METROPOLIS — Rounders is purely a pastime, radiance upon soil.
It consists of three dismissals and four stations and nine frames (occasionally 18) and a group of affluent athletes exerting themselves on your display. It is an enjoyable summertime experience, a frankfurter and a few chilled beverages. It’s an extravagant garment that you didn’t require but obtained nonetheless. And it is entirely, when juxtaposed with the verities of existence, utterly insignificant. It’s a delightful diversion. Neither the maneuvers nor the conclusions genuinely possess consequence.
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In simpler terms: It’s solely as paramount and as significant as it renders us to perceive.
And on Saturday, this paradisaical, merciless, flawlessly flawed sport dispatched each and all who engaged with Championship Series Game 7 through every sentiment the human condition encompasses. Devotees spanning from Saskatchewan to Southern California, from Toronto to Tokyo, were held spellbound by the contest’s wondrous, harrowing, compelling influence.
It was, by all measures, the finest rounders has to present.
“There’s an abundance to dissect,” Jays chief tactician John Schneider articulated subsequently.
Ultimately, the Los Angeles Dodgers arose triumphant, 5-4 in 11 frames. That’s the information provided in the statistical summary. In achieving this, they secured their successive Championship Series title, evolving into the foremost MLB establishment since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees to seize consecutive crowns. The club’s substantial financial resources have already ignited discourse and contention regarding the sport’s trajectory. These exchanges will solely escalate as the climate cools. Twenty-nine supporter factions are understandably displeased; something the jubilant Dodgers won’t be concerned about.
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“We have several additional victories awaiting us,” one Dodger jested postgame. “Minimum of one more until [the organization] suspends us.”
Assuming these Dodgers have indeed metamorphosed into a complete dynasty — and it undeniably feels that way — this was an empire legitimately attained. The Blue Jays contributed all they possessed and further. Furthermore, this is the intended manifestation of a malevolent sporting powerhouse: impregnable, unavoidable. Tormented supporter communities are merely playthings, character foils for the Los Angeles steamroller.
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The Dodgers ascended to the apex, yet again, due to input both substantial and modest, foreseeable and unanticipated, from every recess of their roster. Franchise receiver Will Smith, conceivably the premier offensive catcher of his era, poked the go-ahead round-tripper in supplementary frames. That instant was solely rendered feasible because Miguel Rojas, the team’s seasoned versatile infielder — a light-hitting glove expert whose singular circuit clout this annum versus a right-handed hurler materialized against a positional participant — pulverized a game-equaling colossal fly with one out in the ninth.
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“Connecting with a homer wasn’t on my list of expectations, in all honesty,” he conveyed to MLB Network post-match.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, designated as a warranted Championship Series MVP, furnished 2 2/3 miraculous frames on zero days’ repose roughly 24 hours after he hurled 96 deliveries in Game 6. Integrate his complete contest in Game 2, and it constituted an entirely unprecedented showing. Suitably, Yamamoto occupied the pitching mound for the ultimate out, a double-play grounder to superstar outfielder-turned-shortstop Mookie Betts that averted the tying runner from tallying from third.
In the aftermath, the Dodgers elevated Yamamoto aloft on their shoulders akin to a retiring secondary institution gridiron mentor at the culmination of a Disney motion picture. Subsequently, during the revelry, Yamamoto discovered Dodgers assistant pitching tutor Connor McGuiness and facetiously informed him, in fragmented English: “I no pitch tomorrow.”
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However, this contest held considerably greater magnitude than any singular contribution, any solitary individual, any isolated maneuver.
It represented a chaotic exhilarating journey, encompassing an ample supply of heart-palpitating junctures and alluring narrative threads for five sporting lifetimes. The 41-year-old Max Scherzer somehow amassed 13 dismissals. A benches-clearing squabble transpired. Five commencing hurlers surfaced in relief. Toronto nearly secured victory in the ninth on an extremely close play at the central station. They nearly secured victory anew one play later, when a pair of Dodgers outfielders collided but nonetheless executed the out.
Each spectator, whether involved or detached, desired to expel their stomach contents for four consecutive hours, and it was the pinnacle.
Perhaps most remarkably, on Saturday, the pastime of rounders even unearthed a means to humiliate Shohei Ohtani, an individual who has derided and openly disregarded its confines more frequently than any other participant in the contest’s lengthy, vibrant history. Commencing on three days’ respite, Ohtani the Hurler existed as a person operating on reserve energy. Utterly depleted. He who has accomplished everything simply lacked the ability. Ohtani endured his initial circuit through Toronto’s lineup via tenacity, shrewdness, and favorable circumstances, but matters veered decisively askew for him in the third frame.
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Bo Bichette — the evening’s initial hero-that-wasn’t — unleashed the forceful impact.
A Toronto Blue Jay since his adolescent years, the 27-year-old infielder forfeited the prior rounds of these playoffs as a result of a knee sprain. Throughout the Championship Series, Bichette fundamentally performed on one leg, enduring immense discomfort, despite the fact that, following Game 7, he conceded solely to “a slight” ache. Adrenaline and muscular memory propelled him onward, enabling an instant of sheer enchantment: a nation-erupting, three-run, 442-foot colossal shot to dead center.
The covering sprung from the joint. Bichette discharged his timber and sauntered calmly toward the initial station as jubilation held sway. Ohtani descended hands to knees in exhaustion, a titan vanquished. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Bichette’s close confidant and longtime comrade, awaited at home plate, arms extended wide for the embrace of all embraces. At the time, it registered as a befitting capstone to a magnificent October north of the border.
However, it was not destined to occur. The rounders deities, imaginative and merciless, possessed alternate schemes. As did the Dodgers, who clawed their pathway back into the fray. Max Muncy diminished the deficit to one in the eighth with a solo detonation off rookie Trey Yesavage. An inning later, with the Jays two dismissals from glory, Rojas astounded a nation with an inconceivable, game-equaling tater.
“I deprived everyone present here of a Championship Series ring,” Jays closer Jeff Hoffman, the unfortunate individual on the opposing side of Rojas’ iconic instant, articulated afterward. “It evokes a rather unpleasant sensation.”
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Hoffman wasn’t the singular Jay affected. Throughout the domicile locker room, adult males possessed tear-streaked visages. Shane Bieber, who relinquished Smith’s round-tripper, existed as a puddle. As did infielder Ernie Clement, who shattered the record for connections in a postseason in Game 7. Teammates raved regarding one another, waxed eloquently concerning how intimately connected everybody was, how they perceived it was inscribed within the celestial sphere — until, naturally, it wasn’t.
“I articulated gratitude,” a thankful John Schneider disclosed during his postgame press gathering. “I articulated gratitude approximately 10 instances. And that constituted the principal message. I am confident that I will address them all anew, but I articulated gratitude.”
Canada, assuredly, echoes the sentiment.
This Jays association reinvigorated the sport for a nation — no modest accomplishment. Via a magical postseason excursion, they transformed this franchise into a destination and an institution. No individual donning white on Saturday will derive considerable solace from that, at least not within the immediate afterglow. Nonetheless, in due course, the affliction will wane, and the goodwill will persist.
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At approximately 2 a.m. — the secondary one, attributable to daylight preservation — the Rogers Centre grounds maintenance personnel capitulated. By that juncture, both teams had since departed the structure.
Jays participants were at their residences or en route there, their reserves depleted, their eyes fatigued, their intellects excessively saturated to envision slumber. The jubilant Dodgers were plausibly aircraft-bound or already in flight, their champagne-drenched triumphant apparel in a laundry receptacle somewhere. The stadium remained inert. It concluded, somehow. Each photograph had been captured, the thank-yous exchanged, the embraces bestowed, the interviews conducted, the trophy platform dismantled and eradicated.
All that lingered was a state of disorder.
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And as an army of leaf-blowing apparatuses toiled through the bleachers, clearing the debris of 44,713, the blue-shirted grounds crew struggled to vacuum the avalanche of confetti that littered the infield soil. They’d previously tidied the shimmering strands of paper on the outfield turf, scooping the darn things pile by pile into sizable refuse containers.
Nonetheless, for some rationale, the gold and silver shrapnel behind the secondary station proved an overly formidable challenge. Thus, they merely abandoned it there, a thousand lustrous rectangles that could have been the possession of the Blue Jays but ultimately were the possession of the Dodgers.
Implying that when the sun ascended above a defeated metropolis, all that brilliance would remain extant. Radiance upon soil.
It exists merely as that. It exists as considerably more.
