Davis Schneider celebrates with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. after their back-to-back home runs during the first inning in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday.Ashley Landis/The Associated Press
As Davis Schneider hit the first pitch of the afternoon out of Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, most of the people on hand had no idea it had happened. They were too busy juggling Dodger dogs.
The sight of a man in powder blue running around the bases seemed to concentrate their attention.
As a result, they were watching when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the game’s third pitch out of the park. You could tell that by the noise, which dipped from a low murmur to non-existent.
All ballparks are loud. This one is loud plus. The veteran staff are all wearing ear plugs. But on Wednesday, it lost its voice before the game had really started.
Trey Yesavage didn’t have it in Game 1, and survived. He had it – all of it, including a splitter so wicked it looks like it’s being thrown into a wind machine – in Game 5.
Cathal Kelly: Baseball is having its first truly international World Series
After Yesavage struck out his 12th batter – a rookie World Series record – cameras panned to Sandy Koufax, looking impressed. Final score: 6-1. And that’s it. That’s the game story.
After three remarkable games in L.A., the Blue Jays aren’t just winning the World Series. They have robbed this city of its mojo, and are bringing it home.
You don’t want to jinx anyone, but when your ninth- or 10th-best hitter is sticking a fork in the other team’s ostensible best pitcher 10 seconds after the game starts, it’s done.
This is no longer about what the Jays are doing right, which is everything. It’s about how the Dodgers are reacting. They look worse than lost. They look like they are in a full-blown crisis of confidence.
Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell walks off the mound after giving up two home runs during the first inning.Kirby Lee/Reuters
Dodger self-assurance was running high after losing the first game. It levelled off after winning the second. It peaked following the 18-inning third contest. Big smiles. Relaxed postures. A been-there, done-that approach so blasé it can sound like boredom.
“Those guys over there, they gave it everything they had,” L.A. manager Dave Roberts said after that seven-hour slog. “Fortunately for the Dodgers, we got Freddie Freeman.”
Zing!
They transcribe everything that’s said in the baseball playoffs. Flipping through those pages is becoming a real journey into Dodger madness.
They were so sure of themselves. Not full of themselves – they’re too smart for that. They oozed so much easy confidence they needed trailing around with a towel.
Tariff troubles nudge baseball fans in Windsor onto the Blue Jays bandwagon
That’s what happens when you spend two years hearing that you are destiny’s club. Every new million they spent confirmed in others, and then in them, that they could not lose. Every time someone said it was unfair that L.A. could just buy a title, it re-convinced them that that’s what would happen.
That’s good when you’re winning, but it makes you brittle when you lose. In Game 5, L.A. began to crack.
All the little reactions were suddenly different.
When Mookie Betts blew a guaranteed double play in the third, the Dodgers on the field looked at each other bug eyed, but were careful not to look at Betts.
Teoscar Hernández dove for a ball he had absolutely zero chance of catching in the fourth and let it spin by him. While the man who hit that ball, Daulton Varsho, was sprinting to third, Snell was already tying to light Hernández on fire with his eyes.
The Dodger Stadium fans went from hopeful to desperate, cheering two-out L.A. singles like grand slams. Over in the Dodger dugout, the real story was on display – lots of men in white staring into the middle distance.
When Shohei Ohtani came up to bat in the sixth, the usual frenetic reaction was dampened to mere enthusiasm. When the Japanese looped what looked like an extra-base hit into right-centre, which was caught by a diving Addison Barger, the volume dropped an octave.
When L.A. reliever Edgardo Henriquez worked Guerrero to a full count with a man on third, then chucked his payoff pitch so far wide it nearly ended up in the first-base dugout, the response from fans and team was a total blank. Some pitches are wild. This one was a man-eater. But nothing.
Two weeks ago, this crowd’s team couldn’t be beaten. Now they’re the Bad News Bears. People were starting to get used to it.
A half-hour after Wednesday’s game ended, a couple of hundred Jays fans had gathered over the visitors’ dugout to chant (‘One more game’) and sing O Canada. Guest services started to hustle all remaining stragglers out of the stadium. The Canadians kept singing.
L.A. have scored four runs in the past 29 innings. That’s not a couple of bad nights. It is the sudden realization that maybe you’re not who they told you you are.
So who are the Dodgers? They’re just another team. As they come to terms with that, they’re halfway off the ledge and the Blue Jays are the ones hanging on to their lapels.
Toronto has one big problem now – Thursday. It’s a travel day. They’ll pick things back up on Friday night at 8 p.m. at the Rogers Centre.
The Jays’ biggest fear now should be that the Dodgers get into a room with a hypnotist and have their collective memory of the last week erased. L.A. is about to throw out the only one of their starters who has been effective in the World Series, Yoshinobu Yamamoto. In a Game 7, momentum is everything, until it’s nothing. Ask Seattle.
Like a noted baseball thinker once said, if it were done when ’tis done, then ’twere well.
It were done quickly.
Because of the hype surrounding the Dodgers, the Jays started this series in the hole. I don’t buy for a moment their whole ‘I believe in all 26 guys in that room’ talk. That’s not how human psychology works. But if it was once hopeful self-talk, the Jays have repeated it into reality.
Toronto was the favourite in both previous World Series appearances. This organization has never had the chance to topple a giant, which is the greatest sort of win.
In three remarkable days in L.A. – possibly the most notable in franchise history – they got a titan moving toward the ground. Now, to come home and deliver the final blow.