Dodgers recall World Series Game 7 ahead of Toronto return

Five months later, the disbelief remains.

From the Dodgers’ World Series victory. In the way the short stories unfolded. About how close they came to defeat, just to get the championship.

In Los Angeles, the famous Game 7 is now the stuff of legend.

In Toronto, it’s a nightmare for the Blue Jays, who welcome the Dodgers back to Canada for a World Series rematch this week.

For everyone involved, the details are still new. Even with the start of the new season, the feelings still resonate.

“I got to the brink, and I found a way to get over it,” veteran third baseman Max Muncy said. “For me, that’s probably something I look at more than anything else. We were really tested… (and) we succeeded in the moments where it mattered.”

All of which, entering Monday’s series opener at Rogers Center, raised a lingering question.

Was there a moment during Game 7 when the Dodgers started to doubt? They stopped for a moment in the chaos, looked at the difficult circumstances they were facing, and thought: Man, we’re really going to lose this game.

Last week, the California Post asked Dodgers players this exact query. Most of them, of course, said no. Some, perhaps more frankly, admitted yes. But they all remained amazed by the scale of their accomplishments — staring down certain defeat, and responding with one of baseball’s most memorable victories.

Optimists

Of the 16 players from last year’s World Series team surveyed by the California Post, the majority (11 of them, to be exact) insisted they had no such apprehension at all.

For some, it was just the battle-tested confidence in their team.

“I don’t know if it was just the experience we had, or the atmosphere we actually played in,” Muncy said. “But that was a feeling that resonated in the dugout. It was like, ‘We’ve got our work cut out for us.’ But we can still get this thing done.”

“Our dugout was very quiet and we felt that we would definitely come back and at least get an equalizer,” Teoscar Hernandez added.

Others were so focused on the pitch that they didn’t allow their minds to wander.

“I think when you’re playing the game, you’re so locked in that every bit of your attention is focused on, ‘Okay, how are we going to come back and win?’” Tommy Edman said.

Quique Hernandez felt similarly, especially while struggling with an elbow injury that later required surgery: “To be honest, I was trying to live in the moment because I was in so much pain. I was just trying to survive.”

That’s not to say the Optimists weren’t worried, especially after Bo Bichette’s stunning home-field blast in the bottom of the third inning gave the Blue Jays an early three-run lead.

“When Bichette hit a three-run homer and the roof blew off, you were sitting there saying, ‘This is going to be tough,’” Muncy said.

Kiki Hernandez: “I said to myself: We lost 3-0. It will be an uphill battle.”

Tyler Glasnow: “I didn’t think we were going to lose. But I was like, ‘Ah.’ I had a weird feeling in my stomach.”

However, throughout the rest of the night, hope was alive and well as the Dodgers embarked on their comeback.

“I didn’t really know how we were going to do it,” Justin Wrobleski said. “But, I don’t know, I had a feeling.”

So did Blake Snell, who put it more clearly looking back: “I thought we were going to win all the time.”

Realists

On the other hand, the five players who admitted to moments of doubt indicated that they never surrendered to certain defeat.

It’s just that, in a game with so many punches and plot twists, it was natural for some dark thoughts to creep in.

“I think everyone in the world thought we were (going to lose), so I’d be lying if I didn’t,” Mookie Betts said. “I mean, obviously you don’t want to have those bad thoughts. But I mean, who wouldn’t have those thoughts in this situation?”

“I can’t really lie and say I wasn’t worried,” Rojas echoed. “When you’re down 3-0 in a World Series game, where you know everything is fine from their bullpen…you kind of wonder, ‘Hey, is this going to be it?’”

For Rojas, the worry dissipated quickly, as the Dodgers’ comeback in the fourth inning helped restore confidence immediately.

“It makes you believe again, like, ‘Okay, we didn’t get out,'” he said.

However, for others, the dread stayed right until the first of the ninth inning, when the team was down two games and the veteran stepped up to the plate.

“When you get one out (on that tour), you’re like, ‘Oh my God,’” Freddie Freeman said. “This is probably the only time this idea has ever crossed my mind.”

“It was scary, like: ‘We’re going to come all this way, and we’re not going to make it?'” Alex Cole recalled. “That was probably the most realistic thing I felt (the thought of losing the game) when (Rojas) was in front.”

Return

The Dodgers would erase their deficit before then, coming back by one run on Muncy’s homer in the eighth.

And all the while, in the quiet scenes outside the foul lines, there were other ways players were trying to keep their faith strong.

On the playground, Will Klein chose to follow a mythical routine.

“I was trying to find a position where good things could happen,” he said. “I would go downstairs, take a hit, and stay downstairs — until something bad happened.”

One of his other relief companions sought relief from above.

“I’m sitting in the bullpen, just praying,” Blake Treinen said. “And God keeps eavesdropping on me, saying, ‘Hey, why are you worried? I prayed for the ring. I prayed about this and that. If so, it will be so. “Worrying isn’t going to add another day to your life. It’s like, ‘All right, God.’ And then every time something like that happens, it’s like, ‘Oh, boom… all these (good) things happen.’”

Manager Dave Roberts, who Game 7 broke down on The Dodgers Post podcast last monthhe sensed it in the bunker, noting the confident, supportive chatter he’d heard all night.

“You look at 2017 (in the Dodgers’ previous Game 7 of the World Series against the Astros), we gave up three runs early — and we kind of mailed it in,” he recalled. “In this match here, even when we were down 3-0 in the third set, there was a fight.”

In the end, it all culminated in Rojas winning a draw at home; A moment in which everyone shared a common sentiment this week.

“We were very close,” Cole said. “And then it’s like, ‘No! “We did it!”

“After Miggy hit that homer, I was like, ‘Oh, we’re going to win,'” Glasnow added.

Mookie Betts also noted that “at that point, it looked like we were playing with house money.”

Jack Dryer remembered being next to Clayton Kershaw as they were getting loose on the bullpen. Future Hall of Famer’s reaction: “He was in my ear saying, ‘Oh my God! Oh, my God! “Oh my God!” “Over and over again,” Dreyer said, laughing.

Meanwhile, Roberts couldn’t help but smile while rewatching Rojas’ recent swing — at which point, the Dodgers’ probability of winning was only 9%.

“It wasn’t on my bingo card,” he joked of Rojas’s depth. “That was unbelievable… I just didn’t expect it.”

Championship

There was more tension the rest of the way…as Cole eloquently recounted in his interview with The Post.

Rojas’ faltering pitch in the top of the ninth inning: “Oh my God, get up! Throw the ball home! This is it.”

Later review to check whether Will Smith’s foot had stayed on home plate: “It was like, ‘Is his foot on base? Are we going to lose on the replay?’

Ernie Clement’s fly ball that sent Andy Biggs and Kiki Hernandez crashing into each other in left field: “I’m saying, ‘This is it. We’re going to lose here.’

However, each time, the Dodgers escaped — dodging bullet after bullet before finally prevailing in the 11th on Smith’s go-ahead double play and Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s double play in the bottom of the game.

“There were a lot of different times we could have lost,” Freeman said. And it was like, “Cool, we’re out of this.” We’re out of this.” …I’m sure if we sat down, you’d probably be on several hands saying, “How did we get out of that?”

Dodgers players agreed that the answer was rooted in the culture they forged over years of formative playoff experience, which was filled with heartbreak and jubilation.

“Even when we don’t play well, we figure out ways to win the game,” Kiki Hernandez said. “It speaks volumes about who we are as a group, and our ability to not only be really good, but also know how to win.”

As Vrubelsky, one of the club’s youngest members, said: “No matter what the situation is, let the situation make you better, and just increase that focus.”

For Rojas, who was the oldest member of the team’s player group, this flexibility added to the sense of accomplishment.

“I’m proud of the way we kept our composure and fought through it,” he said. “This is something you’ll never forget.”

All those memories, of course, will come back again this week when the Dodgers return to Rogers Center.

Rojas joked that he was looking forward to being booed, something he’d never experienced before in his career: “I really want to step into the batter’s box again and see what it’s like.”

Roberts was expecting a hostile reaction from the entire team: “I think the fans out there want a piece of us. I think it’s going to be exciting.”

After all, as Treinen pointed out, “You could play this series exactly the same way — every situation coming back, before those big plays happen — you could do it 99 more times, and I bet you could almost say we’d lose 99 more times.”

But when it mattered most, the Dodgers found a way to conjure the magic of a one-in-a-hundred (or a thousand? or a million?) World Series, in a game forever etched in baseball history.

“I still don’t know how we pulled it off,” Freeman said with a laugh.