The Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays entered the MLB history books during their marathon World Series game on Monday — which stretched well into Tuesday.
The teams were locked at 5-5 at the end of nine innings, with both teams keeping a clean slate through extra innings. As it approached 2 a.m. on the East Coast, the teams made a bit of MLB history as they became just the second World Series contest to reach that historic length.
World Series Game Stretches Nearly Six Hours
The game that started at 8 p.m. ET was still knotted up at 5 runs apiece close to six hours later. Dodgers slugger Shohei Ohtani tied the game on a 401-foot home run in the bottom of the seventh inning, and that was the last run that would be scored for seven innings and several hours.
The teams remained tied through the first five extra innings, making MLB history as the second-longest World Series game ever when the Blue Jays got the Dodgers out of the 14th.
“This is the second World Series game in history to last more than 14 innings,” noted the Talking Baseball podcast in a post on X. “Dodgers and Red Sox set the record at 18 innings in 2018 when Los Angeles beat Boston 3-2 on a Max Muncy walk-off home run. That Game 3 was LA’s only win of the series”
There have been no other World Series games that went beyond 14 innings. The Houston Astros and Chicago White Sox played 14 innings in the 2005 World Series, while the New York Mets and Kansas City Royals also went 14 innings when they met in the World Series a decade later.
It was not so easy for the Blue Jays to reach that mark. Dodgers catcher Will Smith came up just short of a home run on a deep shot in the bottom of the 14th inning.
The Dodgers pulled out all the stops, using 10 total pitchers through the first 16 innings and calling on Clayton Kershaw for one big out to get the Blue Jays out of the 12th inning.
The Dodgers opened the game scoring one run in the second inning and adding another one in the third, but the Blue Jays surged back with four runs in the top of the fourth inning. The Dodgers tied the game at 4-4 before both teams traded runs in the seventh inning — the last players to cross the plate for more than three hours.
The Dodgers and Blue Jays split the first two games in Toronto, leading to a high-stakes Game 3 in Los Angeles.
Blue Jays Give Shohei Ohtani Respect
There were some more historic moments during the seemingly never-ending game, including one for the biggest name of the series.
The Blue Jays were determined not to allow Ohtani to end the game after his seventh-inning shot, intentionally walking him four consecutive times after that — once in the 9th, then again in the 11th, 13th, and 15th.
The decision allowed Ohtani to reach base a total of eight times through the first 15 innings of the game. It also put Ohtani in the history books himself, making him the first player in MLB history to be intentionally walked four times in a postseason game.
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