{"id":250130,"date":"2025-10-30T13:15:12","date_gmt":"2025-10-30T13:15:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/250130\/"},"modified":"2025-10-30T13:15:12","modified_gmt":"2025-10-30T13:15:12","slug":"the-blue-jays-have-robbed-l-a-and-the-dodgers-of-their-mojo","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/250130\/","title":{"rendered":"The Blue Jays have robbed L.A. and the Dodgers of their mojo"},"content":{"rendered":"

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

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<\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

The sight of a man in powder blue running around the bases seemed to concentrate their attention. <\/p>\n

As a result, they were watching when Vladimir Guerrero Jr. hit the game\u2019s third pitch out of the park. You could tell that by the noise, which dipped from a low murmur to non-existent. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Trey Yesavage didn\u2019t have it in Game 1, and survived. He had it \u2013 all of it, including a splitter so wicked it looks like it\u2019s being thrown into a wind machine \u2013 in Game 5. <\/p>\n

Cathal Kelly: Baseball is having its first truly international World Series<\/a><\/p>\n

After Yesavage struck out his 12th batter \u2013 a rookie World Series record \u2013 cameras panned to Sandy Koufax, looking impressed. Final score: 6-1<\/a>. And that\u2019s it. That\u2019s the game story. <\/p>\n

After three remarkable games in L.A., the Blue Jays aren\u2019t just winning the World Series. They have robbed this city of its mojo, and are bringing it home.<\/p>\n

You don\u2019t want to jinx anyone, but when your ninth- or 10th-best hitter is sticking a fork in the other team\u2019s ostensible best pitcher 10 seconds after the game starts, it\u2019s done. <\/p>\n

This is no longer about what the Jays are doing right, which is everything. It\u2019s about how the Dodgers are reacting. They look worse than lost. They look like they are in a full-blown crisis of confidence. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Blake Snell walks off the mound after giving up two home runs during the first inning.Kirby Lee\/Reuters<\/p>\n

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 blas\u00e9 it can sound like boredom. <\/p>\n

\u201cThose guys over there, they gave it everything they had,\u201d L.A. manager Dave Roberts said after that seven-hour slog. \u201cFortunately for the Dodgers, we got Freddie Freeman.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zing!<\/p>\n

They transcribe everything that\u2019s said in the baseball playoffs. Flipping through those pages is becoming a real journey into Dodger madness. <\/p>\n

They were so sure of themselves. Not full of themselves \u2013 they\u2019re too smart for that. They oozed so much easy confidence they needed trailing around with a towel. <\/p>\n

Tariff troubles nudge baseball fans in Windsor onto the Blue Jays bandwagon<\/a><\/p>\n

That\u2019s what happens when you spend two years hearing that you are destiny\u2019s 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\u2019s what would happen. <\/p>\n

That\u2019s good when you\u2019re winning, but it makes you brittle when you lose. In Game 5, L.A. began to crack. <\/p>\n

All the little reactions were suddenly different. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Teoscar Hern\u00e1ndez 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 Hern\u00e1ndez on fire with his eyes. <\/p>\n

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 \u2013 lots of men in white staring into the middle distance. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

Two weeks ago, this crowd\u2019s team couldn\u2019t be beaten. Now they\u2019re the Bad News Bears. People were starting to get used to it. <\/p>\n

A half-hour after Wednesday\u2019s game ended, a couple of hundred Jays fans had gathered over the visitors\u2019 dugout to chant (\u2018One more game\u2019) and sing O Canada. Guest services started to hustle all remaining stragglers out of the stadium. The Canadians kept singing. <\/p>\n

L.A. have scored four runs in the past 29 innings. That\u2019s not a couple of bad nights. It is the sudden realization that maybe you\u2019re not who they told you you are.<\/p>\n

So who are the Dodgers? They\u2019re just another team. As they come to terms with that, they\u2019re halfway off the ledge and the Blue Jays are the ones hanging on to their lapels. <\/p>\n

Toronto has one big problem now \u2013 Thursday. It\u2019s a travel day. They\u2019ll pick things back up on Friday night at 8 p.m. at the Rogers Centre. <\/p>\n

The Jays\u2019 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\u2019s nothing. Ask Seattle. <\/p>\n

Like a noted baseball thinker once said, if it were done when \u2019tis done, then \u2019twere well. <\/p>\n

It were done quickly.<\/p>\n

Because of the hype surrounding the Dodgers, the Jays started this series in the hole. I don\u2019t buy for a moment their whole \u2018I believe in all 26 guys in that room\u2019 talk. That\u2019s not how human psychology works. But if it was once hopeful self-talk, the Jays have repeated it into reality. <\/p>\n

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. <\/p>\n

In three remarkable days in L.A. \u2013 possibly the most notable in franchise history \u2013 they got a titan moving toward the ground. Now, to come home and deliver the final blow. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: Davis Schneider celebrates with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. after their back-to-back home runs during…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":250131,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,2922,41,39,42,40,8023],"class_list":{"0":"post-250130","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-noastack","11":"tag-top-news","12":"tag-top-stories","13":"tag-topnews","14":"tag-topstories","15":"tag-topstory"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250130","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=250130"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/250130\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/250131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=250130"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=250130"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=250130"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}