LOS ANGELES — Sometimes the classics sneak up on you. And so do the weird ones.
And Game 3 of the 121st World Series was a little – no, a lot – of both. It was an 18-inning marathon, and with everything else that happened – some things weird, some things captivating – it turned out just plain wonderful for the Dodgers, thanks to guess who?
Yes, Freddie Freeman again. For such a well-mannered, unassuming guy, he has a well-honed flair for the dramatic.
In Game 1 against the New York Yankees a year ago he hit the first walk-off grand slam in World Series history and created indelible comparisons to Kirk Gibson’s own iconic walk-off moment that set the tone of the Dodgers’ 1988 World Series victory.
Monday night he created comparisons to another memorable home run, this one hit by a current teammate, but he and his team hope this one has a different twist to it.
Max Muncy broke up an 18-inning game with a walk-off home run in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series against the Boston Red Sox at Dodger Stadium, a shot to left-center that ended a 7-hour, 20-minute marathon. But that was the only game they won in that series, which the Red Sox won in five.
Freeman’s blast, which cleared the fence in dead center field 406 feet away, similarly decided a Game 3. The difference is that this one gave his team a 2-1 series lead, and if this one ends in five the Dodgers will be celebrating a championship on their home field for the first time since Sandy Koufax jumped off the mound in jubilation in October of 1963.
(Incidentally, given that the 2018 marathon went more than seven hours and this one ended in 6:39, is that proof the pitch clock works?)
There is a long way to go before this one is wrapped up, obviously. Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider noted afterward, “The Dodgers didn’t win the World Series today, they won a game. These guys (his players) are going to be ready to go tomorrow.”
Yeah, and that’s similar to what Yankees manager Aaron Boone was saying a year ago.
This game turned from wild to weird to historic.
It featured the sight of Tuesday’s Game 4 pitcher, the incomparable Shohei Ohtani, reaching base nine times in one game. In the first two games in Toronto he went 2 for 8 with a home run and seemed to be coming out of his slump. Monday night he was 4 for 4 – two home runs, two doubles and five walks, four of them intentional and the fifth of which might as well have been, because when he came up with a man on and two outs in the 17th, Toronto pitcher Eric Lauer threw one outside, bounced one, and threw the next two low.
This was also a night when Ohtani got himself thrown out stealing in the ninth while representing the winning run, when both third base coaches (Dino Ebel for the Dodgers and Carlos Febes for Toronto) had guys thrown out at home plate, and when Toronto’s Bo Bichette got himself picked off first base while teammate Daulton Varsho was arguing about a called strike.
It was a night in which Roki Sasaki became even more of an L.A. folk hero with his 1⅔ innings of relief (and ability to wiggle out of a jam in the ninth thanks to Tommy Edman throwing out Isaiah Kiner-Falefa trying to go from first to third), while Clayton Kershaw was called on to get the last out of the 12th inning with the bases loaded in what conceivably could be his last triumphant moment on the Dodger Stadium mound.
And it was a night when a guy few had paid attention to in the Dodger bullpen provided relief that nobody expected. Will Klein had bounced from the Athletics’ organization to Seattle to the Dodgers this season, spent most of the season in Triple-A, and was a last-minute addition to the World Series roster. When he entered Monday night in the 15th inning, he was the last guy available.
So he threw 72 pitches, gave up one hit, got out of a jam in the 18th because of two walks, and wound up the winning pitcher. And along with all the other reasons that Freeman’s homer was important, it saved Yoshinobu Yamamoto from having to enter the game in relief in the 19th, two nights after throwing a shutout. He was next in line.
“You don’t ever plan on playing 18 innings and you just kind of ask more from the player,” Manager Dave Roberts said. “He (Klein) delivered. He threw probably three times as much as he’s ever thrown before, and certainly with the adrenaline on this stage what he did was incredible. That’s not even enough of a credit to him on this outing.”
And what was going through Klein’s mind through all of this?
“Just keep going,” he said. “We weren’t losing that game, and so I had to keep going back out there. I was going to keep doing that and doing all I could to put up a zero and sit back down and go do it again.”
The last time he threw that many pitches, he said, was his junior year at Eastern Illinois when he was still a starter. This time, he knew he had to be ready for anything.
“I realized that when I looked around in the bullpen and my name was the only one still there,” he said with a laugh. “I was just going to go until I couldn’t, and that’s kind of what happened and, thankfully, Freddie saved us from Yamamoto having to do the same thing.”
In the two games in Toronto, Freeman was 1 for 6 with two walks and had hit a couple of balls to the warning track with nothing to show for it. Monday night he walked twice, drove in a run in the fifth with a single down the right field line, and hit another ball to the track in the 13th, not that far from where his home run would eventually go out. That one was with the bases loaded, and it was right after they’d shown clips of his Game 1 homer last year on the video board.
“I mean, the one in Toronto (Saturday night) I thought I hit way better than the one to center field where it still was like 20 feet short,” he said. “It’s not – I’m not getting frustrated. It’s because the ball’s on the barrel, so I know if I keep staying with that (it’ll work). If I try and switch it up, then I’m going to most likely not be on the barrel. So if you just keep putting good swings on it, sooner rather than later it’s going to be what you want.
“But, yeah, as (Monday’s) game went on, the ball was going a little bit more true for me to center field and left center. The one that (left fielder Myles Straw) ran down in left center (in the 11th) … even though I got out, I was like, okay, there it is. I finally felt that I would stay behind the ball and drive it, and it just made my confidence soar.
“Thankfully,” he continued, “Will Klein, MVP of this game, was able to throw more zeros up, and I was able to get up again.”
Consider them co-MVPs. Also consider this: In a best-of-seven World Series, there often seems to be at least one game that is wacky enough to be memorable, even if it’s eventually overshadowed by the events that actually determine a champion.
This one qualifies. And it might not be overshadowed, either.
jalexander@scng.com