In Game 7 of the World Series, the Blue Jays will have another chance to win their first title since 1993.
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TORONTO – It might have been easier on the mind and soul for the Toronto Blue Jays to simply put up some token resistance when they were down 3-1 in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 6 of the World Series, guaranteeing Game 7 and November baseball if nothing else.
After a meek submission to Los Angeles Dodgers rookie closer Aki Sasaki and right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s second win in eight days, the postgame atmosphere would have been quiet but monotonous.
Please pick it up tomorrow. Sometimes you just have to tip your hat. Everyone pitches in for Game 7.
Alas, these are the 2025 MLB upset victory leaders, the Blue Jays, who are capable of nothing but big emotions and bigger goals, and they almost always come true against expectations.
But this time, a sunken line drive and the ultimate youthful mistake on the basepaths left one of the best hitters in postseason history on the deck, robbing him of a chance to tie or win the game. And now everyone has to come back tomorrow night and try again, including the Dodgers and Blue Jays, a crowd of 44,710 title-hungry Toronto fans, and hundreds of police officers stationed in hopes of making a Sixth victory noise.
What are the best words in sports for Game 7?
I want him to convey this to the club where he got on base with the game-tying hit and hit the World Series-winning RBI in an empty at-bat. A temporary stage built by Major League Baseball for the championship celebration was ready for the batting staff to guide the ball into the Rogers Center wasteland where, if it landed properly, Rob Manfred would award the Blue Jays the Commissioner’s Trophy.
That stage never moved.
I wish Addison Berger had done the same thing when Andres Jimenez’s sinking fly to shallow left field was carried by Dodgers playoff legend Quique Hernandez.
Ever the quick thinker, Hernandez spotted Berger far from second base, eager to jack him up and score the tying run. In fact, it was the worst World Series walk-off result ever for a home team. George Springer, who hit a 7-4 double play, game over, and hit 23 home runs in the postseason, including the game-winning three-run shot in Game 7 of the ALCS, was on deck for the Joe Carter moment.
Instead, Berger drifted far from the second base bag, dead man’s land. Hernandez immediately but casually spiked a one-hop throw to second baseman Miguel Rojas.
And Berger, his limbs and long hair flying, headed toward second base, but with a mile to go, he was out.
You could say Rogers Center was deflated, but there was little chance of it getting back on track, and the rally ended far too quickly and too abruptly.
The Blue Jays, winners of 105 games in the regular season and playoffs, are good enough to deserve a championship. But the smallest part of it, those nine wins that happen dozens of times a year in baseball, isn’t done yet.
“It’s kind of hard to say you deserve it. To deserve something, you have to get the job done,” says Blue Jays rookie starter Trey Yesavage, who may still need to take the Rogers Center mound one more time in that epic postseason. “You can get all these honors not only in the regular season, but also in the playoffs.
“But there’s a limit to what you can deserve. Tomorrow you have to arrive.”
Berger has been in the playoffs all month of October, just one week removed from his Grand Slam win in Game 1 of the Open World Series. He hit a 165.5 mph ball right into the left field seats, hard enough to send it into the wall and put the Blue Jays in position to steal the game.
Even with the basic rule of double, what was planned did not change. Berger tied the game at second base, and no one was out. Ernie Clement’s pop-up against Tyler Glasnow brought up Jimenez, who became a playoff savior despite being the No. 9 hitter this month.
He did the best he could against Glasnow, stroking the ball to the left. Given Jimenez’s lack of attacking power on the opposite side, Hernandez played shallow and closed quickly.
If only Berger could understand what most everyone else understands: that it’s a relatively routine flyball, a motion that freezes and retreats almost immediately.
“I was pretty surprised what he did,” Berger said in the Blue Jays’ clubhouse. “From the bat, I thought it was going to go over the shortstop’s head.
“I didn’t expect it to travel this far. It was a bit of a bad reading.”
And it’s not the way any club would want to go into Game 7.
At the Blue Jays clubhouse where the funeral was held, some people tried to cover their burgers.
“I thought it was a hit. 1,000 percent, I thought it was going down,” infielder Isaiah Kiner-Falefa said of the play’s advantage. “Kike played great there, it was an offensive mistake.
“If we’re going to make a mistake, we want to be aggressive. That’s how we played. It just didn’t work tonight.”
And the Blue Jays still had the spirit of the team, the idea that the cause was never lost, the expectation of a no-out victory whether they finished second or third, and the feeling that they would come again next time.
“We’ve been in that position all regular season. It’s a walk-off win,” Gausman said. “No one’s out. Guys second and third. We kept coming back. Everyone was like, oh, we were going to win this game.”Obviously we didn’t win. But we had a chance to win. At least we weren’t going down without a fight. ”
However, it cannot be denied that there was a residual effect of missed opportunities. All is not lost. These guys bounced back from an 18-inning loss in Game 3 and won the next two games at Dodger Stadium to claim this enviable position in first place.
Your jaw will be lifted on Saturday evening. Yes, there’s still a chance. But we can’t ignore that something golden just passed them by.
“We had a chance to shut them out, but we didn’t, so we’ll just focus on tomorrow,” infielder Bo Bichette said. “Game 7, Game 60 of the regular season, we’re going to come in ready to play, ready to fight and give it our all.
“I thought we had a chance to win today. But we didn’t do it.”
