Dear baseball gods,
Please let this series go the limit.
Padres fans and Dodgers fans deserve it after finishing third and first of 30 teams this year in home attendance.
The sport would be better for it, too, if Saturday night’s Game 1 of the Division Series at Dodger Stadium was any indication.
The first half of the game, by itself, was great entertainment.
Never mind that those four innings took two hours.
Here was Manny Machado responding to boos by whacking a home run as the Padres jumped to a 3-0 lead in the first inning.
Here was Shohei Ohtani answering with a tying three-run home run in the second inning.
Here was Fernando Tatis Jr. scalding one of the hardest groundballs you’ll see, the ball reaching the warning track in left-center.
Tatis’ grass-burner went for a double, leading to a tie-breaking two-run double by Xander Bogaerts.
Unfortunately for the Padres, a former San Diegan didn’t get the memo that the Analytics Era Dodgers shall abstain from attempting to bunt for singles in the postseason.
Tommy Edman, the La Jolla Country Day High School graduate who joined the Dodgers this summer, put down a smart push bunt.
Despite a great whirling throw by Padres pitcher Dylan Cease, the bunt went for a one-out hit.
The Dodgers turned Edman’s spark into a three-run surge in the fourth, going ahead for the first time, 6-5.
How about the defensive play by Padres infielder Donovan Solano?
Though he’s a newbie at first base, Solano pulled off a web gem worthy of great Padres first basemen such as Wally Joyner and Adrian Gonzalez.
Ranging far to his right, the 36-year-old Colombian backhanded a groundball and fired a one-hop strike to the plate while throwing across his body.
Catcher Kyle Higashioka made a difficult snag, retiring Miguel Rojas to preserve the 5-4 lead if only temporarily.
Down 7-5 in the eighth, a Padres rookie authored one of the game’s most impressive plate appearances.
Jackson Merrill, who looked locked in for most of his at-bats, fouled off several difficult two-strike pitches near 100 mph from L.A.’s closer, Michael Kopech.
Merrill’s effort brought the potential go-ahead runner to the plate. But reliever Blake Treinen threw pitches that looked like high-speed Whiffle Balls, enabling L.A. to escape.
Down to their final out, the Padres got a two-out single from Tatis followed by Jurickson Profar’s walk.
But with his 39th pitch, the 36-year-old Treine got Machado to strike out on a slider that swerved several inches outside, securing L.A.’s 7-5 victory.
“We’ll keep throwing punches,” Padres manager Mike Shildt told the FS1 broadcast.
“We played a really good game against a really good opponent,” said Ohtani, who in his second career playoff at-bat launched Cease’s 97-mph high fastball into the right-field seats.
Should the Padres have forced someone other than Ohtani to beat them?
“I’m still trying to understand why you’d pitch to him,” Derek Jeter, an FS1 analyst, said multiple times.
(In fairness, with a 99-mph, higher fastball, Cease induced a soft flyout from Ohtani in the first inning. Later, Padres relievers Jason Adam and Tanner Scott struck out Ohtani.)
So, baseball gods, please don’t let this series end before the fifth game.
Admittedly, where the Padres are concerned, that’s a big request.
Of the seven best-of-fives postseason series played by the Padres, only one went the limit.
But, as the old folks will tell it, it was well worth it.
The Garvey home run. The hot smash by Tony Gwynn past Ryne Sandberg. A groundball hitting a dead spot near first base in Mission Valley and rolling under Leon Durham’s glove. The Padres knocking off the Cubs in the 1984 League Championship Series, reaching their first World Series.
The city went nuts.
But that has been it. No other Padres’ best-of-five or best-of-seven series went the limit.
The Padres and Dodgers will play Game 2 on Sunday before the series comes to Petco Park for Game 3 on Tuesday and a potential fourth game on Wednesday.
If there’s a Game 5, it’ll be in L.A. A whole bunch of folks in Southern California will be watching.
“It’s better for baseball when you have these two teams facing each other, trying to get to the next step,” said Dodgers cleanup hitter Teoscar Hernandez.
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