An unforgettable night at the World Series lasted 18 incredible innings

LOS ANGELES – What is magic if not this: A bat and a ball and some age-old rules, once again casting their spell on some late October night, entrancing entire countries long past their bedtimes, hypnotizing grown men as earnestly as the children who idolize them – leaving everyone certain they will remember these 18 innings forever?

And what words could possibly explain the saga that unfolded between when Shohei Ohtani reached base for the first of nine times and the moment Freddie Freeman’s second career World Series walk-off home run finally ended Game 3 on Monday night?

“I want to go to sleep as soon as possible,” Ohtani said through his interpreter, recalling Odysseus’s postgame interview at Ithaca.

Monday night’s epic, a 6-5, 18-inning win for the Los Angeles Dodgers over the Toronto Blue Jays, was the second-longest World Series game ever played by time and tied for the longest by innings. It included 19 pitchers and 44 total players navigating 609 total pitches. It included what might be the last outing of one Hall of Fame career and what might be the last World Series outing of another. And it included one of the more astounding offensive performances in World Series history: a two-homer, two-double, five-walk showing from Ohtani made even more incredible by the fact that it probably isn’t his most impressive game this postseason.

“We didn’t even talk about Sho,” Dodgers left-hander Clayton Kershaw said later, halfway through a long question-and-answer session with reporters. “Sho just got on base nine times and has to pitch in, I don’t know, 12 hours. Pretty unbelievable all the way around.”

Ohtani tied a World Series record with 12 total bases in the first seven innings - and then became the first player intentionally walked four times in a World Series game. And because he had to pitch Game 4 within hours, he did not even hold a news conference afterward.

“I hope we don’t lose sight of our starting pitcher tomorrow got on base nine times tonight,” said Freeman, whose walk-off blast to dead center in the 18th did earn him a news conference and earned the Dodgers a 2-1 series lead. “…[Walking him] is the right move. You don’t want Shohei to beat you. Let other guys try and beat you after his first four at-bats. And it took a lot longer, but we finally did it.”

No one will remember everything that happened Monday night, but they will remember that Freeman was the one who finally hit a high flyball well enough to slice through the marine layer and carry over the wall instead of falling just in front of it. Try as they might, tired players on both sides struggled to get the big swings they needed in the second nine innings, though many came close.

Freeman’s homer saved the Dodgers from what was shaping up to be a near-apocalyptic pitching decision: A few innings earlier, Dodgers Manager Dave Roberts told the broadcast that he was going to use a position player to pitch whenever his last reliever, Will Klein, finally hit a wall. Generations of discourse would have followed.

But then Yoshinobu Yamamoto, two days after throwing a complete game in Game 2, insisted he be sent to the bullpen instead and started warming up to prevent Roberts from having to make the choice.

“I think that just shows you who we are as a group. We’ll do anything to win the game. But for him to go out there - and I did see him warming up,” Freeman said. “I was like, oh, man - we got to keep this guy out of the game.”

Klein did his part to stave off the unthinkable. He is a rookie who entered the night with 23⅓ career major league innings to his name and left having thrown four scoreless innings and 72 pitches (more than three times his normal outing’s worth) in the World Series. When the game was over, with Freeman as the hero, most Dodgers piled on Klein instead.

“I don’t know how many times you see a guy hit a home run and the whole team is jumping around the pitcher,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said. “But he deserved it.”

Not every Dodger ran to Klein. Ohtani ran to left field, where Yamamoto had been warming in the bullpen. By that time, every other Dodgers pitcher who could be available had pitched. Roberts said later that Yamamoto would have pitched as long as the Dodgers needed him - and his willingness to do so added to his legend without him throwing a single pitch.

No postseason game has ever gone longer than 18 innings. Perhaps the baseball fates feel two games in one night is enough. But baseball games end in their own time, and even the pitch clock cannot end them before they are ready.

This one wandered on so long that Dodgers catcher Will Smith’s PitchCom device ran out of battery before the top of the 11th, causing a delay. Where the Dodgers normally track strikeouts with K’s on the scoreboard, they eventually had to note “10K’s” in the corner because the game went so long they ran out of room to count them one by one. They held a second seventh-inning stretch in the 14th inning. The teams combined for 10 runs in the first seven innings of the game, when their best pitchers were still available. They then failed to score for the next 10, despite using whichever pitchers they could find.

“The bat starts feeling real heavy there towards the end of the game, and I think you saw that from both sides,” Muncy said. “There’s probably several hittable pitches on both sides, and guys were just underneath it, fouling it off.

“We always talk about a regular nine-inning playoff game is like playing three extra-inning games back-to-back-to-back,” he added. “And then we basically played another doubleheader back-to-back today.”

Eighteen innings were more than enough for narratives to collide and bounce off one another, as if every character had to find his way into the story on this night.

For example: Veteran Max Scherzer started the game for the Blue Jays in what might very well be the last World Series start of his career. Retiring legend Kershaw came in with the bases loaded and two out in the top of the 12th for what might have been the last outing of his career. He got Blue Jays outfielder Nathan Lukes to ground out to end the inning. The pitch Lukes swung at would have been ball four. But that was not how Kershaw’s career was meant to end.

“I know it’s his last ride. You want to see him out on top. That’s a tough situation for him to come into. It was like an all-or-nothing thing,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “To see him get out of that inning, it was just super cool.”

In the ninth, there was quiet intrigue: Blue Jays bench bat Myles Straw faced Dodgers rookie Roki Sasaki with the potential go-ahead run in scoring position. The Blue Jays traded for Straw in a money grab last offseason, taking on his salary in exchange for part of the Cleveland Guardians’ international bonus pool - money they had hoped to use to lure Sasaki. Sasaki got him, so the game remained tied.

“It’s one of the greatest World Series games of all time,” Roberts said. “Emotional. I’m spent emotionally.”

So much happened in those 18 innings that Game 3 felt like an entire season of television fit into one 6-hour, 39-minute episode. Blue Jays outfielder George Springer hurt his side on a swing in the seventh and left the game. His status moving forward is uncertain. Blue Jays catcher Alejandro Kirk hit a go-ahead three-run homer in the fourth that seemed like it might turn Scherzer, who allowed three runs in 4⅓ innings, into a winner, but left for a pinch-runner in the 12th. Smith caught all 18 innings for the Dodgers, a herculean effort that will require another when he catches at least nine more Tuesday night.

And then there was the part of Ohtani’s history-making night he could not control: The previous record for intentional walks in a World Series game was three. Because he could win the game with one swing every time he came up after the seventh, Ohtani broke it with ease. He would have set the new mark at five if Blue Jays Manager John Schneider hadn’t let lefty Brendon Little “pitch to him” in the bottom of the 17th. Little walked him on four pitches.

“He’s arguably the best player on the planet, you know,” Schneider said. “I think you kind of react in real time a little bit.”

“I get it,” Roberts said.

Ohtani will hit again in a few hours, but not before he pitches to the top of the Blue Jays’ lineup. He has again provided a dose of the unprecedented, somehow almost overshadowing a walk-off homer in the World Series despite not taking a swing after the seventh inning. But he also symbolized the unthinkable, and Monday night’s game was so unthinkable, it will not be known for what he did alone. And what is that if not magic, a sport that finds a titan capable of molding October nights like no other, and still outdoes him with a masterpiece of its own?