Six Isn’t Enough

This thoroughly excellent World Series will go seven games because it needs to go seven games. Not "needs to" in the wishful sense employed by my colleague Ray Ratto, the inveterate maximum-sports-wanter—who, by the grace of the blog gods will be in this chair to write the gamer—but needs to because six games has settled nothing. The Dodgers and Blue Jays bring out the best in each other, or barring that the most histrionic. They are well-matched teams, each with clear strengths and flaws, to be in turn maximized or minimized or exploited. Even in a low-scoring Game 6 which saw the Dodgers improbably protect a 3-1 lead in a wild ninth inning, 25 outs weren't enough to settle anything. Outs 26 and 27, which did, came in the blink of an eye and the beat of a heart, or, anyway, would have if one's rooting interests allowed for either.

With the tying runs in scoring position and one out, Andres Gimenez made solid inside-out contact on a pitch from Tyler Glasnow, the presumed Game 7 starter, but in to try to preserve a victory that felt like it was slipping away. Addison Barger at second was off on contact; he said he didn't realize Gimenez got quite so much of the barrel on it, and that he thought it was going to bloop in just over the shortstop, and that he knew he needed to at least advance to third so he might score on a sac fly. But the ball hung up, and Barger roamed a bit too far, and emotions were rent and reversed in an instant.

The whole game was like that, a series of delirious whiplashes, in kind if not degree. The story changed on a dime. At first it seemed like it might be a pitchers' duel redux, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto making Jays wave at his dancing splitter and Kevin Gausman slapping up zeroes of his own. Then it looked like a redemption angle for Mookie Betts, who in the third inning broke out of a brutal slump with a two-out, two-run single. Then it looked like it might prove a referendum on Dave Roberts's bullpen management, pulling Yamamoto, who was coming off two straight complete games and still had a moderate pitch count, after just six.

Roberts looked like a genius after Justin Wrobleski and closer locum tenens Roki Sasaki pitched into and out of trouble in the eighth and the ninth. Sasaki for a moment looked like he might be the story as he attempted to nail down a six-out save; in the ninth, Sasaki looked like he might be the story for flying apart at the seams. He hit Alejandro Kirk on an 0-2 pitch, and then surrendered a double to Barger that would likely have scored a run if not for the ball bouncing perfectly to settle and stick in the space underneath the outfield wall.

Justin Dean, fresh in the game for his defense, thrust up his hands in surrender, as did LF Kiké Hernández. Wise move on their parts. The Rulebook is pretty clear that a lodged baseball is any "which sticks in a fence or scoreboard" and entitles the batter and runners to two bases, and no more; the ease or difficulty of dislodging the ball doesn't come into play. Dean said he'd never been in that situation, but it had been firmly drilled into his head what to do.

Who knows how things turn out differently if not for that? But the Jays still had the tying run on second and no outs, and in came Glasnow, the next day's starter, because there was no tomorrow. He needed just three pitches, and suddenly tomorrow was back on the menu.

Tomorrow is tonight. It's all hands on deck. Shohei Ohtani, on three days' rest, will take the ball for the Dodgers, though likely more as an opener than a true workhorse. After that, who knows? We could even see more Glasnow, after such a short appearance Friday. For Toronto it'll be Max Scherzer, all 41 cranky years of him, and waiting in the wings could be the young Trey Yesavage, on two days' rest and in line for his throw day, but quite possibly getting those throws in in the highest-leverage situation baseball has. It's Game 7, the only way this could rightfully have ended, and it will settle the World Series if not necessarily which team is objectively the better. Don't look away for an instant.