Dodgers win the Boston Marathon
Los Angeles Dodgers' Max Muncy celebrates after his walk-off home run against the Boston Red Sox in the 18th inning in Game 3 of the World Series baseball game on Saturday, Oct. 27, 2018, in Los Angeles. Credit: AP/Jae C. Hong
LOS ANGELES
As Friday night’s Game 3 of the World Series stretched into Saturday morning at Dodger Stadium, the exact toll on both teams was difficult to calculate.
Inning after inning, hour after hour, there were worsening degrees of exhaustion, sure.
But it wasn’t until the 18th inning, at the 7-hour, 20-minute mark, that we fully understood. When Max Muncy hammered a backdoor cut fastball from Nathan Eovaldi over the left-centerfield wall, securing the Dodgers’ 3-2 walk-off victory, with the chords of Randy Newman’s “I Love L.A.” pumping through the stadium’s speakers, the balance was evident.
As the jubilant Dodgers spilled from the dugout to swarm Muncy, looking as if they could play another 18, Eovaldi led the gloomy parade across the field.
It’s an entirely different World Series for the Dodgers now, the swing to an optimistic 2-1 from the potential doom of a 3-0 hole, and for the Red Sox, that gap felt like more than just one game. Maybe because it was the longest one in World Series history, by every measure, and they lost.
Red Sox Game 3 starter Rick Porcello said he cried after watching Eovaldi basically empty the tank for six innings-plus, maxing out at 101 mph through the first few dozen pitches and still sitting at 98 by the end. Eovaldi is a veteran of two Tommy John surgeries, and to see him push beyond what most would consider their natural boundaries left a profound effect on his teammates.
“That was the most incredible pitching performance I’ve ever seen,” Porcello said. “He literally gave everything he had. It was the epitome of reaching down deep.”
In a rare twist of fate for the Red Sox, a 108-win team that had been rolling through October, they were the ones who kicked away certain victory. After backhanding a grounder, Ian Kinsler was unable to throw accurately to first base with two outs in the 13th inning, a play that would have sealed a 2-1 win and given the Red Sox a three-games-to-none lead.
Kinsler made a nice stab of Yasiel Puig’s bouncer, but his foot slipped on the turf, tearing up a divot, and his off-balance throw across his body went wide of Christian Vazquez, usually a catcher, who moved to first base in the 12th. Muncy scored from second on the error, breathing sudden, unexpected life into the Dodgers.
“It’s extremely tough,” Kinsler said. “I feel terrible I feel like I let the team down. I had the last out in my glove and we had to play 18 innings. We’re all exhausted. We gave everything we had.”
Both teams did. The Red Sox and Dodgers used a combined 46 players, including 18 pitchers, a postseason record. Clayton Kershaw entered as a pinch hitter in the 17th inning and lined out to rightfield. Eduardo Nunez crashed into everything but the Hollywood sign and had to be checked out numerous times by a trainer -- a worrisome scenario because the Red Sox eventually ran out of bodies, with the exception of Chris Sale and Drew Pomeranz.
In the 13th inning, Nunez got flipped over by Dodgers catcher Austin Barnes, who was scrambling for a loose ball and threw him like a bull as he stood in the batter’s box. The freak accident appeared to hurt his leg, and when Nunez later hit a dribbler, he dived headfirst into the first-base bag, also causing him to get up slowly.
In the bottom of the 13th, Nunez went head over heels into the stands to catch a foul ball. He also stumbled over the mound to snare a pop-up in the 16th. Any one of those mishaps could have caused him to leave the game, but Nunez somehow stayed intact.
“I didn’t have a choice,” he said. “We didn’t have any more players. I was like, [expletive], I have to go on.”
From a managerial standpoint, Alex Cora pushed every button he had, and the decision to go with Eovaldi -- his scheduled starter for Saturday’s Game 4 -- was a bold one, considering that the score was tied at 1 when he called on him for the 12th. Asking him to close was the more obvious strategy, but Cora opted to try and break the Dodgers on Friday night. Instead it was the Red Sox who wound up cracking.
“I just wasn’t able to execute on a pitch,” Eovaldi said. “It’s difficult. You go that far, you want to come out on top.”
As draining as the experience was for the Red Sox, and everyone who stayed up past 3 a.m. on the East Coast, it was rejuvenating for the Dodgers, who were one out away from going down 3-0 in this Series. They blew a sensational outing by Walker Buehler, who pitched seven scoreless innings with seven strikeouts, only to watch closer Kenley Jansen flush a 1-0 lead by serving up the tying home run to Jackie Bradley Jr. with two outs in the eighth. But to rally back as they did, it was the kind of emotional swing that can alter the course of a World Series.
“This was a gut-wrenching game for both sides,” Muncy said. “Their guys are banged up, our guys are banged up. It's one of those things when you're able to come out on top from a game like this, you have to feel it gives you a little momentum going to the next one.”
And the start of that next one was less than 17 hours away.
David Lennon is an award-winning columnist, a voter for baseball's Hall of Fame and has covered six no-hitters, including two perfect games.
