SUPERHUMAN
Dodgers will become legends with a victory in winner-take-all finale
LOS ANGELES — The super team will not go down quietly. Welcome back to World Series Game 7, folks. Third visit in four years. On one side, you’ve got the fiercest offense this side of the “Air Coryell” San Diego Chargers from the late 1970s and early 1980s.
On the other side, you’ve got the super team.
The Dodgers, baseball’s most expensive club of 2017, survived its first great threat Tuesday night, prevailing over Justin Verlander and the Astros, 3-1, in the Halloween pitchers’ duel we all desired to see after the sensory overload of Sunday night’s Game 5. Now this Fall Classic, which has become quite a classic, concludes Wednesday night, here at Dodger Stadium, with Lance McCullers Jr. and Yu Darvish facing off.
The Astros will lean on the meat of their lineup, Jose Altuve and Carlos Correa, to power them through. The Dodgers? They’ll look to their cast of thousands.
Well, not literally thousands. It just feels that way on a night like this one.
Los Angeles manager Dave Roberts, beleaguered for a series of moves that broke bad in Games 4 and 5, pushed every right button on this night. His players, put together by the Dodgers’ front office — which can feel like a cast of thousands in its own right — delivered every time.
It started in the top of the fifth, as Dodgers starting pitcher Rich Hill began to tee- ter by giving up a leadoff single to ex-Yankee Brian McCann and then a double to Marwin Gonzalez. Already down 1-0, with Verlander shoving (he had allowed just one hit, a Yasiel Puig single, and no walks at that juncture), the Dodgers could not afford to fall back any further. Hill recorded his biggest out of the game when he struck out Josh Reddick, and then he whiffed Verlander, too.
Then, the big call: The Dodgers intentionally walked George Springer, whose solo homer in the third accounted for the game’s only run at that juncture, and summoned Brandon Morrow to go after Alex Bregman. That’s the same Morrow who imploded in Game 5, facing four batters and allowing four runs. And that’s the same Bregman who produced the walk-off, 10th-inning hit in Game 5 and has displayed nerves of steel in this postseason.
Morrow retired Bregman on an inning-ending grounder to shortstop Corey Seager.
The Dodgers went ahead in the sixth when, with Austin Barnes on first and one out, Roberts decided to pinch hit for reliever Tony Watson with old dog Chase Utley, who was hitless in 14 postseason at-bats. It somehow worked, as Verlander hit Utley with a pitch in his front foot, keeping the chains moving on a rally that proceeded to produce two runs, with Chris Taylor scoring Barnes on a fisted double to right field and Seager’s sacrifice fly to the right-field wall plating Utley for the 2-1 lead.
Most important for the Dodgers, Roberts operated the bullpen like a maestro, or at least a maestro with a shaky yet ultimately functional baton. Watson entered in the sixth, with Yuli Gurriel on first and two outs, and hit Brian McCann with a pitch before lucking out and retiring Marwin Gonzalez on a liner to Utley at second.
And in the seventh, after Watson walked the leadoff batter Reddick, Kenta Maeda swerved in and out of trouble, allowing Astros to reach first and third with two outs before getting Altuve on a slow bouncer to third. Justin Turner charged the ball and whipped it to first, where Cody Bellinger made a great scoop to secure the third out.
For the eighth, Roberts turned to his closer Kenley Jansen, whom he said before the game would be asked to get only three outs. When your season is on the line, everyone pushes. Jansen pushed his way through six outs to seal this deal.
So many guys on this ultradeep Dodgers roster pushed to get to this winner-take-all, loser-goes-home, final game of the 2017 season. Wow. Can the super-team prevail once more? If it does, it’ll gain what every superpower wants: Legendary status.