All Ball: Dodgers: Thanks, We’ll Take It

by Paul Teetor    

Yaahh! The Dodgers won the World Series! Yaahh for the hometown team.

Let’s have a big parade and revel in how great our team is! 

And indeed, the Dodgers are great – they’re the deepest and best team in all of Major League Baseball. But All Ball’s journalistic keep-it-real mission statement compels me to point out something not quite so inspirational: The Yankees gave it to them.

Or at least the Yanks gave them game five – and by extension the World Series — in one of the biggest choke jobs ever seen in any sporting event.

For casual sports fans who don’t know exactly what a choke job is, it means to collapse under pressure, easy opportunities missed, and giving away a game or an entire series. Think the baller who misses a breakaway dunk with the game on the line, the tennis player who double faults on match point, or the football quarterback who throws an interception when his team is just yards away from the winning touchdown.

They’re all chokers.  And if they do it repeatedly, that becomes the conventional wisdom: Oh, him? He’s a choker.    

Playing under extreme pressure in sports can produce diamonds – see Freddie Freeman’s walk off grand slam in Game one — but it also can produce burst valves that manifest themselves as big mistakes at the worst possible time.

And the Yankees choked at the very worst possible time in game five: they had already cut the Dodgers’ series lead from three games to none to three games to one, were leading game five by a score of 5-0, and were poised to go back to LA for games 6 and 7 where all the pressure would have shifted to the Dodgers, who would now be facing the prospect of the worst collapse in World Series history.

Twenty-four times in the past, a team had fallen behind three games to none, and all 24 times the trailing team had failed to advance past a game five. So the Yanks were already on the verge of making history just by getting to a game six. 

And If the Yanks could win a game 6 and then force a game 7, every Dodgers swing of the bat, every Dodger pitch, and every decision by Manager Dave Roberts would come under the most intense scrutiny. And Roberts’ had a lot of scrutiny already.

But first they had to win game 5. Instead, they lost it with the most glaring choke job in World Series history.

The Yanks had built their five-run lead on Aaron Judge’s two run home run in the first inning and solo shots by Jazz Chisholm – what a great baseball name! – in the first inning and Giancarlo Stanton in the third.

That lead was protected in the fourth when Judge raced to the wall in left-center field to make a leaping catch of a Freddie Freeman drive before slamming into the wall. It was a great catch by a great player.

Kiki Hernandez led off the top of the fifth inning with a single to right-center field, breaking up Yankee pitcher Geritt Cole’s no hitter. Tommy Edman, the MVP of the National League Championship Series and pretty damn good in the World Series too, hit a routine fly ball to Judge in the outfield.

But Judge, who had just proved himself an outstanding fielder in the previous inning, peeked at the runner on second base just before he tried to catch the ball, causing him to drop the easy catch. It was the kind of awful mistake he might make once a season, but this was the worst possible time.

The error put two men on base with no outs for Will Smith, the Dodgers underrated catcher. He chopped a grounder to the shortstop Anthony Volpe, normally a great fielder. Volpe handled the ball cleanly, but missed an easy throw to third base – an error that loaded the bases with no outs.

Cole almost cleaned up the mess his fielders had made when he struck out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani, who was a shell of himself once he injured his shoulder while sliding into second base earlier in the series. Late in the series he became an automatic out, traumatizing Dodger fans spoiled by his superhuman feats all summer long.

But then the Yankees entered the twilight zone of baseball screw ups. It was bad enough that two great fielders had made costly errors, but when Mookie Betts hit a slow roller toward first base, Cole simply forgot the play that every pitcher practices every day from spring training forward: when the first baseman is drawn off the base to field a ball, the pitcher races over to first base to catch the throw from the first baseman and beat the hard charging runner to the base.

First baseman Anthony Rizzo fielded the ball cleanly, but when he looked up he had no one to throw it to. Cole had simply spaced out and stopped halfway between the mound and first base. A real nowhere man.

“Gerrit was kind of spent from almost working his way out of the jam,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said, “and he just didn’t react quick enough to get over.”

Or, more simply, he choked in the heat and pressure of the moment.

“I just knew I hit and had to run,” Betts said, “And I’m glad Cole didn’t cover first.”

So after two inexplicable physical errors and one huge mental error had cut the Yankees lead to 5-1, the Dodger floodgates opened. Freeman lashed a two-run single, Teoscar Hernandez crushed a two-run double, and suddenly it was tied 5-5 and the whole dynamic of the game – and the series — had changed in just ten minutes.

Subliminally, both teams knew it was over at that moment, and four innings later the Dodgers had a 7-6 win and had taken the World Series 4-1.

LA to New York: Thank you very much.             

Ryan Rakowski’s 1-yard keeper on the first possession in overtime proved to be the difference in Friday’s game against Mira Costa.

Mustangs: More OT heartbreak     

The Mira Costa High School football team battled Palos Verdes into overtime Friday in its Bay League finale, but lost a heartbreaker 20-13 when PV quarterback Ryan Rakowski scored on a 1-yard touchdown run on the opening possession of overtime. 

The Mustangs were unable to answer when given their chance in overtime, but that was not the only oh-so-close-to-a-win aspect of this classic game at PV High School.

Just before the overtime PV kicker Dylan Freebury made a 27-yard field goal as time expired in regulation to tie the game at 13. What would have been a 13-10 Mustang win was suddenly headed to overtime and an eventual loss.

The Sea Kings, who ended their regular season with a Bay League record of 3-2 and an overall record of 5-5, earned one of the Bay League’s three automatic playoff berths with the victory. Costa, whose record fell to 2-3 in the Bay League and 5-5 overall, was awarded an at-large playoff bid by the CIF Sunday afternoon and will play at La Habra next Friday.

Rakowski’s 1-yard keeper on the first possession of overtime proved to be the difference in the game when PV defensive back Evan Aguirre broke up a pass to the back of the end zone for Mira Costa receiver Luke Meeker on Costa’s last-chance fourth down play.

The key sequence in the game came with PV trailing 13-10 and needing to go 80 yards with one minute and 37 seconds remaining in the game.

Facing a fourth-and-8 on his own 23-yard line, Rakowski scrambled and found running back Andrew Habif for a 30-yard completion.

“I was trying to make a play,” Rakowski said. “It’s fourth-and-8, game’s on the line. I trust my guys and gave them a chance.”

Rakowski then ran for gains of 6 and 9 yards to get to the Mira Costa 32-yard line before connecting with Habif again to get to the five-yard line with a couple of seconds left.

That set the stage for the PV field goal that sent the game into overtime as regulation expired.         

Redondo Rolls Over South

The Redondo Union High School football team used a powerful running attack to roll right over South Friday night for a 49-20 win that lifted its league record to 4-1—good for second place in the Pioneer League – and 8-2 overall.

The Sea Hawks earned a playoff bid and will host Aquinas next Friday.

Redondo unveiled a deep rushing game with five different players scoring touchdowns on the ground. Christian Zeno led the way with 12 carries for 93 yards and two touchdowns.  Also scoring on the run were quarterback Niko London, Cadence Turner, Milo Youker and Lucien Iglesias with one TD each.

The only passing TD came from junior quarterback Cole Leinart to Bo Ausmus. 

Contact: teetor.paul@gmail.com