It started as it would end, with Freddie Freeman, and then it just kept happening: Dodger after Dodger in extra innings would smoke a potential walk-off home run off of Toronto Blue Jays near-hero Eric Lauer, almost directly to center field, the stadium would roar, and then the ball would die just at the warning track, snagged, inevitably, by Daulton Varsho. It was funny, and then it was funny, and then it was … funny? And then it was the bottom of the 18th inning.
Because of how long the game ran on Monday, it was chillier and perhaps windier than you usually get at Dodger Stadium, which—for reasons that are somewhat inscrutable but can be attributed to short fences, a short center field, perhaps (or perhaps not) balmy Los Angeles weather—has recently been the best home run park in baseball. That was the real killer. It wasn’t just the home crowd psyching out everyone else; the batters themselves were at least partially convinced that the ball, off their bat, would be a home run. Perhaps it was wishful thinking.
