Back to LA in a Series for the ages

Alex Bregman struck the final blow in a World Series Game 5 with more plot twists than an Ingmar Bergman movie.

Kenley Jansen threw the final pitch in a game that saw more leads vanish than David Janssen as Dr. Richard Kimble in “The Fugitive.”

Logan Forsythe tried to be the Dodgers’ hero in a game that another ex-Razorback, Astros left-handed ace Dallas Keuchel, didn’t see the fifth inning.

Dave Roberts, who once stole a base ahead of a David Ortiz ninth-inning hit in an American League Championship Series, made some irrational decisions regarding pitchers for the second time in the Series, Los Angeles losing both games with Ortiz, a firstyear Fox Sports analyst, watching.

One waited for leadoff man George Springer, in the thick of everything good for Houston, to end it with one swing of the bat and prompt the newspaper headline: “Springer’s dinger ends an epic.”

After that preamble, perhaps we should catch our breath and review exactly what happened and what it means.

By 13-12 in 10 innings, Houston won an epic game in a World Series for the time capsule but without a resolution.

By the time you read this, they’ll be planning a victory parade in Houston, something that city doesn’t see often and has never witnessed in baseball, or a Game 7 tonight in Los Angeles.

In a series with Magic Johnson (Dodgers owner) in the stands, magic has been in the air. In a Fall Classic that pop Nolan Ryan has watched from the front row, club president Reid Ryan and the Astros stood on the brink Tuesday of bringing the first World Series baseball title to Texas.

Nolan Ryan’s only world championship came in 1969 as an ostensible reliever for the New York Mets. He went on to pitch a record seven no-hitters after the Mets, in a colossal front-office blunder, traded Ryan in 1972. You can get arguments whether he or Roger Clemens, he of seven Cy Young awards, is the greatest pitcher to hail from Texas (Ryan from Alvin, Clemens from Katy).

The Astros were poised also to make Sports Illustrated look like Nostrodamus for its 2014 prediction of a 2017 World Series championship in Houston. The Astros have been willing participants in the home-run derby that the 2017 major-league season has become. Houston’s top three in the batting order — Springer, Bregman and presumptive American League MVP Jose Altuve — have been as omnipresent as Pete Rose, Ken Griffey and Joe Morgan batting 1-23 for Cincinnati’s Big Red Machine of the mid-1970s.

Houston won a division series in Boston’s Fenway Park and survived three games in Yankee Stadium to beat New York in a league-championship series dominated by the home team. The World Series clincher for Houston, if there is one, would come in Dodger Stadium, where the ghost of Kirk Gibson expected to hang over Chavez Ravine on a Halloween Game 6.

Long ago, a Houston team led by Art Howe beat a Los Angeles squad in a one-game NL West playoff at Dodger Stadium. The

1980 Astros then lost an epic NLCS to Philadelphia, which with Steve Carlton and Tug McGraw won its first World Series since 1905. The

‘86 Astros lost another series of instant classics to the Mets, who with Darryl Strawberry hitting, Dwight Gooden pitching and Bill Buckner booting a ground ball up the first-base line as Ray Knight sped home at Shea Stadium, downed Boston in seven games.

Baseball having come to its senses and revoked the silly rule that gave homefield advantage in the World Series to the All-Star Game winner’s league, we have Los Angeles getting last bats in the last game of the season. That’s because the National League champs had more one victory than Houston (102-101) in the regular season. A Series clincher at Dodger Stadium would be LA’s first since Sandy Koufax outdueled Whitey Ford in a four-game sweep of the Yankees in 1963.

A five-time Series winner in 12 years after moving from Brooklyn,

the Dodgers have not celebrated in the Oktoberfest since sweeping Oakland in 1988, Gibson’s walk-off homer against Dennis Eckersley deciding the opener. Houston, which has subjected its fans to both good and bad baseball over the years, has been living for this moment since the original Colt 45s entered the NL in 1962.

All of us without strong rooting interests were asking Tuesday for one thing only — and that’s two more nights.