So that was just about as good of a baseball game as you’re going to see. It certainly was about as long of a baseball game as you’re going to see.
World Series Game 3 took six hours and 39 minutes, lasted 18 innings and required 19 pitchers. It featured two Shohei Ohtani homers, four Ohtani extra-base hits and five Ohtani walks (four of them intentional).There were a whopping 37 runners left on base, a seemingly endless series of players thrown out on the bases, one Clayton Kershaw clutch out that could have doubled as a farewell, yet ANOTHER Freddie Freeman walk-off homer in the World Series, and presumably, a partridge in a pear tree.
The Dodgers won Game 3 of the World Series, but the way that game went … it felt like they won more. But we shall see. We do,after all,have to play again today,after a game that stretched into today on the East Coast and very nearly did on the West Coast,too. It’ll happen whether any of us are ready for it or not.
Throughout this postseason,I’ll be previewing the next day’s action,game by game. here are three storylines for today’s World Series Game 4.
Shohei is pitching! (And hitting)
What do you do as an encore after playing perhaps the greatest individual baseball game in the history of the sport, one that sent your team to the World Series? Well, if you’re Ohtani, you just keep making history. In Game 3, that meant setting postseason records for reaching base safely (nine times) and intentional walks, wiht the Blue Jays deciding they wanted absolutely no part of facing him in a high-leverage situation. (Also, don’t you love when I said “playing perhaps the greatest individual game in the history of the sport,” you were maybe not promptly sure wich game I was referring to?)
And now he gets to take the mound! I feel obliged to point out that a starting pitcher also hitting in a World Series game happened for nearly 120 years before the universal DH arrived, so it’s not that weird, but everything Ohtani does at this point feels unprecedented anyway. but the spectacle of what Ohtani will do tonight shouldn’t overshadow how vital it is indeed for him to be great both on the mound and as the leadoff man.
The Dodgers had to use a bunch of bullpen arms on Monday night — every single one they hav