Dodgers keep season alive with dramatic World Series Game 6 win

TORONTO — The play that saved the Dodgers’ season started with a sound, and a feeling.

There was a faint crack of a broken bat. A ball that was momentarily lost in the lights. And a player with more postseason experience than anyone else in Dodgers history, making the right read, and the perfect play, at the most critical juncture of the entire year.

In the bottom of the ninth inning in Game 6 of the World Series on Friday night, the Dodgers were in danger of succumbing to disaster. The two-run lead they’d held for much of the evening was suddenly under threat.

The Toronto Blue Jays had the tying runs in scoring position with nobody out. The Dodgers had removed closer Roki Sasaki to call on potential Game 7 starter Tyler Glasnow in emergency relief. And inside a sold-out Rogers Centre, the hopes of an entire nation had turned the scene deafening.

On each pitch, however, the raucous crowd of 44,710 would briefly quiet down, and collectively hold its breath.

What happened next could be the defining moment of this World Series. At the very least, it helped seal the Dodgers’ 3-1 win and force a Game 7 back here on Saturday night.

Andrés Giménez hit a one-out line drive to left that was just a little too far off the end of his bat, cracking the lumber as the ball made impact. In the outfield, Kiké Hernández heard the sound, and let instinct take over as he ran to field it.

“For a split second, as Glasnow threw the ball, the crowd got quiet,” Hernández said afterward. “I was able to hear that the bat broke, so I just got a really good jump on the ball. And I came in.”

By breaking in toward the infield, Hernández was in perfect position to make the highlight reel play that followed: He caught the ball on the run, despite losing it in the lights ever so briefly; contorted his body to quickly throw to second, having peripherally “felt” baserunner Addison Barger drift too far off the bag; then delivered a one-hop strike that was cleanly picked off the dirt by teammate Miguel Rojas.

Double play. Game over. See you tomorrow night.

“Pretty epic ending there,” Rojas said.

“That was just wild,” Mookie Betts added.

“He caught it, threw him out, it was kind of crazy,” Glasnow echoed. “Like, there wasn’t enough time to think.”

Entering Friday night, the Dodgers had nothing but time to think about the position they had put themselves in, coming to Toronto facing elimination after lackluster performances in Games 4 and 5.

That latter contest had been one of the longest nights of the Dodgers’ season. And it grew even longer when their flight back to Canada was delayed. First, a faulty engine pump light in the cockpit forced the plane to return to the gate. Then, there was a long wait on the aircraft to be refueled after the initial gas truck broke down.

At one point, the players — who fly separately from the coaching staff and the rest of the organization’s traveling party — contemplated staying the night in Los Angeles, and trying to fly out again in the morning.

But by then, they had already stewed on their Game 5 clunker long enough.

They wanted to get to Toronto, prepare for an off-day workout Thursday, and begin the daunting task of trying to win consecutive games and preserve their repeat-title dreams.

“I gave our players an option to not work out today, because of the long series and 18 innings [in Game 3] and the travel and all that stuff,” manager Dave Roberts said the next afternoon. “And not one guy took the option. So that was pretty exciting for me. It just speaks to where these guys are at. … We’re gonna keep going, and keep fighting.”

Friday’s fight started with a shift of approach from the Dodgers’ recently scuffling and overly passive offense: Be aggressive, swing often, and don’t live in fear of striking out or making mistakes.

“When you want to do so good, you press, and you start being really careful about your move and about your pitch selection and all that,” Rojas said. “Yeah, we have a plan, and we got to execute the plan. But … I feel like all we have to do is free ourselves up when we go to the plate.”

It didn’t lead to pretty results early. In the first two innings, the Dodgers struck out five times in six straight outs, swung at 22 of Kevin Gausman’s first 32 pitches and whiffed on 12 while fouling off several fastballs he left in the zone.

Undeterred, the Dodgers kept hacking.

And in the top of the third, they finally came to life.

Tommy Edman and Will Smith ambushed Gausman for doubles, leading to the night’s opening run. Then, with the bases loaded later in the inning, Betts came up and snapped his three-for-24 slump to start the series.

After a strong day of work in batting practice Thursday, which Roberts said had Betts’ swing looking as good as it had at any point in this series, the shortstop squared up a fastball from Gausman and sent it screaming through the left side of the infield for a two-run single.

As he pulled into first base, Betts clapped toward the dugout, then slapped his hands against his thighs in an outburst of relief.

It marked the first time the Dodgers had scored more than two runs in an inning since Game 4 of the NL Championship Series, and it gave pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto an early lead to protect.

“It felt great to come through for the boys,” Betts said. “I was able to pull the ball. … Get some pace, some athletic swings.”

The rest of the night was tense.

The Dodgers wouldn’t score again against Gausman, who completed his six-inning start by retiring the final 10 batters he faced.

Yamamoto, coming off complete games in his previous two starts, gave one run back in the bottom of the third but also limited the damage in his own six-inning outing, finishing with a sixth and final strikeout that stranded two runners on base.

Roberts rolled the dice in the seventh, turning to rookie left-hander Justin Wrobleski to face the bottom of the Blue Jays’ order. He gave up a two-out double to Ernie Clement, but bounced back by striking out Giménez to retire the side — and let out a fired-up yell as he walked off the mound.

Then, as the Dodgers squandered a bases-loaded opportunity in the eighth, Sasaki got ready for a potential six-out save.

The first three did not come easy, with the right-hander — pitching for only the second time this series — having to wiggle out of a two-on jam. Then, in the ninth, he invited more danger, hitting Alejandro Kirk with a two-strike splitter before giving up a scorching line drive that Barger laced to left-center.

That play would be the first big break of the inning for the Dodgers. The ball was hit so hard, it got wedged in the base of the wall for an automatic double. Defensive replacement Justin Dean was closest to it in center field, but (along with Hernández) wisely threw his hands up before trying to field it. That helped ensure the umpires recognized the situation. There were still no outs in the inning, but the Blue Jays’ runners were forced to return to second and third.

“That’s probably the first time [in my life I’ve been the one] getting the ball” on such a play, Dean said afterward. “It’s just something you’re taught from an early age. Like, ‘Hey, if you see this, throw your hands up.’ … Literally just instincts.”

Two batters later, instincts took over again for Hernández. After Glasnow entered and got one quick out, he heard Giménez’s bat break on the line drive to left.

The sound helped Hernández come in on the ball immediately, but he did have to contend with the lights. Asked if he went into panic mode then, he answered with a laugh: “When the World Series is on the line, I was willing to get hit in the face.”

Eventually, of course, the ball came back into sight. And as soon as Hernández fielded it, he said he could subconsciously “feel” that his best play was to second — where Barger, who had broken toward third on contact in hopes the ball would drop, was frantically trying to scramble back.

“It’s just, the play’s in front of you, and you feel the play,” said Hernández, the veteran utilityman who passed Justin Turner earlier in this Fall Classic for the most postseason games played ever by a Dodger (Friday was his 91st with the team, and 102nd of his career).

“I guess maybe that comes with playing everywhere. But like, you don’t have to look to get an idea where the runners are. You feel it.”

The instinct was indeed correct. And with the help of Rojas’ clutch scoop, the out call was confirmed on a video review.

“One of the headiest baseball players I’ve ever been around,” Roberts said of Hernández.

“When he hit the ball,” Rojas added. “I thought there wasn’t a chance.”

Instead, the Dodgers poured out of the dugout as Betts leapt into Hernández‘s arms. The noise inside Rogers Centre vanished, and this time for more than a breath.

Now, the Dodgers will go to Game 7, when Ohtani is expected to start on the mound and Glasnow and Blake Snell could help in relief. They will live to see one final day, ensuring (this time, thankfully) that their return flight home was once again delayed.

“This is what we dream of,” Hernández said. “I think baseball deserves a Game 7,”

Even if it took a sound, and a feeling, to help make it happen.