MILWAUKEE — Yasiel Puig lifted his arms in triumph, then wiggled his fingers in an attempt to ignite a hostile crowd that had grown silent in the wake of his blast. His two-out, three-run home run in the sixth inning of Game 7 in this National League Championship Series had extended the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ lead to four, providing enough cushion for a 5-1 victory over the Milwaukee Brewers and another pennant.
The Dodgers — out of it in May, reeling in August, desperate throughout September — are heading back to the World Series, where the American League champion Boston Red Sox await. They’ll board a two-hour flight after their champagne celebration on Sunday morning, then play Game 1 of the World Series from Fenway Park on Tuesday, with first pitch scheduled for 8:09 p.m. ET.
Walker Buehler, only the fourth rookie in the past 30 years to start a Game 7, gave up only a Christian Yelich solo homer and struck out seven in 4⅔ innings. The Dodgers were jolted by a two-run homer from Cody Bellinger in the top of the second — moments after a bunt single from Manny Machado — then waited out Josh Hader for the next three innings.
When Jeremy Jeffress came on with one on and none out in the sixth, the Dodgers’ offense awoke again. Justin Turner singled, Bellinger beat out a potential inning-ending double play, then Puig extended his arms on a low-and-outside curveball, sending a low line drive into deep center field for the decisive blow. In the half-inning prior, Chris Taylor momentarily saved the game with an extraordinary catch near the left-field warning track, robbing Yelich of an extra-base hit that would have tied the game.
The Dodgers are the sixth team in baseball history to fall 10 games below .500 and reach the World Series in the same season, a feat last pulled off by the 2005 Houston Astros, according to research from the Elias Sports Bureau. Only two of the previous five won it all, the most recent of which was the 2003 Florida Marlins.
The Dodgers have not claimed a championship trophy in 30 years and are making a second straight trip to the World Series for the first time in 40 years.
Their road back was a bumpy one.
A loss to the Astros in Game 7 of last year’s World Series was followed by a conservative offseason, one motivated by the organization’s desire to dip under the luxury-tax threshold. It bled into a staggeringly slow start which saw the Dodgers fall all the way to 16-26 on May 16.
Corey Seager, their dynamic young shortstop, was lost for the year because of Tommy John surgery. Turner, their veteran leader, was on the shelf with a broken wrist. Kenley Jansen, their star closer, was off to a slow start. Clayton Kershaw, their Hall of Fame pitcher, was attacking hitters with a slower fastball.
But the Dodgers rebounded, winning 43 of their 63 games leading up to July 28 to jump back into the mix. A bullpen meltdown around the middle of August — triggered by Jansen’s irregular heartbeat — prompted a 3-9 stretch, but the Dodgers recovered by winning 11 of their next 15. They lost back-to-back games to the woeful Cincinnati Reds on Sept. 10 and 11, but they took three of four from the St. Louis Cardinals, then swept the Colorado Rockies and later won the last four games of their regular season, including a one-game tiebreaker on the first day of October.
The Dodgers overwhelmed the young Atlanta Braves in the NL Division Series, then outlasted a Brewers team that used creative and at times unprecedented methods to make up for deficiencies in its rotation.
“We never quit,” Jansen said as the NLCS was winding down. “We never tire of the situation, and we just go out there and compete. And I feel like that’s the thing that kind of makes us unique and special — we keep grinding and grinding and grinding. Nothing came easy for us this year.”
The Dodgers played a historically bad Game 1, committing four errors and two passed balls, but Turner’s late home run saved them in Game 2. They were lulled to a Game 3 loss, but prevailed in 13 innings in Game 4 and rode a dominant Kershaw in Game 5. They fell behind early and never recovered in Game 6, but they put the pressure on the Brewers early in Game 7 and held on.
Jansen got the Dodgers through the eighth inning, then handed the ball to Kershaw, who shut the Brewers down in the ninth inning to officially end their season. By throwing only one inning, Kershaw would still start opposite fellow lefty Chris Sale in Game 1 of the World Series.
Now the Dodgers will face a Red Sox team that outscored its opponents by a combined 250 runs during the regular season and cruised past the New York Yankees and Astros in the playoffs.
The Dodgers will now make the 20th World Series appearance in franchise history — tied with the Giants for second most in the majors — and will look to become the first NL team since the 1944 Cardinals to win it all one year after losing in the final round.
Source:ESPN
