This time they didn’t drown.
This time they were the ones who suffocated.
On a glorious night in the midst of a turbulent sea of joyful blue, the Dodgers They wrapped their worn arms around the San Diego Padres on Friday and crushed those brown jerseys like they were an empty paper bag, finally exhaling with redemption, relief and a coveted spot just four wins away from the World Series.
Winner takes all Game 5 of the National League Division SeriesThe Dodgers took all the criticism from the last two postseason collapses and buried it under a barrage of fastballs and long balls in a near-perfect game. 2-0 victory about the Padres in an unabashedly cheerful Dodger Stadium.
Buried were the sins of his predecessors, the failures of past seasons, the grind of postseason humiliation.
Read more: Dodgers overcome recent postseason frustrations in NLDS Game 5 win over Padres
Buried, from here to Chula Vista.
It was the first postseason series-clinching victory in Chavez Ravine with fans in attendance in 11 years and, man, was it a spectacle.
When Kike Hernandez he threw the final ground ball to Max Muncy the roofs of the pavilion were unhinged, 50,000 fans jumping and roaring in unison, Blake Treinen standing in the middle of it all on the mound, raising both hands toward the sky as if in shock, the entire Dodger team surrounding him, hugging him and jumping up and down as if shouting two years of pain in October.
“I Love LA” has rarely sounded louder, lasted as long, or been so full of hope.
Later, in a champagne-filled Dodger clubhouse, Miguel Rojas raised a shot glass and shouted to the group that had shut out the Padres for the final 13 innings: “Hello, bullpen! This photo is for your boys!
David Roberts He then urged his team to keep pushing and the coach shouted: “Eight more wins! And I’m telling you right now, guys, I’ve never believed in a group of men as much as I believe in you. And most importantly, each of you believed in each other.”
The Dodgers now welcome the upstart New York Mets in the National League Championship that begins here on Sunday, a seven-game contest in which the winner advances to the World Series.
It will feel anticlimactic, and rightly so. The Dodgers should dominate. The outmanned Mets have advanced this postseason thanks to small miracles. The top Dodgers are all muscle.
They proved it once and for all on Friday night against a Padres team that was probably their biggest obstacle in their quest for their first full-season World Series championship in 36 years.
This first series was the difficult one. This was the one the Dodgers really needed. They entered the tense evening amid memories of first-round exits in the past two postseasons, including a humiliation in 2022 by these Padres.
Could they free themselves from the demons of their story? Could they erase the memories of their failures?
Could they ever.
“We didn’t come here to win the NL West; We came to win the World Series…we have to do that or we go home and think about it all offseason and this team comes to spring training thinking about the failures of years past, blah blah blah ”. Hernandez said.
In fact, they avoided the blah blah blah.
They did it with woof, woof, woof.
It began with the surprise starter giving a stunning performance, Yoshinobu Yamamoto finally earning part of his record-breaking $325 million contract by shutting out the Padres on two hits in five innings.
It continued with the Dodgers’ own Mr. October, Hernandez, a prolific October hitter who sent Yu Darvish’s first pitch into the left field stands in the second inning. Hernandez has a staggering 14 home runs and 29 RBIs in 188 postseason at-bats, including three home runs against the Chicago Cubs in Game 5 of the 2017 National League Championship Series.
“You’ve got to have the right mentality, the right mentality, to come here and just find a way to dominate the day,” he said, noting that he envisions success in the postseason. “You just find a way, whatever it is that you have to find, so that when the time comes, when the big moment comes and you step up or whatever, you don’t let the moment When you grow too big, you feel that You are bigger than the moment and there is no moment that becomes too big for you.”
His moment was followed five innings later by a similar throw into the left-field stands by Teoscar Hernandez, the underrated offseason steal of Andrew Friedman, the MVP not named Ohtani.
The game ended with the Dodgers bullpen that had been so brilliant in a do-or-die victory in Game 4, this time four relievers holding the Padres hitless over the final four innings. The Padres finished the series without scoring a run in the final 24 innings and the Dodgers pitched by retiring the final 19 batters.
The crowd roared with each pitch and kept their water bottles to themselves, a worthy companion for a team flirting with greatness.
“If this crowd has something, it is hunger,” said Kiké Hernández. “They want a championship. They want another one. The one we had a couple of years ago, the city could not celebrate due to obvious circumstances. “We know how much they want it… we just know that our fans have our back and we are ready to rock with them.”
They shook, the Fathers moved, one October chapter ended, two more remain, a once feared journey continues to dance.
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This story originally appeared on Los Angeles Times.