WATCHING THE DODGERS SURVIVE — KIKE-MANIA! YAMAMOTO! — LEAVES US SPENT
Their pitchers thwarted the Padres, who didn’t score the final 24 innings, and to beat the Mets and reach a World Series, they’ll need Ohtani to awaken while the lineup turns into a Hernandez festival
The tension choked our muscles and bones. Nervous systems were immobilized. What knucklehead would throw a harmful object when glee was gathering through Dodger Stadium, as the Padres left shocking numbers of scoreless innings on the scoreboard, from 18 to 20 to 22 to 24 … as the game ended Friday night?
Who wasn’t astonished? Finally, in a week of hurly-burly postseason baseball that featured nothing predictable, a 2-0 score somehow would be enough. The Dodgers have advanced to the sport’s final four when their demise once seemed certain, and their fans were prepared for solitary confinement. Not only did they silence the mocking, mouthy losers and return them to San Diego, the best of the cluster was Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who actually performed for five innings like the highest-paid pitcher ever and screamed with celebrities in the final seconds.
And Dave Roberts, the manager who saved his team when many were ready to fire him? “Show me the money!” he yelled when the Fox Sports crew of former superstars offered to represent him in talks. “In the postseason, you’ve got to be ready to brawl. We were not going to be denied in this series. We’re ready for the next level. I am going to finish my cigar. I will have my Bordeaux. If we can’t enjoy wins, why do we do this?”
Never mind Shohei Ohtani, in words never before uttered. He rubbed Yamamoto on the head and remained insignificant in the batter’s box, for now, as the New York Mets ponder more “OMG” signage in the National League championship series. They will need more than Hawk Tuah, who used those words to describe sexual acts on the street, to throw out the first ball and help in this bicoastal mission. The sluggers who thrived are named Hernandez — Teoscar and Kike — one a massive offseason pickup and the other a clubhouse funnyman. The Padres sent three balls to the warning track and, with hell in their voices, ask how they let a masterful bullpen and a tentative rotation oust them from a World Series title they might never see.
The heroes? They found the seats of the outfield pavilion. The first one, Kike, is a character with a light green glove. Earlier this year, he agreed to an in-game interview and was miked up. The ball was hit to him at third base as Apple TV’s Dontrelle Willis asked a question, but Hernandez missed the grounder for an error. The broadcasters said nothing for half a minute until Enrique Jose Hernandez Gonzalez — the nickname is pronounced KEE-kay — decided to speak up.
“What was the previous question, before I made that error?” he said.
“I don’t want to ask it again, because I don’t want you to boot the ball again,” Willis joked. “I’ll take that E for you, big dog.”
Now we’re all laughing with him. After he made the final play at third base, throwing to Max Muncy, Hernandez was asked about his remarkable playoff performances when his regular seasons are, well, decent. He has 14 postseason home runs and 29 RBIs after his solo shot in the second inning. “I like it. I don’t know. I like it,” he said.
The announcer asked how he felt. “Are we live?” Hernandez said. Yes, he was told.
“The fact that we don’t give a f—,” he said, as millions listened to reality.
He’s an electrolyte. He doesn’t care. Maybe that’s how the Dodgers overcome the pressure, in southern California and throughout baseball, of winning just one Series in a pandemic since 1988. “Certain players want the big moment,” Roberts said. “Kike is one of the great current postseason players of our time.”
What’s next? Kike posing as Ron Burgundy and yelling slurs at San Diego? “We didn’t come here to win the NL West. We came to win the World Series,” he said. “Everybody was picking them to win because we have no pitching, we can’t hit with runners in scoring position, this and that. We’re the ones popping bottles now.”
Why is he the star? Who would play Kike in a ballpark audience that included Brad Pitt, Jason Bateman and Bryan Cranston? “You need the right mindset, and the right mentality, to come in here and just find a way to dominate the day,” Hernandez said. “Whatever it is, you’ve got to find it so that when the moment shows up, when the big moment shows up, you don’t let the moment get too big. You feel like you’re bigger than the moment.”
Wait, isn’t Ohtani supposed to say such things? Said closer Blake Treinen, recalling when the team was down 2-1 in the series: “Kike fired off a text to the boys. We still can get by with our backs to the wall.”
Once Yamamoto plowed through the opening innings with a splitter and a slider, Padres manager Mike Shildt appeared and said, “He’s better than we’ve seen him in the past.” For $325 million, he allowed batters this season to hit .296 and posted a 6.00 ERA in the first inning. Roberts swore by him. He was right. The relievers carried on and left the insurance policy for the other Hernandez, Teoscar, who has been vital as the world focused on Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman.
“We were joking in the clubhouse. It’s a good day to have the last name Hernandez. You never know where we’re getting it from,” Betts said. “There are no soft spots. It wasn’t even us today. It was the pitchers. We fight, we fight, we keep going. All season, everybody says the Dodgers are winning the World Series, the Dodgers are winning the World Series. And we get to this series, and all of a sudden we’re the underdog.”
They’ll be favored slightly against the Mets, a joyful product with Grimace the purple McDonald’s creature as the mascot. Francisco Lindor is hot, when Ohtani is not. Pete Alonso is hot, when Betts comes and goes. Watch those trends change. Ohtani will not remain hush as dueling megamarkets await. Yet, so many pitchers are ravaged. Who pitches? Bullpens forever?
For now, let’s exhale.
“I think stunning is appropriate,” Shildt said.
“I want to say bad timing,” Fernando Tatis Jr. said. “Obviously, you know, they pitch good. They pitch good, simple as that.”
And the winning front office, after losing the last two Division Series to the Padres and Arizona? “We’d been in a little bit of a DS funk,” said Andrew Friedman, president of baseball operations. “For the guys that had been there, they could feel that after we got down 2-1. The new guys wanted no part of that.”
Nor did Roberts. “Eight more wins!” he shouted.
Sunday night is too soon for Game 1.
Eight more?
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.