{"id":347324,"date":"2025-11-01T06:01:16","date_gmt":"2025-11-01T06:01:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/347324\/"},"modified":"2025-11-01T06:01:16","modified_gmt":"2025-11-01T06:01:16","slug":"dodgers-recapture-their-mojo-survive-a-scary-world-series-game-6","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/347324\/","title":{"rendered":"Dodgers recapture their mojo, survive a scary World Series Game 6"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The Dodgers<\/a>, it turns out, chose the perfect costume in which to parade on this scariest of Halloween nights.<\/p>\n

They came dressed as the Dodgers.<\/p>\n

The Yoshinobu-Yamamoto<\/a>-firing Dodgers. The Mookie-Betts<\/a>-blasting Dodgers. The energetic-and-inspired Dodgers.<\/p>\n

The listless team of the previous two games was gone. The passionate team of the previous month was back.<\/p>\n

Earlier this week fans were asking, who are those guys? On Friday they emphatically answered that question by finally, forcefully, being themselves.<\/p>\n

Faced with elimination in Game 6 of the World Series, the Dodgers rose from the presumed dead to haunt the Toronto Blue Jays at the Rogers Centre with a 3-1 victory<\/a> to knot the duel at three games apiece.<\/p>\n

And they did with the most unlikely of saves, a game-ending double play on a lineout that Kik\u00e9 Hern\u00e1ndez<\/a> caught in left field and, while sprinting toward the infield, threw to Miguel Rojas<\/a> at second base, where he made a scooped catch to double up Addison Barger.<\/p>\n

The Blue Jays began the inning with runners on second and third and none out. They ended it watching the Dodgers celebrate around Rojas on second base, their golden opportunity to clinch their first title in more than three decades having disappeared under a welcome wave of Dodger savvy.<\/p>\n

How on earth does Toronto come back from something like that?<\/p>\n

\u201cWild way to finish it, for sure\u2026 baseball happens sometimes,\u201d said Toronto Manager John Schneider.<\/p>\n

How on earth can the Dodgers not gain insurmountable momentum from something like that?<\/p>\n

\u201cI feel great,\u201d said Dodger Manager Dave Roberts<\/a>. \u201cI feel great.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dodgers\u2019 quest to become the first team in 25 years to win consecutive World Series championships lives.<\/p>\n

Game 7, Saturday night in Toronto, awaits.<\/p>\n

And Shohei Ohtani The Starting Pitcher<\/a> appears.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re going to leave it out there,\u201d said Roberts. \u201cI don\u2019t think that the pressure, the moment\u2019s going to be too big for us. We got to go out there and win one baseball game. We\u2019ve done that all year. Everyone\u2019s bought in.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

The stage is indeed set for all sorts of dramatics after a night when the Dodgers took an early three-run lead on the back of slump-busting Betts and then cruised to victory on the back of another brilliant pitching performance by Yamamoto and a surprising three-inning shutdown from the Dodger bullpen.<\/p>\n

It didn\u2019t end smoothly, but it ended splendidly, after reliever Roki Sasaki began the ninth by hitting Alejandro Kirk in the hand with a two-strike pitch, then Barger hit a ball to center field that lodged under the outfield padding for a ground-rule double.<\/p>\n

With runners on second and third and no out, Tyler Glasnow<\/a> made an emergency appearance and recorded that memorable save, retiring Ernie Clement on a first pitch popout and ending the game by inducing Andr\u00e9s Gim\u00e9nez into a lineout that Hernandez perfectly threw to Rojas.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of the headiest baseball players I\u2019ve ever been around,\u201d said Roberts of Hern\u00e1ndez. \u201cAnd even just getting off on the ball, the awareness to get to his arm, get the ball into second base. He\u2019s just a heck of a baseball player.\u201d<\/p>\n

The Dodgers have been here before. It was just last year, in fact, when they needed consecutive wins against the San Diego Padres in the division series to save their season.<\/p>\n

They calmly won both<\/a> and rolled to a championship. A similar path could end in a similar destination this weekend after the Dodgers rebounded from two lifeless losses at Dodger Stadium<\/a> to weather the loud Game 6 storm with calm and cohesion.<\/p>\n

\"\" <\/p>\n

\u201cYeah, I mean, we all know that everything has to go perfect for us to be able to pull this off,\u201d said Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez before the game.<\/p>\n

So far, so good, beginning Friday with the much-maligned Betts, who was the biggest villain of the Dodgers hitting drought with a .130 World Series average while stranding 25 consecutive baserunners. He had been dropped to third in the batting order in Game 5, and then dropped again to fourth for Game 6, and it finally worked, as he knocked a two-strike fastball into left field to drive in two runs and give the Dodgers a 3-0 lead.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe\u2019s one of our guys,\u201d said Roberts of Betts. \u201cI\u2019m going to, as they say, ride or die with him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Next up, Yamamoto, who followed consecutive complete games by giving up one run on five hits in six innings.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe can\u2019t afford to lose,\u201d said Yamamoto through an interpreter.<\/p>\n

Enter the bullpen, which had given up nine runs in the Dodgers three losses in this series. But Glasnow, Sasaki and Justin Wrobleski combined to pitch three scoreless innings, and when that happens, anything can happen.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m excited, it\u2019s going to be fun,\u201d said Will Smith, who doubled in the Dodgers\u2019 first run. \u201cWe work all year long to be in this situation to win a ball game and win a World Series. So it should be a fun one tomorrow.\u201d<\/p>\n

That fun actually began a day earlier when Roberts did his best Tommy Lasorda imitation by literally leaving it all on the field during Thursday\u2019s day off. He challenged speedster Hyeseong Kim to a race around the bases, and gave himself a generous head start, but as Kim was passing him up around second base, Roberts tripped and fell flat on his face.<\/p>\n

The moment was caught on a video that quickly spread over social media and actually led the FOX broadcast before Friday\u2019s game.<\/p>\n

Roberts looked silly. But Roberts also looked brilliant, as his pratfall injected some necessary lightness into the darkening team mood.<\/p>\n

He lost, but he won.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course it makes you smile and it makes you have a good time,\u201d said Rojas. \u201cWhen the head of the group is\u2026loose like that, and he\u2019s willing to do anything, that\u2019s what it tells everybody, that he will do anything for the team.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now it\u2019s down to one game, and one team that will once again do anything for each other.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers are back. Advantage Dodgers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Dodgers, it turns out, chose the perfect costume in which to parade on this scariest of Halloween…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":347325,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5123],"tags":[40935,170366,29176,1582,276,8329,2442,81911,5208,1910,2961,170457,224,5337,32075,26804,10201,3007,1290,25454],"class_list":{"0":"post-347324","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-los-angeles","8":"tag-addison-barger","9":"tag-andres-gimenez","10":"tag-betts","11":"tag-ca","12":"tag-california","13":"tag-dodger","14":"tag-dodgers","15":"tag-ernie-clement","16":"tag-friday","17":"tag-game","18":"tag-la","19":"tag-lifeless-loss","20":"tag-los-angeles","21":"tag-losangeles","22":"tag-miguel-rojas","23":"tag-roberts","24":"tag-run","25":"tag-team","26":"tag-toronto-blue-jays","27":"tag-world-series"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115472924138879054","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347324","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347324"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347324\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347325"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347324"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347324"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347324"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}