’s not safe for him to see it in a Phillies uniform.

Maybe someone should find ways to ask those sides pre-emptively whether they would have had half the fortitude to own up to a grave on-the-job mistake made in front of 50,000+ fans in a ballpark, and a few million more watching on television, or streaming online, or listening to the radio.

As with too many others who hammered those I call Merkle’s Children—Fred Merkle himself, plus Williams, Ralph Branca, Bill Buckner, John McNamara, Donnie Moore, Don Denkinger, Tom Niedenfeuer, Gene Mauch, Johnny Pesky, Mickey Owen, Ernie Lombardi, Fred Snodgrass, maybe every St. Louis Brown ever—you might be lucky to find a very few who’d answer, “Yes.”

If they really must visit this White House . . .

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Jackie Robinson

The Dodgers should remind Trump and his minions—quietly, but profoundly—that they don’t hold with Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson’s dismissal as just another DEI hire.

The defending World Series champion Dodgers will go to the White House Monday at the invitation of President Donald Trump. Including Mookie Betts, who once declined the visit when his then-defending World Series champion Red Sox accepted the same invitation from the same president.

Three days before the Dodgers’ scheduled White House visit, Los Angeles Times columnist Gustavo Arellano urged the Dodgers to show up wearing jerseys with Jackie Robinson’s number 42. I hope the Dodgers read that column and heed the advice. Then, after the White House visit, I hope they perform a team march in those jerseys from the White House to the Pentagon, right up to Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth’s office.

Of course I can dream, can’t I?

Hark back to March. When the Defense Department scrubbed from their Websites the stories of Robinson (an Army lieutenant in World War II, who beat a court martial for refusing to go to the back of a bus), the Navajo Code Talkers, the Tuskegee Airmen, and Ira Hayes, the Native American Marine who was one of the six raising the American flag at Iwo Jima.

When DoD press secretary John Ullyot cited Hegseth saying, “[Diversity, Equality, Inclusion] is dead at the Defense Department.” Until it wasn’t, within just days, following an uproar of the type that’s become second nature to Trump/Trump Administration doings, sayings, undoings, unsayings.

“It’s not a political stance that I’m taking,” the Mookie Monster told The Athletic‘s Fabian Ardaya last Friday. “I know no matter what I say, what I do, people are going to take it as political, but that’s definitely not what it is. This about an accomplishment that the Dodgers were able to accomplish last year.”

Was Betts unaware of Trump’s DoD’s bid to turn Robinson and other wartime African-Americans of the 1940s into non-persons? No one says he or his Dodger teammates should turn the visit into a giant, noisy raspberry. But just wearing the Robinson jerseys would be a more powerful rebuke to Trump than any verbal schpritz.

“Opponents of Trump can’t scream into the void, or among themselves, and think that’s resistance enough,” Arellano wrote.

They shouldn’t cede the traditions of this country, like the flag, the White House and democracy, to a tyrant like Trump just because he has wrapped himself in them.

Going to the White House does not normalize Trump—it’s a reminder that the place is ours, not his . . .

. . . Guys: Y’all pioneered the type of globalism and multiculturalism that Trump loathes, that L.A. now exemplifies and that continues to power the best franchise in baseball. It’s time to stand tall for the Dodger Way at the moment it matters the most.

“We have a lot of different people that are part of this organization,” said Dodger manager Dave Roberts.

Different backgrounds, different cultures, race, gender. So everyone had a different story. Economic situations. So we are all going as an organization. I do know that we’re all aligned, and everyone’s going to have their opinions.

This is not a political thing, and I’m not going to sit up here and make it political. I’m excited to, again, recognize the 2024 World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Roberts should be excited likewise to offer the president a reminder that the Dodgers stand for something above and beyond World Series rings. If they don’t want to wear number 42 Dodger jerseys to the White House, Roberts should think of handing Trump a number 42 Dodger jersey. Hand it to him, and say nothing.

Then—before they lend or spend any further credibility upon a man who rejects that for which the Dodgers have stood, since Jackie Robinson stepped onto a field to begin the Dodger career that launched a powerful rebuke to formal segregation and Robinson himself into Cooperstown and world immortality—Roberts and his players should get the hell out.

2024: Taking the Fifth, and Other Lamentations

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Aaron Judge

This is not what was meant when the phrase, “I’ve got the drop on you,” was coined . . .

Hands up to everyone who can’t wait for 2024 to depart. Now, hands up to everyone who thinks 2024 was just the most wonderful year of the decade. My, but that’s a barren sea of hands over that second suggestion.

Much like its home country, baseball’s 2024 was . . . well, why don’t we let some of the signature moments, doings, and undoings of baseball’s year speak for themselves. The new flimsy uniforms sucked. The All-Star Game uniforms didn’t suck that badly, but still. Meanwhile, I’m thankful to folks such as Jayson Stark and a few other intrepid sleuths of BBW—that’s Baseball Bizarro World, you perverts—who either unearthed or reminded us about . . .

Take the Fifth—Please Dept.—“Come an’ see my amazin’ Mets,” their manager Casey (I Lost With This Team What I Used to Win with the Yankees) Stengel liked to say of his maiden squad. “I been in this game a hundred years but I see new ways to lose I never knew were invented yet.”

That was the Ol’ Perfesser gazing down from the Elysian Fields, watching the team with whom he won ten pennants and seven World Series perform the single most splendid imitation of the 1962 Mets since . . . the 2024 White Sox finished their sad, sad, sad regular season.

Pace George F. Will, look to your non-laurels, White Sox—the Bronx Bumblers captured 21st Century baseball’s booby prize. You White Sox only out-lost the 1962 Mets this season. You probably never did in one regular season game what only began in a World Series game . . . with a Yankee center fielder who does a credible impersonation of the Leaning Tower of Pisa approaching the plate and Frank Howard at the plate committing his first error playing center field after 538 fly balls hit his way in his entire career to date became outs.

Then . . .

* A Gold Glove-finalist shortstop threw for a force play at third base and saw the ball ricochet off the base instead of reach his third baseman’s glove.

* The arguable best pitcher in the American League got thatclose to escaping a bases-loaded, nobody-out jam when he suffered the brain fart heard ’round the Bronx and the world: he forgot to cover first when Mookie Betts hit a screwdriving ball toward Anthony Rizzo. Oops.

* The Yankee anti-party included a balk and catcher’s interference.

* The Dodgers became the only team in baseball history to score five runs in a World Series game after they were in the hole 5-0.

* The Yankees became the only team in baseball history to serve up five unearned runs in a World Series game since they started counting earned and unearned runs as official statistics. (When did they start? In the same year during which premiered Ford’s moving assembly line, the first newspaper crossword puzzle (in the New York World), and Louis Armstrong’s first cornet. In the New Orleans Home for Coloured Waifs.)

* And the fifth-inning party actually started with everyone from the television announcers to the fans and back pondering whether Gerrit Cole might, maybe, consummate a no-hitter to keep the Yankees alive.

Your Reality Check Bounced Dept.—Too many Yankee fans continue infesting social media with proclamations that the Yankees still have the dynastic history of dynastic histories. And too many baseball fans steeped in reality and not fantasy keep reminding them, Your damn dynasty is just soooooo 20th Century!

Juan Not-So-Small Step for Met World—That’s $765 million the Mets will pay Juan Soto over the next fifteen years. This may or may not mean the end of Pete Alonso’s days as a Met, which may or may not mean . . .

Out with a Bang Dept. . . . that Polar Bear Pete’s final act as a bona-fide Met was the biggest blow on their behalf this century: the three-run homer he blasted in the ninth inning that proved the game, set, and National League division series winner against the Brewers. Which was also the only home run hit by any Met in the set.

Did I Do That Dept.—Alonso’s division series-winning blast came off Devin Williams . . . who’d never allowed a ninth-inning lead-changing bomb in his major leaguer life until then. Then, after some time passed, the Brewers let the Yankees talk them out of keeping Williams, sending them pitcher Nestor Cortes, infielder Caleb Durbin, and cash to take Williams. We still don’t know if the deal was Milwaukee payback for surrendering Alonso’s game-changing/game-swiping bomb.

Out with a Bigger Bang Dept.—That would be Walker Buehler, pitcher. One minute, locking down the Dodgers’ World Series win with a spotless Game Five ninth including two swinging strikeouts. The next, practically (well, give or take a few hours): Signing for one year and $21 million with the Red Sox. Anyone remember the Dodgers making Buehler a qualifying offer for that money and Buehler turning it down? He’s rolling serious dice on himself with this deal.

Shohei-hei Rock and Roll Dept.—You might think anyone can become a member of the 50 home run/50 stolen base club. But you won’t be able to predict who might do it the same way Shohei Ohtani did in September against the Marlins: 6-for-6 at the plate; three home runs; five extra base hits; two stolen bases; ten runs batted in. His own planet? Try realising Ohtani exists in his own quadrant.

A Cut Below Dept.—Pete Fairbanks, Rays reliever. He missed a game in 2024 because of a finger cut. He cut the finger opening a bottle of spring water. Considering his bizarre 2023 injury (incurring a black eye while trying to dunk against his toddler son through a water basketball net), it seems as though Fairbanks just couldn’t cut it anymore.

On Your Knee Dept.—Presented for your consideration: Miguel Sanó, Angel. Aleady on the injured list with an inflamed knee. He put a heating pad over it. He forgot about it just enough to burn the knee and place himself for another month on the IL. Miguel Sanó, who proved he certainly could stand the heat in . . . the Angels’ continuing Twilight Zone.

The King of Pop Dept.—Mookie Betts performs amazing feats at the plate and on the field. At the plate, they usually involve baseballs shot on lines into the outfield, or driven like ballistic missiles over fences. They didn’t involve him popping out for the cycle . . . until 25 September, when, in order, he popped out to: second baseman, third baseman, first baseman, and shortstop.

Don’t do it. Don’t Google “MLB players who’ve popped out for the cycle.” It won’t even call up the Mookie Monster, yet, never mind anyone else who might have had that kind of a day—whether a Hall of Famer, a Hall of Famer in the making, or a guy who’s destined to be forgotten outside such a single singular feat.

Mystique and Aura, kidnapped by the Dodgers

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Walker Buehler

Walker Buehler (21, far left) about to be swarmed by fellow Dodgers after he locked the Bronx Bumblers down for keeps to finish World Series Game Five.

Has it really sunk in yet that the Dodgers are full-season, no-doubt, take-no-quarter World Series champions? Has it really sunk in yet that the Yankees aren’t just another group of also-rans but a team as fully able to implode at the wrong time as any team in major league history?

Both teams needed the best they had available for Game Five Wednesday night. The Dodgers to win it, the Yankees to stay alive long enough to force a cross-country trip to Los Angeles for Game Six at minimum. When the Dodgers needed reinforcements, they found them, sometimes in places unexpected outside their portal.

Anyone remember Mystique and Aura? The Dodgers kidnapped them with no known ransom demand turning up at this writing. The Yankees needed Mystique and Aura but they got Wobbly and Rickety.

Just one night after showing serious enough life by blowing the Dodgers out of Game Four, the Bronx Bumblers self-dismantled in ways almost unheard-of by any previous World Series contestant. The Series-clinching, Game Five final was 7-6. It was a close game only if you ignore the way the Yankees helped the Dodgers close an early 5-0 Yankee lead.

The Game Five Dodgers almost didn’t need stout innings from their bullpen, a shutdown ninth from projected Game Seven starter Walker Buehler, and too-timely hits enough to matter. If you didn’t know better, you’d be swearing the Yankees were handing it to the Dodgers on a platinum platter.

The 161st Street Stumblers lost the Series to a Dodger team that found ways not to let little things like too many injured pitchers and a half-effective bullpen keep them down for very long. bullpen half of which would be effective keep them down for very long. But Game Five night just might have been the single most surrealistic game of this Series, if not any Series.

Trust me when I say that that’s saying something.

The top of the fifth challenges such sad Series mishaps past as Fred Snodgrass’s glove turning into a trampoline, Freddie Lindstrom’s pebble, Ernie Lombardi being dismantled at the plate, Mickey Owen’s passed ball, Willie Davis losing two Oriole flies in the sun in the same inning, Curt Flood losing Jim Northrup’s drive in the sun, or Bill Buckner’s horror seeing the slow grounder skip beneath his downstretched mitt.

Does anyone remember that the 11-4 Game Four beatdown the Yankees dropped on the Dodgers actually had people predicting with straight faces that the sleeping giants were awakening enough to do the unheard-of and take the next three straight to teach those ornery louts from Los Angeles a lesson in manners and championship?

There went those ideas. Above and beyond the Yankees waiting fifteen years to get back here only to tumble away this time, above and beyond the Dodgers winning eleven out of twelve National League West titles with only one World Series conquest to show for it until now, this is what everyone will remember about this Series in general and Game Five in particular:

They’ll remember Series MVP Freddie Freeman’s Game One-winning ultimate grand salami as the first salvo toward his reaching the seats in the first four games, which marries to his bombs in Games Five and Six in 2021 (when he was still a Brave) to tie George Springer for the longest Series home run streak (six games).

They’ll even remember Freeman overcoming a balky ankle keeping him somewhat calm in the earlier postseason rounds. Somewhat. Because by the time Freeman got finished with his bombing in Game Four, Yankee fans were holding up signs pleading, “Freddie, Please Stop!” As if Freeman had any intention of obeying.

Aaron Judge

First, Judge was the sleeping giant coming wide awake . . .

They’ll remember Shohei Ohtani jamming his shoulder on a failed Game Two stolen base attempt, leaving himself all but useless for most of the Series, but insisting upon staying in the lineup just in case. If only for the presence.

They’ll remember Dodger starting pitcher Jack Flaherty keeping the Yankees to two runs starting Game One but getting flogged for four before he could get out of the Game Five second—including Aaron Judge, heretofore the Yankees’ first among the sleeping giants, awakening himself and Yankee Stadium with a two-run homer in the bottom of the first, followed immediately by Jazz Chisholm, Jr.’s solo bomb . . . until . . .

They remember the Yankees leading 5-0, and Yankee starter Gerrit Cole striking Gavin Lux and Ohtani out swinging back to back, and not one Dodger hit thus far.

Until . . . come the fifth . . .

* With Kiké Hernandez aboard on a leadoff single, busting any shot Cole had at a no-hitter, Tommy Edman lined one that Judge—who committed only one error all year to that point—normally catches in his sleep. This time, the ball hit the web of Judge’s glove and bounced away.

* Five pitches later, Will Smith grounded one to Yankee shortstop Anthony Volpe’s right. Volpe picked it clean the way a Gold Glover does. Then he threw an awkward short-hopper to Chisholm at third the way a Cold Glover does. Chisholm couldn’t get the handle on that throw. The Dodgers had the bases loaded and nobody out.

* The Mookie Monster singled Hernandez home, on a squibber first baseman Anthony Rizzo had to step back to snag because it was spinning like a gyroscope, practically . . . leaving Cole not covering first because the pitcher took a bad route to the ball, leaving both men resembling raw rookies with signals crossed and knotted.

* Freeman singled Edman and Will Smith home and set up first and third.

* Teoscar Hernández doubled Betts and Freeman home.

* And every last one of those five runs in the Dodger fifth was unearned.

Aaron Judge

. . . but, then, his unlikely error began handing the Dodgers the fifth inning and beyond.

“This is as bad as it gets,” Cole said postgame. “It’s the worst feeling you can have. You have to keep sometimes willing yourself to believe and give yourself a chance. You keep pushing and pushing, and ultimately, you fall short. It’s brutal.”

“You can’t give teams like that extra outs,” said Judge, who’d made what threatened to be the play of the night when he stole an extra-base hit from Freeman by scaling the left center field fence in the fourth. “They’re going to capitalize—their 1-2-3 at the top of the order, they don’t miss. You give them a chance with guys on base, they’re going to capitalize. You gotta limit the mistakes.”

Then, everyone will remember Blake Treinen, the man who usually gets the final three outs of a Dodger win, coming in a little bit sooner than usual to clean up a mess and keep the Yankees at bay from there. As in, the bottom of the sixth, with the Yankees back in the lead 6-5 but threatening to put the game back out of reach with first and second, two out, and Volpe due at the plate.

The same Volpe who really started the Yankees’ Game Four mayhem—when they were down 2-1 in the third thanks to yet another Freeman flog two innings earlier, but with the bases loaded on two out—by hitting Daniel Hudson’s first service into the left field seats.

Treinen got Volpe to ground out to second for the side this time. Then he retired the Yankees in order in the seventh and squirmed out of a first-and-second jam with a fly out by Giancarlo Stanton and a swinging strikeout on Anthony Rizzo.

Somewhere in the middle of all that, Buehler ambled down to the Dodger bullpen. Just call me if you need me, boss. He’d only told any Dodger personnel, from teammates to front office people, that he was available to work in Game Five if need be. He made for the Dodger bullpen after the bottom of the fifth.

Then, Buehler started loosening up. Then, he started warming up in earnest. He may well have thrown the equivalent of the first two and a half innings worth of a quality start by the time he got the call to handle the bottom of the Game Five ninth.

He got Volpe to open with a sharp ground out to third base. He struck Austin Wells out swinging on a full count. He struck former teammate Alex Verdugo out swinging on 1-2. Buehler then spread his arms like an old-time nightclub singer inviting applause for the big finish and his mates began pouring onto the Yankee Stadium infield to start the party.

They survived the early bombs by Judge, Chisholm, and Giancarlo Stanton. They survived their Game Four bullpen game plan getting vapourised, going into sacrificial lamb mode the better to keep their six best relief arms available for Wednesday night. They survived their own recent past of, manager Dave Roberts admitted postgame, losing games that handed them what Game Five had before the fifth inning.

They didn’t stop to ask questions when the Yankees began passing out early Christmas presents one botched out after the other in the top of the fifth. They knew the answers going into the Series.

Their knowledge only began with Betts working on playing caroms off the wall almost as incessantly as he does on his batting swing. It only continued with every Dodger no matter how wounded attacking basepaths rather than just running them. The Dodgers scouted the Yankees and determined they were über talented but fundamentally lacking. They didn’t have to advertise it. They simply exposed it.

The Yankees didn’t pay close enough attention to any reports telling them the Dodgers could match them talent for talent even with their MIAs. The Dodgers, for all their star and firepower, were too grounded fundamentally to let the Yankees treat them like just another poor-relations team.

Freddie Freeman

To absolutely nobody’s surprise, Freddie Freeman was named the Series MVP. (A home run in each of the first four games, plus tying a Series record with twelve RBIs, does that for you.) Now named for the late Willie Mays, the trophy depicts Mays making his fabled 1954 World Series catch against Vic Wertz.

Most of all—unlike the title they won at the end of the surrealistic, pan-damn-ically shortened season and under-isolation postseason—nobody so inclined can hang any kind of asterisk on this one. These Dodgers went the distance no matter whose interpreter swindled him out of millions to cover debts to a bookie, no matter who hit the injured list, no matter who lost a season to an injury. No matter that they tied and took what proved the winning lead on a pair of eighth-inning sacrifice flies.

The last man standing? A pitcher who once resembled a mound terror until two Tommy John surgeries and other ailments kept him limited this regular season, only to show up in October looking as close to his former self as his age and body allowed and hell bent on doing something, anything, to secure his team the Big Prize.

“This is the only reason I play,” Buehler said postgame, “for games like this. The whole year—the offseason, spring training, the regular season—it doesn’t matter. Well, it matters, but not like these games. To win championships is why I play. It’s the best feeling in the world. I live for this.”

He pitched the ninth to prove it. A ground out and back-to-back swinging strikeouts. Followed by stepping down from the rubber, holding his arms out like a vintage nightclub singer delivering the Big Finish, and being mobbed by a swarm of Dodgers. They all lived for this.

The earliest no-hitter for his team’s first win

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Ronel Blanco

The Blue Jays got Blancoed for the record books on Monday . . .

You know a man of my ability
he should be smokin’ on a big cigar.
But ’till I get myself straight
I guess I’ll just have to wait
in my rubber suit rubbin’ these cars.

–Jim Croce, “Workin’ at the Car Wash Blues”

I have no idea if Ronel Blanco knows who Jim Croce was, never mind if he’s heard the old troubador’s music. But the Dominican righthander who worked at a car wash in his homeland before the Astros handed him a $5,000 bonus when he was 22 can smoke all the big cigars he wants now.

You earn such spoils if you become only the fourth pitcher in Show history to throw a no-hitter for your team’s first win of the regular season, a club that includes Hall of Famer Bob Feller (who did it in 1940, on Opening Day) plus Burt Hooton (Cubs, 1972) and Hideo Nomo (Red Sox, 2001). You earn them when you break Nomo’s record for the earliest regular-season no-hitter in Show history by two days. (Nomo: 4 April; Blanco: 2 April.)

But you might care to share them with your catcher, Yanier Diaz, since he also became the first since 1901 to call a no-hit game from behind the plate and hit a pair out in the same game: solo blasts with two out in the second and one out in the seventh. And, with your left fielder Kyle Tucker, who joined Diaz going long in both innings, a solo in the second and a two-run shot in the seventh.

And pass one to your manager, Joe Espada, who’s become the first manager in Show history to be on the bridge when his first major league win comes with a no-hitter. You might have needed to wait until age 28 to get to the Show at all but Espada ground away a very long time as a minor league infielder turned minor and major league coach before becoming the Astros’ bench coach after 2017.

All that plus a changeup described politely as nasty kept the Blue Jays’s bats from hitting anything past Astro fielders when not striking out while the Astros dropped a ten-run, twelve-hit assault upon last year’s AL wild card victims. (They lost two straight to the Twins in that set.)

All the Astros wanted in Minute Maid Park was to shake off the season-opening sweep the Yankees dropped on them that included three comeback wins for the latter. They couldn’t have gotten a better shake-off if they’d hired a scriptwriter and his number-one script doctor at once.

Fairly enough, the Jays exacted a little revenge the following day. José Altuve wants to open the proceedings with a leadoff bomb against José Berríos in the top of the fourth? We’ll just see about that, said Davis Schneider, with two out in the top of the ninth and Daulton Varsho pinch-running for Justin Turner, hammering Josh Hader’s slightly hanging slider more than slightely beyond the center field fence. Thus the 2-1 Jays final.

But it wasn’t enough to dull or diminish Blanco’s blanking Monday. Nobody can take that from him.

MEANWHILE, ELSEWHERE IN THE RECORD BOOKS

Slumpbusting Thumps Dept.—Bryce Harper opened the season 0-for-11 with only a pair of walks placing him on base. Then he took it out on Reds started Graham Ashcraft on Tuesday for openers, hitting a 1-2 service over the Citizens Bank Park center field fence in the bottom of the first. He abused Ashcraft opening the bottom of the fourth, too, hitting the first pitch into the lower right field seats.

Harper wasn’t even close to finished, either. With the bases loaded, one out, and Brent Suter, the second Reds reliever of the night, on the mound, Harper unloaded on a full count and sent one two-thirds of the way up the lower right center field seats. Making the score 8-1, Phillies. They needed all that insurance plus Brandon Marsh’s solo bomb in the top of the ninth, after all, since the Reds pried three more runs out before expiring on the wrong end of a 9-4 Phillies win.

Harper became the 56th player and third Phillie to hit three home runs including a salami slice in the same game. The previous two such Phillie phloggers: Should-be Hall of Famer Dick Allen (29 September 1968) and Jayson Werth (16 May 2008). All three such games have something else in common: thirteen runs scored total, though Allen’s and Werth’s resulted in 10-3 Phillie wins.

OH, BY THE WAY . . .

Place Your Betts Dept.—Mookie Betts has now played eight regular-season games this year. He has five home runs, fifteen hits in 38 plate appearances, and eight walks. The only problem there is that four of the five times he hit them out there wasn’t a Dodger to be found on base ahead of him, and the Dodgers have been 3-2 in the games he’s dialed the Delta Quadrant so far.

But the Mookie Monster has also scored fourteen times, and other than by himself it seems Freddie Freeman has shown him the most love after he’s reached base: Freeman has sent him home five times over those first eight.

Did I mention that, as of Wednesday morning, Betts leads the National League in hits, bombs, walks, and total bases? That he leads the NL with a .605 on-base percentage thus far? That he leads the entire Show with his 1.772 OPS?