The Left Center Field Home Run by Max Muncy ends a significant contest between the Boston Red Sox and the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Momentum may be on the L.A. Dodgers side now after trailing the Red Sox 2-0 and with a lot of Fans losing hope in the postseason progress for the Dodgers earlier in the week. Don’t count them out though, even though they’ve gotten some bumps and bruises; utilizing nearly their entire roster and surely very tired, the Dodgers are probably quite happy with the 3-2 win over the Red Sox, despite spending almost 8 hours (actually about 7 hours and 20 minutes – more than 2 hours longer than any other WS game) and 18 innings of play to do it.
A couple of records were set; a lot of tired bodies will be sitting in tubs of ice or hot water depending on the player’s normal tasklist, and the World Series is suddenly up for grabs again. Had this gone a different way, which it nearly did in the 13th, this would have surely been one of the final nails in the coffin for the Dodgers. It’s now just gotten very interesting. Eighteen pitchers were used, and 27 position players took the field in a game that itself was one of the most interesting in recent history (or even all of baseball history if you look at it purely from a statistical perspective).
It’s on the books as the longest World Series game in history. The teams will face each other less than fourteen hours from the time that game three ended. That’s a tough schedule by any standard. Playing past midnight in any setting is tough at that level of gameplay. The fact that game four is on its heels doesn’t help.
An impressive start for Walker Buehler as a Rookie pitcher for the Los Angeles Dodgers
Walker Buehler averaged nearly 98 miles per hour in his game pitching as a Dodgers rookie. Impressive.
Jackie Bradley Jr. homered in the 8th to tie it up. Pivotal, surely.
In extra innings, the 10th inning got interesting when the Bellinger throw nabbed Kinsler at home plate. A rocket from over 270 feet away and dead on, even though Bellinger alluded to the fact that he thought he had overthrown the ball at first in a postgame interview. He was wrong – but oh so right.
Some errors and an awkward play in the top of the 13th caused the Red Sox to move ahead 2-1 with the Eduardo Nunez dive into first base, which drew an error. it had flashes of Bill Buckner in 1986. Awkward.
Another error allowed Puig to “bat in” a runner (it was officially scored as an error, not an RBI) and tie it up again, with Kinsler throwing the ball away.
Muncy making it happen for the Dodgers
Muncy was on point in the 15th, nearly dropping a walk-off home run but ending the inning.
Muncy was due for some big work in this Dodgers must-win game, and the fans deserved it who stayed in the stadium; in the 18th he homered to close the game.
Cut by Oakland, considering going back to school, Muncy is now in the record books as a Dodger postseason hero, and it’s fitting that he nearly did it in the 15th, and then DID do it in the 18th. The historic game will not soon be forgotten. With the Dodgers down 10 games in May, who would have thought they’d even be in the postseason with any real intent, and then, to predict this? Unlikely.
Dodgers fans will now be able to stomach the series, where it was getting queasy for some coming off of the first two games. The Dodgers may have a big advantage with the rested starting pitcher, that Boston cannot match up squarely with, they simply don’t have the manpower after this game. Fans will just have to wait and see how big of a catalyst this game was for what seemed to be a Bo-Sox dominated series up until the extra innings play tonight.
