2025 World Series, Game Seven: Dodgers 5, Blue Jays 4 (F/11)

 

nearly enough

Of all the teams that have ever lost the World Series, none have come closer to winning it than my favourite baseball team, the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays. We can say this, confidently, without even taking into account the shattered-bat Alejandro Kirk double-play grounder (off of a zero-days-rest Yoshinobu Yamamoto splitter) right to Mookie Betts that left Vladimir Guerrero Jr., who had ripped a double to left field to open the home half of the eleventh inning, stranded as the tying run at third base to end the game, the series, and the season all at once. We needn't reflect in any great detail, either, upon Will Smith's home run in the top of that same inning against the stalwart Shane Bieber, nor yet the top-of-the-ninth, game-tying Miguel Rojas home run against Jeff Hoffman, who had pitched a stronger October than anyone could have hoped for, for this to be true. All we need to attend to, to clearly demonstrate this to have been the closest anyone has ever come, or could possibly come, to winning a World Series without in fact winning it, is a bottom of the ninth that first saw catcher Will Smith's foot lightly lift off of, and then just as surely barely return to, home plate just ahead of a sliding Isiah Kiner-Falefa, and then, a batter later, bear witness to defensive-replacement centre-fielder Andy Pages' headlong run both over and through Kiké Hernandez at the warning track to snag, and somehow hold onto, an Ernie Clement drive that, off the bat—and for a little while after, too, as Kiké desperately twisted and turned, dashing back helplessly, if not hopelessly—seemed all but certain to walk it off, and place Ernie Clement's name close enough alongside Joe Carter's for there to have been little to choose between them. Had either of those moments gone even the slightest bit differently, think what that would have made of Bo Bichette's towering three-run home run to the deepest part of the ballpark off of short-rest Shohei Ohtani a single pitch after Vladdy had been intentionally walked in the third; or of the incredible performance turned in by Max Scherzer, who shook off a miserable season to deliver another October befitting his inner-circle Hall-of-Fame career; or of Varland and Bassitt and young Trey Yesavage coming on in fine relief; or of the incredible defensive plays turned in by Varsho in centre and Vladdy (again and again) at first; or even of Ernie Clement (who now holds the record for the most hits in any postseason ever, at thirty, with Vladdy just behind at twenty-nine) and Andres Gimenez, at the bottom of the order, scraping out a fourth run late enough in the ballgame to feel like it might be just enough. All of those moments happened—they were real, and they mattered—but of course figure much differently now, given what followed, set against what might have.

As things unraveled—first in slow motion, then all at once, as is so often the case—there were moments in the game that were enormously difficult to watch. But, at the same time, I don't want to overstate that aspect of things. It took me about half an hour, I can see now, as I look at the messages I sent to some of the friends I share baseball with, to shift from the obvious and unavoidable sadness of it all to a feeling of genuine gratitude for the season. In fact, I used that exact language of sadness and gratitude; that is how hard I go in the chat. "This was my favourite baseball team ever, and they lost in extras in the best world series I have ever seen," I seem to have continued a moment later, at 1:54AM (all times Atlantic). "Will that 9th, and to a lesser extent that 11th, haunt me forever? Sure, a little!" When talk understandably turned to Hoffman's ninth, I offered only that "he was fantastic all October," and that I had no appetite for pinning it on him, even if that is precisely what he himself did, I would learn a little later, as he spoke in sombre tones to the press (I'd expect nothing less of him, honestly, but it's not how I feel, and I don't think it's how his teammates feel, either). In fact, here's the rest of what I posted (just as the autumn time change turned 2AM back into 1AM) to give you a sense of how raw I felt about things in the immediate aftermath, which you will see is not in actuality all that raw, I don't think, given the circumstances: 

"the bats had every opportunity in the 9th and it just didn't happen

if you want a single moment, imo it is IKF's lack of a secondary lead off third on the Varsho grounder

if he's even close to a normal amount down the line, I think that play goes differently

but at the same time Varsho is a guy who gets the ball in the air a tonne, so what are you gonna do   

Will we ever get closer during Vladdy's fourteen remaining years with the team? Probably not!

On the other hand, if we won this year, what purpose would Vladdy even have for the rest of his many playing days? It's good to have goals to work towards.

Let's keep trying to achieve them together, Vladdy."

My friends, as you have no doubt already surmised, are enormously patient people. But the morning after, I don't even feel right to have been as passingly hard on Kiner-Falefa as I was last night. Did we not see innings cut short earlier this selfsame series by liners hit right at guys, and guys subsequently doubled off of bases they hadn't been leading especially far off of? It happens! It's real! Is Daulton Varsho not a left-handed batter, which clears a throwing lane for the excellent Will Smith to fire a back-pick attempt to Max Muncy, playing reasonably close to the bag at third, should IKF be caught dangling? Kiner-Falefa was not on the roster, and was not put into the game, because he is any kind of burner with high-level baserunning acumen; rather, he was on the roster, and put into the game, because he can play a solid second base, and run better than this still-injured version of Bo Bichette who could only, for instance, go station-to-station in an early-inning rally that ended up scoreless this very same game. (It's incredible that Bo played at all, let alone hit as he did, but he simply could not run in his current condition.) If Miggy Rojas had not made an excellent throw (while falling!) after fielding a tough top-spin hop, or had Will Smith's foot lifted off the plate for a fraction of a second longer before returning atop it, nobody would have any interest in IKF's secondary lead, or would have anything to say about it at all; they'd instead be talking about how sharply he scampered home from third to win the World Series on a ball that never left the infield. But so it goes.

In the clubhouse after the game, there were some enormously poignant moments. I've already mentioned Jeff Hoffman's self-recriminations, which were hard to hear. A lot of attention is understandably being paid to Ernie Clement, whose heart is never far from his sleeve: "All I care about is just hanging with these guys for another couple hours." Vladdy, now one of the greatest October performers in the history of baseball, stood fully in his station, thanking the fans, apologizing to the city, but speaking almost exclusively about how proud he was of everybody. A reporter asked a question about seeing Vladdy comforting his crying daughter, and wondering, who will comfort him? "It's a game, it's a game. We lost a game," he said through his translator. "God will help my daughter, and myself." Shane Bieber was extremely grateful to have been a part of everything; Bo Bichette, taciturn as ever, said it was a great group that achieved some pretty cool things, and that he was proud of the guys (hey me too, Bo; me too). Of all the interviews I've seen, it was Chris Bassitt's that really got me, though. It's always been clear that he's an intense, emotional guy, but this was really something. "You can try to replicate this," he said in response to a question about next year. "But it's hard to replicate true love." I didn't actually see or hear Max Scherzer speak, and it's probably just as well, given what I've read of what he had to say. I don't think I'd have done too well with it. "I'm forty-one years old," Scherzer is reported to have said, wiping tears from his eyes. "I never thought I could love baseball this much."

KS

2025 World Series, Game Six: Dodgers 3, Blue Jays 1

 

oh no

When potential Game Seven starter Taylor Glasnow, of all people, came out of the Dodgers' bullpen in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game Six, with runners on second and third and nobody out in a 3-1 game, Ernie Clement had a chance to win the World Series with a single swing of the bat. It had taken a moment for the madness of Addison Barger's double-that-got-stuck-in-the-wall to settle, but as soon as it did, the full weight and potential of Ernie's at bat came into focus. For the third inning in a row in this closely contested, thoroughly well-pitched game, the Blue Jays had two runners on, but this time with nobody out. You look ahead only slightly, and think: even if neither Ernie Clement, who has been hitting everything all month, nor Andres Gimenez, whose nearly every hit this postseason has produced a run, manage to make things happen here, we'll still get to the top of the order, and George Springer will come to the plate as the potential winning run (the potential World Series winning run). The three-run, World-Series-winning homer is asking an awful lot, obviously, but consider, too, that were Ernie able to so much as dunk a little chip-shot single into the outfield, it's probably a tie game (Barger, though no burner, but runs well enough). But Ernie, swinging on the first pitch as he so often does to such great success, popped out to Freddie Freeman. One down. 

And so it was Andres Gimenez, whose cool and calm professionalism all admire, with 2017 World Series MVP George Springer on deck behind him. This still all felt pretty good! But two pitches later, Gimenez popped out to shallow left, and Kiké Hernandez doubled Barger off at second, with ancient gloveman Miggy Rojas heroically digging the ball out of the dirt on a wicked hop before Barger—who, in his bottom-of-the-ninth eagerness, had taken a step or two too many towards third—could scamper back. The gross improbability of this finish was made all the grosser by an unusually compelling Kiké Hernandez postgame interview (and Kiké Hernandez is, to me, already a compelling guy generally), in which he noted that he was playing even a little shallower than he had been instructed, and that he'd totally lost the ball in the lights, but had dashed in upon hearing Gimenez's bat break (in real time, I had neither heard it break, nor did I see it do so, at first). It was an extraordinary read by a player who has long been extraordinary in the postseason, for whatever reasons, and the adeptness of Miguel Rojas' dig at second really can't be overstated—how many times does Rojas scoop that out of ten? I say in all appreciation of his fielding acumen that I don't know that it would be most. It was not lost on me that, on this team of future Hall-of-Famers, with hundreds and hundreds of millions of dollars in salary (hey: get it while you here, boy), it was Kiké and Miggy Rojas who made the deeply improbable play that keep the Dodgers season going at least one more day; this turn of events, as so much of what happened in Game Six, felt like baseball in its truest expression. Addison Barger, for his part, as he himself noted after the game, made a bad read. Simple as that. He was not alone in it: Joe Davis, the fine Fox broadcaster, seemed to think the ball was going to drop in (off the bat, I thought so too, and not merely out of hope), whereas Dan Shulman's voice turned towards dread pretty quickly (perhaps he had noted Kiké's unusually shallow positioning?). You may recall that in Game Seven of the Blue Jays ALCS win over the Seattle Mariners, the one George Springer turned around with his three-run homer in the bottom of the seventh, it was Cal Raleigh left standing in the on-deck circle as Jeff Hoffman struck out the side in the ninth. As Game Six of the World Series ended last night, it was George Springer standing with the bat on his shoulder. So it goes.  

Lest the whole game shrink to that one wild inning, let's remember that the Blue Jays' pitchers retired the Dodgers in order in seven of the game's nine frames. That's right: seven three-up, three-down innings. Kevin Gausman struck out the side to open the game to the cheers of maybe the loudest first-inning SkyDome crowd I have ever heard, and had the splitter dancing all night. The three-run third on big hits from Will Smith and, at long last, Mookie Betts was, of course, the ultimately insurmountable problem, but three runs on three hits and two walks, striking out eight batters in six complete innings, you'll take that from your World Series Game Six starter against the Los Angeles Dodgers for sure. And the Blue Jays again had their chances against this peak version of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, but two double plays in the early innings ended any real threats beyond Springer knocking home Barger's double in the home half of the third. The Blue Jays never led this game, not for a single moment, which is what makes the feeling at the end of the game so strange: we never led, never even seemed likely to lead, but kept it close enough that we brought two batters to the plate in the bottom of the ninth with a chance to win the World Series on the next pitch. But then we didn't.   

This was a tough one, for sure, and though I am not a person especially given to gloom after baseball games, I did sit for a good while afterwards with the feeling that we may very well have missed the best chance we're going to have to win this thing, even if that chance came in a game we were never, in fact, winning. I spent a little time last night saying goodbye to the season. But of course, at this point, goodbye is really the only thing that remains to be said to this, the most wonderful baseball season I have known, or feel likely to ever know, in that it ends tonight (or early tomorrow), regardless of how this final game plays out. There can't be any more baseball. It'll be Max Scherzer, of all people, on the mound for the Blue Jays, followed, of course, by everybody (Yesavage up next? Bieber?). While there remains some question as to how the Dodgers will arrange their pitching, the alignment that makes the most sense to me (for what that's worth!) is Shohei Ohtani as the opener, to keep his bat in the lineup when Tyler Glasnow comes in to pitch afterwards. If anyone but Ohtani, Glasnow, and Sasaki touches the ball for the Dodgers, I would be very surprised (unless, I suppose, it were Yamamoto, on no-days rest; I think that would leave me surprised, but not very surprised, given all that we've seen). 

Taking the broad view, this has already been an all-time classic World Series, one that in a sense deserves a Game Seven. And so, as baseball fans, we should be grateful that that's what we're getting. It's true, too, that there is no one who would not, at the start of any given baseball season, eagerly accept the chance to see their team play in Game Seven of the World Series that October (or indeed November, as we have it now). All of these things are exceedingly the case. But, at the same time, I really can't tell you how much I wish this was already in the bag! In this, I am a very small and narrow-minded partisan. And I will live within that smallness for at least this last day, hoping for a truly lopsided, Game-One-style, endless-dingers, Blue Jays trouncing of these excellent Los Angeles Dodgers, though I hold no real animosity towards their very likeable players, their amiable manager Doc Roberts, or the seemingly agreeable fans that gather in such multitudes at their beautiful ballpark. Do I anticipate such a drubbing? Or even, necessarily, a Blue Jays win? Oh by no means! I am actually feeling unaccountably resigned and fatalistic! But all the same, I'll be here, enjoying the snacks that I've already arranged (and that have, in kindness, been arranged for me), amidst this last game of the season of my favourite baseball team ever, the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays. "Okay, Blue Jays," they will sing at tonight's seventh-inning stretch, as at so many before, but for the first time—the only time it'll ever happen, you'd have to think— at the seventh-inning stretch of the seventh game of the World Series. "Let's play ball." 

KS