2025 World Series, Game Four: Blue Jays 6, Dodgers 2

 

une balle cassante suspendu

In the third inning of Game Four of the 2025 World Series, not so many hours after the conclusion of an eighteen-inning all-time classic Game Three, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. of the Toronto Blue Jays hit a two-run home run off of Shohei Ohtani of the Los Angeles Dodgers in what early reports indicate is real life, somehow. (You might enjoy, if you have not already, this "All Calls" video [it is at best "Most Calls," but let's set that aside for now] of that particularly compelling sporting moment.) It put the Blue Jays on top, and the way Shane Bieber was dealing, and the Fluharty-to-Bassitt-to-Varland bullpen after him, that's very much where things stayed. We should note, probably, that while Shohei Ohtani is surely the most talented baseball player who has ever lived, he is still capable, mercifully, of at least reasonable approximations of human frailty and fallibility: not only did Ohanti give up that Guerrero rocket to left, but he went oh-for-three at the dish, too, striking out twice along the way (nobody reaches base thirteen times consecutively against the Toronto Blue Jays in a single World Series; nobody). Ohtani did pitch into the seventh, mind you, before being chased by an Ernie Clement double after a Daulton Varsho single to open that inning, but the Dodgers' bullpen did him no favours, allowing both of those runs to score, plus a couple more (Gimenenez single, Ty France pinch-hit RBI groundout, Vladdy intentional walk, and a Bo Bichette liner off the wall that could only be a single, given the shape of things). This was such a solid outing all around, from all involved, that it seemed inconceivable that these same Blue Jays had lost a six-hour, forty-nine-minute just before, but maybe it shouldn't have? "I slept like a baby," Vladdy answered when he was asked how he dealt with his emotions in the immediate aftermath of that wild game. "I was so tired." Andres Gimenez slept well, too, he told Hazel, because he knew Bieber was starting the next game. 

It's young Trey Yesavage who starts the next one—about fifteen minutes from now, in fact. We're down to a best-of-three to decide the World Series Champion, so each of these games is beyond enormous (in the baseball sense), but whatever happens tonight, it's remarkable, isn't it, that, one way or another, this 2025 season is going to end at the SkyDome? Isn't that a weird thing to actually be happening? It sure would be sweet to have to shots at that fourth and final win, though, so I really would prefer everybody do a really good job again tonight, please, guys, if you maybe could.

KS