Getty Images
The air was thick with the scent of destiny, stale nachos, and Beau’s Lug Tread. This was it: Game 7. The Los Angeles Dodgers, chasing a legacy, against the Toronto Blue Jays, chasing a dream. What followed was a baseball game so long and so emotionally exhausting that historians will one day list it as the primary cause of several national alcohol shortages.
The game began with a singular, magnificent disruption: Shohei Ohtani. He hit in the first inning and then, like a tired god descending from the heavens to do a tedious chore, he sauntered to the mound to pitch.
Act I: The Ohtani Time Warp Controversy (A Rant)
This is where the drama immediately veered into farce. Ohtani, after running the bases, needed time—understandably—to transition from “unrivaled hitting force” to “unrivaled pitching force.” And how did the home plate umpiring crew handle this unprecedented physical request in the most high-stakes game of the year? They just… let him.
Toronto Manager John Schneider, poor man, looked like he was slowly dissolving into his own dugout jacket. He stormed out, possessed by the spirit of fairness, to complain about the three-minute-long warm-up that Ohtani was allowed, far exceeding the 90-second standard.
The conversation, tragically un-mic’d, likely went like this:
Schneider (yelling): “Are we running a baseball game or a film festival? He’s been out here longer than an entire episode of the pitch clock promotional video!” Umpire (shrugging): “Sir, it’s Ohtani. He’s allowed to run on Ohtani Time, which follows celestial rules we simply cannot interfere with. Also, my kid is watching.”
Apparently, Ohtani is a “special circumstance”, and the extra allotment was entirely within the rules. Of course, the added time didn’t seem to help much, as the Blue Jays, led by the surging Bo Bichette, tagged Ohtani for three early runs before he was mercifully pulled in the third, having pitched on just three days’ rest. The damage was done, the drama was set, and the umpires had successfully demonstrated that rules are merely “suggestions” when a generational talent is involved.
Act II: The Grind and the Ghost of Ginoza
The middle innings were a brutal, bench-clearing symphony of fastballs and bad tempers. Bases loaded, hit-by-pitches, warnings issued—it had the energy of a family holiday dinner where someone finally brings up politics. The score remained a tense, agonizing 4-2 Blue Jays lead into the late innings.
And this is where we turn the spotlight to the other half of the Japanese powerhouse: Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
While Ohtani was stretching the rulebook and his own elbow, Yamamoto was channeling the spirit of a highly organized, photogenic samurai. We all know his reputation for the most meticulous pre-game routine in baseball—a daily, highly-documented, highly-analyzed ceremony of precision. The man has a pitching delivery so choreographed, they call it the Ginoza Curveball.
We must assume that before Game 7, while others watched film or slept, Yamamoto was reviewing his 200,000 photos of himself performing a handstand bridge while perfectly balancing a splitter. This dedication—this commitment to having a flawless, picturesque delivery—is why he was summoned in the ninth, on the heels of a 96-pitch Game 6 start.
He emerged from the bullpen, a study in quiet panic. But that beautiful, mechanically perfect arm was a machine. He hit a batter to load the bases, but then, with the championship hanging by a thread, he got the final out. Yamamoto prevented three blue-clad baserunners from scoring, all of them standing there like they’d just watched a Zen monk achieve enlightenment at their expense.
Act III: The Improbability of Miguel Rojas
In the top of the ninth, Max Muncy cut the lead to one with a soul-stirring solo blast. Still, the Jays led 4-3, and the air was tightening into a lethal vacuum. And then, the inexplicable. Miguel Rojas, the defensive stalwart who hits a home run less often than a solar eclipse eclipses. He stepped up with one out. He connected, launching the most improbable, destiny-defying, 9th-inning tying home run in World Series Game 7 history.
Rogers Centre got put on mute. Rojas, an unlikely hero, had just shattered every dramatic script ever written.
The game spiraled into extra innings—an 11-inning, 4-hour, 7-minute theatrical marathon. Toronto stranded three more runners in the 10th. The tension was now so high that the stadium lights started flickering.
Finally, in the top of the 11th, catcher Will Smith, who had already set a record for most innings caught in a World Series, decided he’d had enough cardio for the year. He crushed a solo homer off a slider, giving the Dodgers their first lead of the night, 5-4. It was the first extra-inning homer in a winner-take-all Game 7. A fitting, brutal, dramatic blow.
Epilogue: The Samurai’s Standoff
And who did manager Dave Roberts send back out to finish this masterpiece of masochism in the bottom of the 11th? The man with the best photos: Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
After giving up a double to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. (because of course he did), and an intentional walk, Yamamoto stood on the mound with the winning runs on base and no outs. The world held its breath.
He didn’t flinch. He didn’t sweat. He was Fudoshin—the immovable mind, the master of his Ma-ai, the purveyor of perfect form. He induced a sacrifice bunt. Then, with runners on second and third, he got Alejandro Kirk to hit a grounder to the left side. Shortstop Mookie Betts fielded it, fired it to second, and a frantic, championship-winning 6-6-3 double play ended the game.
Then it was pandemonium. The Dodgers were back-to-back champions, winning an opera of miracles, fueled by an extra-rested two-way star and a photographic memory of pitching mechanics.
Final Score: Dodgers 5, Blue Jays 4 (11 Innings). The most beautiful, chaotic, and aggressively long Game 7 ever played—unless, of course, you factor in the actual longest World Series game 7 ever played. It happened 101 years prior in 1924, where the Senators beat the Giants 4-3. That one went 12 innings.
