Sun Sentinel Palm Beach Edition
Dodgers rally, tighten series
Cody Bellinger hit a tying, three-run homer and Mookie Betts then lined an RBI double as the Dodgers rallied in the eighth inning, beating the Braves 6-5 on Tuesday to trim their NL Championship Series deficit to 2-1.
The Dodgers were down to their final five outs when Bellinger drove a two-strike pitch from Luke Jackson into the right-field pavilion, igniting the blue towel-waving crowd, some of whom had already left with the home team trailing 5-2.
Chris Taylor singled, stole second and moved to third on pinch-hitter Matt Beaty’s groundout. Betts followed with a double off Jesse Chavez to right-center.
Game 4 is Wednesday at Dodger Stadium.
With the cheering, chanting crowd on its feet in the ninth, Kenley Jansen struck out the side to earn the save, the ninth pitcher used by the Dodgers. They ran through a combined 15 in the first two games.
After getting staggered with back-to-back walk-off losses in Atlanta, the Dodgers returned home, where they’ve dominated the Braves in recent years and were an MLB-best 58-23 during this regular season.
The Braves haven’t won at Dodger Stadium since June 8, 2018. It sure looked like they’d end that skid after leading 5-2 in the fifth. But the 106-win Dodgers staged another improbable postseason comeback late.
They beat the Cardinals in the NL wild-card game, then edged the 107-win Giants in Game 5 of the NL Division Series on Bellinger’s tiebreaking single in the ninth inning. Last year, the Dodgers rallied from a 3-1 deficit to beat the Braves in the NLCS.
The Braves built their lead Tuesday with a bunch of singles, pounding out 12 hits. Freddie Freeman broke out of his slump, going 3-for-4 with a walk and a run scored.
Baker steers clear:
Old-school Astros manager Dusty Baker is happy to stay out of the latest kerfuffle over players showing each other up on the field, saying on Tuesday: “It’s too late for me to change the world.”
The latest flare-up over baseball’s unwritten rules came in Game 3 of the ALCS on Monday, when Red Sox pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez pointed to his wrist after retiring the Carlos Correa. It was a clapback at Correa himself, who used the gesture after hitting a homer in Game 1 to signal that it was his time to shine.
Red Sox manager Alex Cora chastised his pitcher and said, “We don’t do that.” Rodriguez said he would apologize to Correa. But Correa said he “loved every single bit of it.”
“It’s just the way baseball should trend, moving forward,” Correa said before Tuesday night’s Game 4 in Boston, which ended too late for this edition. “You need to let the players have fun.”
That’s not the way it was when the 72-year-old Baker played from 1968-86 — almost all of it in the NL, where a preening pitcher would be fodder for a 100 mph lesson the next time he was in the batter’s box.
“Back in my day you would have been probably pushing up daisies somewhere, you know what I mean?” he said. “It’s a new world, new day . ... It’s too late for me to change the world.”