Ahead of World Series rematch, Dodgers relive emotions of dramatic Game 7 victory
Five months later, the disbelief still remains.
Of the Dodgers’ World Series triumph. Of the storybook way it unfolded. Of how close they were to defeat, only to rally for a championship.
In Los Angeles, that iconic Game 7 is now the stuff of legend.
Getty Images
In Toronto, it’s a haunting nightmare for the Blue Jays, who welcome the Dodgers back to Canada for a World Series rematch this week.
For everyone involved, the details are still fresh. Even with the start of a new season, the emotions continue to resonate.
“You got taken to the brink, and you found a way to overcome it,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “For me, that might be something that I look at more than anything else. That we got truly tested … (and) came through in the moments when it mattered.”
All of which, entering Monday’s series-opener at Rogers Centre, raised a lingering question.
Was there ever a moment during Game 7 that the Dodgers started to doubt? Where they took a moment amid the mayhem, considered the dire circumstances they were facing, and thought: Man, we’re really gonna lose this game.
Last week, The California Post posed Dodgers’ players that exact query. Most, of course, said no. Some, perhaps more honestly, acknowledged yes. But all of them continued to be amazed at the scale of their accomplishment –– staring down near certain defeat, and responding with one of baseball’s most memorable victories.
Getty Images
The optimists
Of the 16 players from last year’s World Series team that The California Post polled, the majority (11 of them, to be exact) insisted they never had such apprehension.
For some, it was simple confidence in their battle-tested squad.
“I don’t know if that’s just the experience that we’ve had, or the atmospheres we’d already played in,” Muncy said. “But that was a feeling that was resonating through the dugout. It was, ‘We have our work cut out for us. But we can still get this thing done.’”
“Our dugout was so calm,” Teoscar Hernández added, “it felt like we would for sure come back and at least tie the game.”
Others were too focused pitch-to-pitch to let their mind wander.
“I think playing the game, you’re just so locked in that every bit of your attention is focused on, ‘OK, how are we gonna come back and win?’” Tommy Edman said.
Kiké Hernández felt similarly, especially while fighting through an elbow injury that later required surgery: “To be honest, I was trying to be in the moment because I was in so much pain. I was just trying to survive.”
That didn’t mean the optimists weren’t worried, especially after Bo Bichette’s stadium-rocking blast in the bottom of the third inning gave the Blue Jays an early three-run lead.
Said Muncy: “When Bichette hit the three-run homer and the roof blew off the place, you’re kinda sitting there going, ‘This one’s gonna be tough.’”
Kiké Hernández: “I was like, ‘F—, we’re down 3-0. It’s gonna be an uphill battle.’”
Tyler Glasnow: “I didn’t think we were gonna lose. But I was like, ‘Ugh.’ I just kind of had a weird feeling in my stomach.”
Yet, throughout the rest of the night, hope was alive and well as the Dodgers embarked on their comeback.
“I didn’t really know how we were gonna do it,” Justin Wrobleski said. “But, I don’t know, I had a feeling.”
So did Blake Snell, who put things more declaratively looking back: “I thought we were gonna win the whole time.”
Getty Images
The realists
On the flip side, the five players who did acknowledge moments of doubt noted they never resigned themselves to certain defeat.
It’s just, in a game that contained so many gut punches and plot twists, it was only natural for some dark thoughts to creep in.
“I think everybody in the world thought that (we were gonna lose), so I’d be lying if I didn’t,” Mookie Betts said. “I mean, obviously, you don’t wanna have those bad thoughts. But I mean, who doesn’t have that thought in that situation?”
“I can’t really lie, saying that I wasn’t worried,” Rojas echoed. “Being down 3-0 in a World Series game, where you know it’s all hands on deck from their bullpen … you’re kind of wondering, like, ‘Hey, is this gonna be it?’”
For Rojas, the concern dissipated quickly, with the run the Dodgers got back in the fourth inning helping to immediately restore belief.
“It makes you believe again, like, ‘OK, we’re not out,’” he said.
For others, however, dread remained straight through to the top ninth inning, when the team was down to its last two outs and the veteran infielder stepped up to the plate.
“When you get one out (that inning), you’re like, ‘Aw, darn,’” Freddie Freeman said. “That’s probably the only time that thought crossed my mind.”
“It was scary, like, ‘We’re gonna come all this way, and we’re not gonna make it?’” Alex Call recalled. “That was probably the most real (the thought of losing the game) felt, when (Rojas) was up at the plate.”
Getty Images
The comeback
The Dodgers had been chipping away at their deficit before then, clawing back within one on Muncy’s homer in the eighth.
And all along, in quiet scenes outside the foul lines, there were other ways players were trying to keep the faith strong.
In the bullpen, Will Klein opted for a superstitious routine.
“I was trying to find a position (to stand) where good things would happen,” he said. “I would go downstairs, we’d get a hit, I’d stay downstairs –– until something bad happened.”
One of his other relief-mates sought comfort from above.
“I’m sitting in the bullpen, I’m just praying,” Blake Treinen said. “And God keeps tapping me, like, ‘Hey, why are you worrying? You’ve prayed for a ring. You’ve prayed for this and that. If it’s gonna be, it’s gonna be. Worrying isn’t gonna add another day to your life.’ It’s like, ‘Alright God.’ And then every time something like that would happen, boom … all these things (good) happened.”
Manager Dave Roberts, who broke down Game 7 on The Dodgers Post podcast last month, felt it in the dugout, noting the confident and supportive chatter he heard throughout the night.
“I look back to 2017 (in the Dodgers’ previous World Series Game 7 against the Astros), we gave up three runs early — and we just kind of mailed it in,” he recalled. “Whereas this game right here, even when we were down 3–0 in the third, there was fight.”
And in the end, it all culminated with Rojas’ game-tying home run; a moment to which everyone offered common sentiments this week.
“We were sooo close,” Call said. “And then it’s like, ‘No! We did it!’”
“After Miggy hit that homer, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re gonna win,’” Glasnow added.
“At that point,” Mookie Betts also noted, “it kind of felt like we were playing with house money.”
Jack Dreyer remembered being next to Clayton Kershaw as they were getting loose in the bullpen. The future Hall of Famer’s reaction: “He was in my ear going, ‘Oh my god! Oh my god! Oh my god!’ over and over again,” Dreyer said with a laugh.
Roberts, meanwhile, couldn’t help but smile while rewatching Rojas’ swing recently –– at which point, the Dodgers’ win probability was only 9%.
“It was not on my bingo card,” he joked of Rojas going deep. “That was unbelievable … I just didn’t expect that.”
Getty Images
The championship
There was more stress the rest of the way … as Call so eloquently recounted in his interview with The Post.
Rojas’ stumbling throw home in the top of the ninth: “Oh my gosh, get up! Throw the ball home! This is it.”
The ensuing review to check if Will Smith’s foot stayed on home plate: “It was like, ‘Is his foot on the base? Are we gonna lose on a replay?’”
Ernie Clement’s fly ball that sent Andy Pages and Kiké Hernández colliding into each other in left field: “I’m like, this is it. We’re gonna lose right here.”
Every time, however, the Dodgers escaped –– dodging one bullet after another before finally prevailing in the 11th on Smith’s go-ahead homer and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s game-ending double-play.
“There were so many different times we could’ve lost,” Freeman said. “And it was just like, ‘Wow, we got out of that one. We got out of this one.’ … I’m sure if we sat down, you’d probably count on multiple hands, ‘How did we get out of that?’”
The answer, Dodgers players concurred, was rooted in a culture they’d forged over years of formative playoff experience, plenty full of both heartbreak and elation.
“Even when we don’t play well, we figure out ways to win a game,” Kiké Hernández said. “It speaks volumes about who we are as a group, and our ability to not only be really good, but know how to win.”
As Wrobleski, one of the youngest members of the club, put it: “No matter what the situation is, let the situation make you better, and just heighten that focus.”
To Rojas, who was the oldest member of the team’s position player group, such resiliency only added to the feeling of accomplishment.
“I’m proud of the way we kept our composure and fought through that,” he said. “That’s something that you will never forget.”
All those memories, of course, will come flooding back this week when the Dodgers return to Rogers Centre.
Rojas joked that he was looking forward to being booed, something he’s never experienced before in his career: “I really want to step in that batter’s box again and see how it’s gonna be.”
Roberts was anticipating a hostile reaction for the whole team: “I think the fans there want a piece of us. I think it’s gonna be exciting.”
After all, as Treinen pointed out, “You could play that series the exact same way –– every situation lines back up again, before those big plays happen –– you do it 99 more times, and I bet you could almost say we’d lose 99 more of them.”
Getty Images
But hen it mattered, the Dodgers found a way to conjure one-in-a-hundred (Or thousand? Or million?) World Series magic, in a game forever etched into baseball history.
Said Freeman, with a laugh: “I still don’t know how we pulled that off.”
