Dodgers Recap: Game Three Marathon Ends with Freddie Walk-off Blast

LOS ANGELES — Dodger Stadium started loud and finished delirious, and somewhere in between the game stretched into a late-night epic. It took 18 innings and 6 hours, 39 minutes, but the Dodgers outlasted the Blue Jays, 6–5, to grab a 2–1 edge in the World Series. Freddie Freeman supplied the final swing, a towering drive to straightaway center that ended the longest game (by innings) in Fall Classic history, tying 2018’s Game 3 at Chavez Ravine. The scene looked familiar, yet the mood felt different—relief more than eruption—because so many hands had kept the night alive.

Dave Roberts more or less predicted the shape of it in real time. During a midgame TV hit he said, “Ultimately, it’s gonna be a battle of the bullpens tonight.” Hours later he upgraded the description to something larger: “One of the greatest World Series games of all time.” Freeman didn’t disagree, but he nudged the spotlight elsewhere. “It took every single guy tonight,” he said. “I think that just shows you who we are as a group.”

Start with Shohei Ohtani, who turned a postseason game into a personal stat museum. He doubled in the first, ripped a solo shot in the third, sliced an RBI double in the fifth, and then launched a seventh-inning blast that tied it 5–5 and sent the night on its marathon path. By the end he had reached base nine times—a postseason record—matched the World Series mark with four extra-base hits, and drew four intentional walks in extras. “What I accomplished today is in the context of this game,” Ohtani said through an interpreter. “What matters the most is we flip the page and play the next game.”

Toronto reached the same conclusion Ohtani’s numbers suggested. “After that,” manager John Schneider said of the seventh-inning homer, “you just kind of take the bat out of his hands.” They did, walking him again and again. Roberts called it “the ultimate sign of respect.”

Of course, none of it lands without the bullpen doing a week’s work in one night. The Dodgers used ten pitchers and strung together nine consecutive scoreless innings in extras. Roki Sasaki took the ball in the eighth and knifed out of trouble. Emmet Sheehan bridged the tenth and eleventh. In the twelfth, with the bases loaded and two outs, Clayton Kershaw jogged in to the loudest murmur imaginable—anticipation, dread, all of it. One grounder later, Tommy Edman glove-flipped to first and Kershaw walked off to a fist pump as his wife, Ellen, wiped away tears. “It’s a lot of fun to have success when you know you’re close [to the end],” Kershaw said. “And I got four more times to try to get ready [to pitch in this series]. That’s a good feeling too.” He also tipped his cap to the group: “Sometimes that’s what you need to win a World Series, and we’ve got a lot of guys in here willing to sacrifice to do that.”

Then came Will Klein—the last reliever standing and, by the end, the center of the clubhouse scrum. Activated only for this round, he took the 15th and refused to give the ball back, grinding through four scoreless innings and 72 pitches, his longest outing as a pro. He allowed one hit and, in the 18th, wriggled out of a walk-walk-wild-pitch mess by dropping a 3-2 curveball for strike three. “I never dreamed that anything like this would happen,” Klein said, grinning through exhaustion. Max Muncy laughed about the postgame pile-on: you don’t often see a team celebrate the pitcher after a walk-off homer, but that’s where everyone ran.

The game contained a lifetime of side stories. Tyler Glasnow started and endured a four-run fourth that flipped an early 2–0 Dodgers lead built on Teoscar Hernández’s no-doubt blast and Ohtani’s first homer. An Edman error helped open the door; Alejandro Kirk kicked it in with a three-run shot to center. Toronto tacked on another for 4–2. L.A. answered: Ohtani’s opposite-field double chased Max Scherzer, Freddie knotted it with a clean single, and the ballpark reset to a dead heat.

Seventh-inning weirdness briefly pushed Toronto back ahead. Bo Bichette’s slicer down the right-field line kicked off the side wall near the ball boy’s station and caromed away long enough for Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to score from first. Seconds later, Ohtani erased it with that second home run, a fastball he hammered to the pavilion. From there: ten innings of missed chances, defensive gems, and stranded ducks. The Jays left 19 on base, a World Series record; the teams combined to leave 37. There wasn’t a double play all night. There were, however, six runners cut down on the bases, including a perfect right-field to second-base to plate relay from Hernández to Edman to Will Smith that snuffed Toronto’s go-ahead bid in the 10th.

Freeman’s ending distilled everything that came before. Brendon Little worked him to a full count to begin the bottom of the 18th. With Yoshinobu Yamamoto stretching in the bullpen—he had volunteered to cover innings two days after his complete game—Freeman got a sinker that didn’t sink and sent it over the wall in center. Arms in the air, slow trot, bedlam. “To have it happen again a year later, to hit another walk-off, it’s kind of amazing, crazy,” Freeman said. “I’m just glad we won and we’re up 2–1.”

If you’re tallying the night by the numbers: 19 pitchers, 25 position players, 609 pitches, 153 plate appearances, and one very long, very strange classic. If you’re judging it by feel: a team win with a dozen authors and one signature. Roberts liked the history of it; the players mostly liked that it was over. Ohtani, who will start Game 4, kept the perspective even after a once-in-a-century box score. “Flip the page,” he said. That was the theme inside a clubhouse where the loudest cheers found Klein, the most tired legs belonged to the guy with nine times on base, and the last word came off Freeman’s bat.

Tuesday brings Game 4 at Dodger Stadium with Ohtani facing Shane Bieber. That’s the tomorrow this group kept talking about while they were still living a game that refused to end. For one unforgettable night, the Dodgers did just enough, again and again, until there was nothing left to do except send everyone home happy.

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