The quiet crowd had come alive. The quiet pitcher had become unhittable. The quiet catcher had loudly blasted a ball that sent Chavez Ravine into tremors.
In the sixth inning Wednesday night, with their pursuit of history on the line against those pesky Milwaukee Brewers, the somnolent Dodgers had finally come to life.
Moments later, they were dead again.
And they will remain so next spring.
After an inspiring, two-run rally authored by a bases-loaded double from Will Smith, Dodgers starter Blake Snell allowed back-to-back homers to Jake Bauers and Garrett Mitchell to open the seventh and eventually close out the Dodgers’ season in a 6-2 loss in Game 3 of the National League Championship Series.
It’s not over, but it is. The Dodgers aren’t done, but they’re so done.
The chase for a third consecutive World Series championship is historically and essentially and practically kaput. Their pursuit of a three-peat has been smothered by the Brewers’ own version of a three-peat, and nearly all hope is lost.
The Dodgers now trail the Brewers three-games-to-none in this best-of-seven series, a virtually impossible mountain to scale, achieved only once in major-league history.
Yes, Dave Roberts stole the base that spurred the Boston Red Sox to work out of a similar hole against the New York Yankees in 2004, but he’s no longer on the field and any of that inspiration has long since vanished.
“I don’t know if some of those guys even know I played,” said Roberts before the game..
They could have used some of his fire Wednesday in a game played against a background of apathetic embarrassment.
Namely, it wasn’t a sellout. How can an NLCS game in the most perpetually crowded baseball stadium in America not sell out?
The huge swaths of empty seats were perhaps a sign that, after watching their team slog through two losses in Milwaukee, Dodger nation had already given up. The 50,708 fans who did show up made lots of noise, but it was too late to reverse the optics of a team abandoned.
Not surprisingly, there were several standing ovations given to injured star Shohei Ohtani, who the Dodgers considered benching before allowing him to talk his way into staying in the lineup. Also not surprisingly, Ohtani did little to reward his devotees, He hit a soft flyout, he was hit by a pitch, he drew a walk to help fuel the Dodgers sixth-inning rally and he singled after the Brewers had taken a three-run lead. No heroics. No hard hits. No chance.
The injury-plagued season of Ohtani will end with the Dodgers surely realizing that they should have taken control of his situation instead of empowering him to dictate the terms of his participation. They shouldn’t have let him keep playing hurt, but they did because they didn’t want to upset him, and it was the team that ended up paying the price.
All this negativity swirling around Dodger Stadium Wednesday night and, to think, the Dodgers were just moments from saving themselves.
Snell was brilliant for six innings, allowing just a leadoff home run to Jackson Chourio.
The Dodgers then set him up for a victory by taking advantage of a terrible decision by Brewers manager Pat Murphy.
Entering the sixth inning Brewers starter Robert Gasser had allowed just three singles in five shutout innings and had thrown just 72 pitches. Yet he was stunningly pulled by Murphy in favor of heavily used Abner Uribe.
Sure enough, Uribe threw eight balls in his next nine pitches to walk Teoscar Hernández and Kyle Tucker. After Max Muncy struck out, Ohtani drew a five-pitch walk in one of his best plate appearances this month.
Up stepped Smith, who entered the game with one hit in his previous 25 postseason plate appearances. But this night was going to be different, as it was hours after Will Smith’s wife, Cara, announced the birth of their third child.
Oh baby! Dad powered a two-run double off the left-center field fence to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead.
Snell took the mound in the seventh having retired the previous 14 Brewers and looking strong. But he had not pitched this deep all season. And the Chourio home run was the first he had allowed this season.
Should Roberts have pulled him? You decide. Snell opened the seventh by walking Andrew Vaughn and losing an 11-pitch duel to Bauers, who won the battle with a two-run homer. Two pitches later, Garrett Mitchell took Snell deep to almost exactly the same right-center field spot to give the Brewers a 4-2 lead they never lost.
Snell was gone, but it was too late and too much. The weary and distracted Dodgers never again showed much energy on a night when Dodger Stadium did its best.
There was Keith Williams Jr. hitting all the high notes — and even higher — during his usual incredible national anthem.
There was past Brewers playoff nemesis Chris Taylor chanting, “It’s time for Dodger baseball!.”
Late in the game, there was even unofficial Dodger emcee Ice Cube on the video board saying “We ain’t backing down to no one.”
The hardest part of all this is that Cube is wrong. The Milwaukee Brewers are a good team but make no mistake.
Blessed with an opportunity to step up and make history, the Dodgers backed down.
Soon to be knocked out.
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