TORONTO (Reuters) -The Los Angeles Dodgers kept alive on Friday their hopes of becoming Major League Baseball’s first repeat champion in 25 years, with a 3-1 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays that pushed the World Series to a decisive seventh game.
With their backs against the wall and facing elimination for the first time this postseason, a Dodgers team that had no room for error got six solid innings from starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto while Mookie Betts and Will Smith provided the offense.
“We got to go out there and win one baseball game. We’ve done that all year. Everyone’s bought in,” said Dodgers manager Dave Roberts.
“I don’t know how the game’s going to play out, but as far as kind of the moment, winning a game, I couldn’t be more excited to get to sleep and wake up to play a baseball game tomorrow.” Toronto thought they tied the game on an inside-the-park home run in the ninth on a bizarre play, when the ball was lodged at the bottom of the outfield fence where Dodgers outfielder Justin Dean immediately raised his hands to rule the play dead.
A review went the Dodgers’ way and determined it was a ground rule double, which left Toronto with runners on second and third with no outs.
Ernie Clement then hit an infield pop and Andres Gimenez lined out to left before Kike Hernandez quickly fired the ball to second base to get Addison Barger out for a game-ending double play.
‘TOUGH BREAK’
The Dodgers victory put on hold, for one day at least, a coast-to-coast party in Canada, where fans of the lone MLB club are desperate to celebrate the Blue Jays’ first World Series triumph in 32 years.
“I haven’t seen a ball get lodged ever. Just caught a tough break there,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider told reporters.
“That will take awhile to kind of unpack. That’s a wild ending,” he said.
“But we’re going to be ready to play tomorrow. Everyone’s going to be ready to play.”
As they were at the start of the season, the Dodgers came into the World Series as an overwhelming favourite and with few expecting the Blue Jays to produce much of a challenge and even fewer calling for it to go the distance.
With their season on the line, Los Angeles opened the scoring in the third on a run-scoring double by Smith, before Betts singled in a pair of runs to put Los Angeles ahead 3-0.
Barger led off the bottom half of the third with a double before scoring on a George Springer single to get the Blue Jays within two.
YAMAMOTO MAGIC
The Dodgers’ starting rotation had been the team’s strength this postseason but the Blue Jays picked it apart en route to grabbing a 3-2 lead in the World Series before Yamamoto once again took matters in his own hands.
The Japanese ace, who threw complete-game gems in his previous two starts, struck out six batters and allowed one run on five hits across six innings before the Dodgers turned to a bullpen that has been their weak link all season.
“In my mind, I was ready for another inning, but my job, the most important part was to protect our lead and then pass it to the guys coming behind me,” said Yamamoto.
The Blue Jays threatened in the eighth when they got runners on first and second with one out before Roki Sasaki retired Bo Bichette and Daulton Varsho grounded out to end the inning before once again getting close in the ninth.
Play was temporarily disrupted in the sixth inning when a spectator scaled the outfield wall and stormed the field with an American flag before he was promptly taken down by security guards and escorted away.
Game Seven will be played on Saturday in Toronto.
“I feel great,” said Roberts. “We’re going to leave it out there. I don’t think that the pressure, the moment’s going to be too big for us.”
(Reporting by Frank Pingue in Toronto; Additional reporting by Rory Carroll in Los Angeles; Editing by Clarence Fernandez and Muralikumar Anantharaman)
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