LOS ANGELES – Hype video after hype video, each obnoxiously louder than the last, touting the Los Angeles Dodgers’ singular greatness, if not invincibility, pulsed between innings over three hype nights in SoCal and the Toronto Blue Jays tore apart the Hollywood hagiography.

The team that segments of the baseball world are being forced to recognize, that has given the defending champions more than they can handle thus far in this captivating World Series, is heading home on the cusp of a title. A reality that would have been met with incredulity, if not laughter, back when pitchers and catchers reported to camp on Valentine’s Day.

Yet this group of Blue Jays truly believed when others did not, and when obstacles emerged, they found a way, and when they needed players to emerge, they did, and it’s been the story of their season that was once again reflected in a crucial victory, this one 6-1 on Wednesday night.

Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old who started the season in low-A and progressively has made bigger and bigger starts across five levels, dominated in a way the Blue Jays could only have imagined in their dreams in his biggest outing yet. He faced down Shohei Ohtani right out of the gate, inducing a weak chopper to the mound that showed he was up to the task, and overmatched the Dodgers for the next seven innings, allowing one run on three hits with no walks and 12 strikeouts, establishing multiple bests for a rookie along the way.

The Blue Jays offence, meanwhile, immediately began to rough up Blake Snell the way Rufus Wainwright roughed up the singing of O Canada before a crowd of 52,175.

Davis Schneider, batting leadoff after George Springer’s latest attempt to return from a right-side issue came up short, launched Blake Snell’s first pitch, a 96.6 m.p.h. fastball, 373 feet to left field to open the scoring. He’d barely taken off the club’s home run jacket when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. clobbered the game’s third pitch, a 96 m.p.h. heater, and lined it over the wall in left.

After Yesavage’s one mistake, a fastball up and in that Kiké Hernandez ripped over the wall in left in the third inning, the Blue Jays responded immediately, capitalizing on each and every Dodgers mistake.

Daulton Varsho opened the fourth by slicing a ball to right field, where Teoscar Hernandez made an ill-advised dive and turned a single into a triple, a scene very familiar to his former club. Ernie Clement followed by lining a ball to centre, scoring Varsho easily to make it 3-1.

A two-spot in the seventh knocked out Snell, as Addison Barger opened the inning with a single, took second and third on wild pitches as Andres Gimenez walked and then scored on another wild pitch from Edgardo Henriquez that was Ball 4 to Guerrero. Bo Bichette followed with an RBI single that made it 5-1, while in the eighth, Ernie Clement led off with a single, took second on yet another wild pitch, advanced to third on Barger’s groundout to the right side and scored on Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s RBI single through a drawn-in infield.

Seranthony Dominguez pitched a clean eighth while Jeff Hoffman handled the ninth, closing out a spectacular pitching performance. 

The seven innings for Yesavage marked his longest outing of the season, topping the six he worked for low-A Dunedin versus Clearwater on May 1. The 104 pitches he threw marked another season high, surpassing the 94 he threw Sept. 27 against the Tampa Bay Rays.

And after a good but not great Game 1 outing, when he allowed two runs over four innings and navigated enough traffic for Dodgers manager Dave Roberts to say that “there were a lot of pitches that we missed,” Yesavage left them nothing this time out.

An eighth-inning video implored Dodgers fans to make some noise, to not let the opposition “think that they got us.” After a quiet bottom half, one lonely fan yelled, “the series isn’t over,” again and again, and he was right. But the story the Dodgers have been telling their fans all year just hit a major twist, and the Blue Jays have two chances to write the ending they want.