By admin 
LOS ANGELES – Is the golden era of Dodgers baseball, as first proclaimed by President of Baseball Operations Andrew Friedman after the first of back-to-back World Series championships in 2024, about to end with a thud?
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Or maybe the sounds that resonated more were those two cannon-like cracks of the bat in the seventh inning on Wednesday night, just when the Dodgers seemed poised to break serve in Game 3 of their National League Championship Series with the Milwaukee Brewers.
The team that relies on little ball, on steals and bunts and all the less glamorous parts of baseball? The Brewers gleefully stepped out of character by dooming the Dodgers with big flies, bookends to what otherwise would be considered an outstanding pitching performance by Blake Snell in a 6-2 Milwaukee victory that pushed the Dodgers to the edge of the cliff.
Blake Snell struck out nine of 20 hitters and allowed one hit after giving up a first-pitch home run to Jackson Chourio leading off the game for a 1-0 Brewers lead. And after Will Smith had given the Dodgers a 2-1 lead with a bases-loaded double in the sixth, there were those two Brewers’ cannon blasts in the seventh: Jake Bauers, a graduate of Marina High in Huntington Beach, capping an 11-pitch at-bat by hitting a 412-foot shot into the right field pavilion with a man on for a 3-2 Milwaukee lead, followed by Garrett Mitchell, a former UCLA and Orange Lutheran standout, sending a 428-foot blast into the same general area to make it 4-2.
Just like that, the air came out of the balloon.
All that talk going into this game about whether Shohei Ohtani should take a day off and was in fact hurting the ballclub by trying to play while physically compromised? Didn’t matter. The playoff slump that had bedeviled Smith? Not a factor, especially when his ball in the sixth came maybe five feet short of clearing the fence in left-center field for a grand slam. As it was, the mood in The Ravine changed from tense to joyful, at least for a while.
Footnote: The Dodgers have led in each game of this series. Yet they’re in position to be sent home as early as Thursday night, their chances of making history as the first National League team to win three straight World Series titles possibly swept aside by the same team they swept in the NLCS a year ago.
Before Wednesday night’s game, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts – who had one of the most famous stolen bases in postseason history in 2004 to start the Boston Red Sox toward a historic comeback from a 3-0 series deficit against the New York Yankees – was asked if he had ever considered bringing that up to one of his teams in a tight spot, and maybe bringing in the video clip.
“Absolutely not,” he said with a laugh. “Then I’ll lose them. I don’t know if some of those guys even know I played. No, absolutely not.”
Afterward, more soberly, he was again asked about knowing from personal experience it could happen.
“It’s certainly possible,” he said. “I’ve lived it, and I think the thing is that our guys have been battle-tested, as was that team I was a part of.
“I think the mindset has to be – and teams have been down before 0-2, 0-3 – it’s just you’ve got to win tomorrow. It’s an elimination game. We’ve played in a lot of elimination games. We’ve just got to get a win. We’ve got to find a way to build some momentum, and it takes all of us.
“… I think they’ve seen the documentary. They know it can happen.”
And while his players might be too young to identify with that moment – gosh, was it really 22 years ago? – any inspiration at all would help at this point.
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As for the Ohtani question, and the debate (at least, on one radio talk show Wednesday afternoon) about whether he should have been ordered to take at least the day off, with a banged-up body and a swing that had gotten out of sync? He was 3 for 20 for the postseason coming into Game 3, but he reached base three times on Wednesday night, getting hit by a pitch, drawing a walk and lining a sharp single to center (113.5 mph off the bat) in the eighth inning.
Unfortunately for the Dodgers, no one was on base at the time he got the hit. Their timing continues to be an issue.
They were 50 for 234 with runners in scoring position through September. In two postseason series they are 3 for 32, and 2 for 16 in this series including Smith’s double in the sixth.
So what now? I’m sure this is what Roberts will tell his team, but it’s a variation of what he’s told his teams for years: Concentrate on the basics. Win one game.
“There’s not a mind change at this moment,” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “It’s all about coming to the ballpark (Thursday) knowing that you have no room for error and it’s an elimination game. We’ve been in this situation before, even though it’s an 0-3 and we have to win four in a row against a really good team.”
His team, in this championship run, has faced elimination games before. Remember Game 4 of the Division Series in San Diego in 2024, when the Dodgers staved off elimination with an 8-0 victory in a bullpen game and won the series two nights later in L.A.?
Or Games 6 and 7 last October in Toronto, when the Dodgers went from facing elimination in Game 6 to winning the World Series in maybe the best Game 7 ever?
The difference here is that they need a four-game winning streak to keep the chance of a three-peat alive. And yes, they’ve done it this season, several times: Nine different streaks of four or more victories, the longest an eight-game stretch in September.
The difference? Those were heavily larded with victories over sub-.500 teams.
This time, against a team that won 103 regular-season games, with the pressure of history and a season’s worth of expectations? This would surely be more impressive – and even then the job wouldn’t be done.
“I just feel like it has to be a sense of urgency of winning every single pitch starting (Thursday), pitch one,” Rojas said.
“We have no room for error, and I don’t think there’s a mentality change or anything like that. It’s just like we haven’t been in this position before. We just gotta go out there every single day and try to win a game.”
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It sounds so simple. I suspect everyone in both clubhouses knows better.
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This story was originally published October 14, 2026 at 10:05 PM.