TORONTO — Game 7 was so insane, so compelling, so breathtaking, so dramatic, that when the final out was made early Sunday morning, Dodgers three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw looked at his teammates in disbelief.
‘What, we just won?’ Kershaw said. ”Really? Are you sure?’ I was warming up. I really had no idea we won.’
It was that kind of night, and when the Los Angeles Dodgers started boarding their buses from Rogers Centre at nearly 3 in the morning, they still had trouble digesting what just transpired.
Yes, the Dodgers really won the World Series, 5-4, in 11 innings over the Toronto Blue Jays, becoming the first team in a quarter-century to go back-to-back.
The hero who saved the game with his ninth-inning homer, and then his glove, Miguel Rojas, had a partially dislocated rib and didn’t even know if he could play until mid-afternoon.
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Catcher Will Smith, who caught all 74 innings of the World Series, the most ever by a catcher, hit the game-winning homer in the 11th, which was the Dodgers’ first lead of the game.
Every single Dodgers starting pitcher appeared in the game.
There was a bench-clearing skirmish in the fourth inning.
And there was Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who started and won Game 6 on Friday, threw 96 pitches, and came into relief Saturday, and won Game 7 by pitching more innings than any Dodgers pitcher the entire night.
‘What he did,’ said Andrew Friedman, Dodgers president of baseball operations, ‘is literally the most impressive accomplishment I’ve ever seen on a major league baseball field.’
This is a guy who pitched a complete game in the Dodgers’ 5-1 Game 2 victory, was warming up and ready to pitch in the Dodgers’ 6-5, 18-inning victory, pitched six innings in the Dodgers’ 3-1 victory Friday, and, there he was, back out on the mound again Saturday.
‘For him to have as good as stuff as he had in Game 6,’ Friedman said, ‘is mind-blowing.’
Friedman was first aware that Yamamoto would attempt to pitch when he got a text message from interpreter, Will Ireton, after Game 6 that read: ‘I’m getting treatment after the game to be prepared to pitch Game 7.’
Friedman’s reaction: ‘I didn’t really pay much attention. I’m like, ‘OK, that’s great. He really cares. He really wants to be part of it.”
The next text arrived late Saturday morning: ‘Hey, I actually feel really good after getting treatment again.’
The next was in the early afternoon: ‘I went out to play catch and, hey, the ball is really coming out well. I feel great. I feel like yesterday.’
‘I said, ‘OK, he’s going to be part of this,” Friedman said, ‘but you don’t know what that means. And you don’t know how long he’s going to be able to hold his stuff.’
Yamamoto promptly went out and pitched 2 ⅔ scoreless innings, gave up one hit, and ended the game by inducing a double-play ball by Alejandro Kirk with runners on the corners.
‘When I started in the bullpen before I went in, to be honest,’ Yamamoto said, ‘I was not really sure if I could pitch up there to my best ability. But as I started getting warmed up, because I started making a little bit of an adjustment. And then I started thinking I can go in and do my job.’
Oh, did he ever, batter after batter, inning after inning, and by the time the night was over and he was on the World Series stage accepting his MVP trophy, he was so tired he could barely lift it.
‘I can’t pitch tomorrow guys,’ Yamamoto yelled out in the clubhouse celebration, ‘I just can’t do it.’
The clubhouse screamed in laughter.
Certainly, it’s a performance that vaults him into Dodgers history, right alongside Orel Hershiser, the original ‘Bulldog,’ who carried the Dodgers to the 1988 World Series title by pitching 267 innings during the regular season, and three complete games, including two shutouts, in his last three postseason starts.
‘He is one of the greatest competitors I’ve ever seen,’ Friedman said. ‘And that continues to get strengthened and strengthened with each time he touches October. Seeing what Orel did, and how he competed, it adds to that Dodger legacy of what guys have done on the mound in October.
‘Yama is absolutely on that Mount Rushmore now.’
The Dodgers, who took the gamble believing he’d be a star in the major leagues, paying him a 12-year, $325 million contract when he left Japan, certainly aren’t having any detractors now, with Dodgers owner Mark Walter remembering that he promised Yamamoto the Dodgers would win World Series titles after his arrival.
Well, two years in, and there’s two World Series championships.
They wouldn’t have won the World Series without him last year, and certainly not this year with Yamamoto going 5-1 with a 1.45 ERA and two complete games this postseason.
‘I mean, that’s going to go down in history as one of the best championship performances of any sport,’ Dodgers pitching coach Mark Prior said. ‘And not to mention warming up in the 18th the other day. Well-deserved MVP because he’s not in this position if he doesn’t pitch in three games.’
Yes, indeed, while all of the attention this series was on Shohei Ohtani and Vladimir Guerrero of the Blue Jays it was Yamamoto who stole the show.
‘What a gangsta,’ said Dodgers reliever Jack Dreyer, who warmed up four different times in the game. ‘What he did was just insane. What he did tonight will never be done again. One of his first pitches was a 93-mph splitter. We were like, that’s just inhumane. It’s literally insane that he’d able to do that. And to have all four of our starting pitchers to throw in the same game, that’s crazy too.
‘The only thing that would have made it even crazier if Kersh (Clayton Kershaw) came in. That would have been quite the swan song, but this game was just incredible. You can’t top this.’
Kershaw, the three-time Cy Young winner who’s headed to Cooperstown, is just fine with the way it ended, and couldn’t stop gushing over Yamamoto.
‘I don’t think you’ll ever see somebody do what Yama did tonight,’ Kershaw said. ‘That was probably the most gutsy, ballsy thing any guy’s ever done.’
Said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman: ‘When he was jogging in, I looked at Doc (Dodgers manager Dave Roberts), ‘He is a dawg. I can’t believe he’s coming into this game.’ You guys can write an article every day about Yoshinobu and we’ll still be able to talk about it going into next year. I’ve never seen anything like that.’
And even though Kershaw didn’t appear in the game, walking off the field for the final time in his illustrious career, he couldn’t have dreamt for a better way to end his career.
‘How cool is that I will forever, for the rest of my life, get to say that we won Game 7 of the World Series, the last game I ever played,’ Kershaw said. ‘You can’t script that. You can’t write it up. Even if I was not throwing 88 (mph), I would still be done.
‘It’s the perfect way to go out.’
Sure, the Dodgers may have been a $400 million team, but as they’ve preached all season, it takes a village to win a championship.
‘Everybody talks about the Dodgers and how much money we spend and how we’re supposed to do this and all this stuff,’ Kershaw said. ‘But I tell you what, man, you can’t buy the character, the heart, the willingness to do things that other people wouldn’t all the way down the lineup.
‘It’s all our superstars. There’s a lot of superstars in this game. But I don’t think they’re all like that. I don’t think they’re all willing to do whatever.’
While Yamamoto was the star of the series, and Smith was the one who hit the game-winning homer in the 11th inning, their unsung hero all season was the shining star for the world to see and for the Dodgers to forever remember in the ninth inning.
Rojas, 36, who went weeks without starting a game and didn’t even play in the National League Championship Series, hit one of the most dramatic homers in Dodgers history. They were down to their final two outs when Rojas belted a slider off closer Jeff Hoffman that brought dead silence to the screaming 44,713 fans at the Rogers Centre.
And this is from a guy who didn’t even think he would be healthy enough to play Game 7 in a freak injury after celebrating Game 6. He was so elated hugging shortstop Mookie Betts that one of his ribs popped out. Rojas went to bed not believing he would be able to play Game 7.
‘I knew it was Game 7, but I didn’t want to play if I wasn’t feeling that I was going to help the team,’ Rojas said.
He came to the ballpark early for treatment, doing drills and taking batting practice, before Dodgers manager Dave Roberts could even put him in the lineup.
‘I had a lot of pain and had to take medicines and injections to get me through the game,’ Rojas said, who came out before the 11th inning with his side aching. ‘It is what it is. Game 7 of the World Series, you always want to be part of it. Thank God I did.’
The next thing Rojas knew, he’s in the middle of the Dodgers’ champagne celebration, and Roberts is calling him out, saying that Rojas epitomizes the character of their team and that no one deserved this moment more than he did.
‘I talk about how the game honors you,’ Roberts said, ‘and right there the game honored him. He does things the right way and he deserved that moment.’
Rojas was moved by the gesture and plans to keep the tape to show his kids. On one glorious day, Rojas sure felt appreciated.
‘I’m not a superstar, I know my status on the team,’ Rojas said. ‘People can’t really see what I do behind the scenes, but just hitting this home run, kind of cements what I mean for this organization. I never had this kind of moment in my career.
‘I think this is a great story, not just for me, but for all of us.’
Said Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman: ‘Miguel has been grinding, just doing whatever he could to help this team. And for him to come up with that moment when you’re 36 years old, and says he’s going to retire after next season, to have that moment in the World Series, in Game 7, is just absolutely incredible and saved our season.’
As the Dodgers slowly got dressed after their four-hour game, trophy presentation, champagne celebration, picture gathering and family get-togethers, they reminded one another that they’ll be back together Monday.
They’ve got a parade in downtown Los Angeles.
It’s a season that started with two games in Tokyo, 160 more regular-season games in the United States, 17 postseason games, culminating with a World Series championship won in Canada.
When they go through customs, they’ll be asked if there’s anything they need to declare:
Yes, we’re the Los Angeles Dodgers, and we’re carrying across this magnificent World Series trophy.
‘When you put on this uniform you’re expected to win,’ Freeman said, ‘and to do it like we did back-to back when everyone was expecting us to win, that’s really hard to do. But when you have that pressure, and you embrace it like we did, and you accomplish it, I think that’s what makes it that much sweeter.
‘That was emotional. I think I’ve seen seven people, players cry. We needed every single guy. Everything you could think of happened in this series.
‘What a year.’
And, oh, what a team.
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