Wild win — crazier to be one away
HOUSTON — Alex Bregman screamed and pointed toward everyone still standing — and now screaming, too — as 1 a.m. approached Monday morning. It was over. And you thought that night in Hollywood with all the huge, late-inning home runs was the one with all the magic.
Game 2, meet Game 5. We have a new winner.
This World Series just got completely crazy. These Astros are also just one victory away from their first championship, after erasing three deficits to overcome the Dodgers 13-12 in the 10th inning in a night of screams, joyous disbelief and barely hanging on at Minute Maid Park.
It took 5 hours 17 minutes to finish. It felt like 10.
It was beautiful when it was finally done.
A.J. Hinch’s club down 4-0 in the fourth inning with Dallas Keuchel already chased and a silent stadium starting to freak out? Whatever. Yuli Gurriel will hit a three-run blast to suddenly tie it all up and make it feel like Game 7 of the American League Championship Series all over again.
These Astros down again, 7-4 in the fifth, after Collin McHugh gives up three more? Whatever, Part 2. Clayton Kershaw is about to fall apart. Then Jose Altuve will even everything all over again, drilling a three-run home run to deep center field and tying it all up at 7, as the ballpark in downtown Houston becomes a scream factory once more.
And … Astros down for a third time, 8-7 in the seventh, after George Springer allows a low-flying liner to roll all the way to the centerfield wall? Whatever, Part 3. Time to really get crazy. Springer will blast a solo shot to tie it, Altuve will follow with a lined RBI double and then Carlos Correa will fire a two-run moonshot that eventually ends up in the Crawford Boxes. Astros 11-8. But then the Dodgers followed with three more runs in the ninth. And it wasn’t until the 10th, when Bregman lined a 91-mph cutter from Kenley Jansen into left field to score pinchrunner Derek Fisher, that this one was finally complete.
If you weren’t one of the lucky ones with a ticket to the Astros’ final home game of 2017, maybe this gives you an idea of how crazy Game 5 was: 25 combined runs, 28 hits, seven home runs and two Cy Young winners knocked out before a full five.
Even more cuckoo: The team that went 55 years without winning a single World Series game is now just one victory away from winning the whole darn thing.
These Astros will hand the ball to new super-ace Justin Verlander on Tuesday in L.A., and now have two games to end the Dodgers.
After the late-night, home-run heroics in Hollywood in Game 2, Hinch used the word “believing.” After the insanity of Game 5, we need a dictionary to capture a team and season that continue to defy normal belief.
We thought we had it all figured out in the fourth, after Keuchel was chased. And midway through the fifth, Game 4 starters Charlie Morton and Alex Wood already were better than the hyped Kershaw and Keuchel.
We didn’t know anything, yet. And every time a story line appeared, the truth disappeared and common sense was torched.
The Astros put up three in the bottom of the fifth and four in the seventh, answering three strong Dodgers leads with the same thrilling spirit and fight they’ve shown since April. A “Beat L.A.” chant was soon ringing in downtown Houston and the Springer-Altuve-Correa show was back on.
A 104-win team again couldn’t hold leads or depend on its once-untouchable bullpen. A 101-win club on the verge of giving up two straight World Series games at home returned to life once again, just like when Marwin Gonzalez delivered his series-changing shot in Game 2 and Altuve, Correa and Springer followed with blasts of their own.
It felt like “one of those games” the moment that Gurriel went deep, deep, deep in the fourth. It obviously was once Altuve straightened out a nearhome run fired down the left-field line, then locked in for his seventh of the postseason an inning later.
Keuchel didn’t have it. Kershaw couldn’t hold on.
Kenta Maeda, Brandon Morrow and McHugh: also off.
And you know what? By the fifth inning of Game 5 — when everything had gone crazy again and you could barely hear yourself think — it all, somehow, made perfect sense.
This was just the start. All the home runs, comebacks, blown leads and final-out rallies were still to come.
The Astros needed it more. So they just took it and Bregman came through.
And now the team that has never won a World Series is just one more win away from the trophy, thanks to the beautiful insanity of Game 5.