The Dodgers entered the 2013 playoffs on an auspicious note. Only four teams in history had ever won forty-two of fifty games during the regular season. Each went on to make the World Series.
Earning a spot in the Fall Classic was not going to be easy, however. To get there, Los Angeles would have to beat two very good National League teams, and they’d have to do it without home-field advantage. Because they were the first team to clinch their division and had injury issues all year, the club’s brain trust chose to rest many starters during the season’s final week. With backups on the field, the Dodgers dropped four of their last five contests, and slipped down to the third seed in the National League behind St. Louis and Atlanta.
First, they had to face the NL East champion Braves in a best-of-five series. Though the Dodgers sent Kershaw to the mound for Game 1 of the division series, victory was no guarantee. The Braves countered with their own ace, Kris Medlen, who had been named the NL’s pitcher of the month for September. Medlen had faced the Dodgers twice earlier in the year and flummoxed Los Angeles hitters both times, allowing zero earned runs in 13.2 innings pitched. But both of those games came early in the season, when the Dodgers weren’t any good.
During batting practice before Game 1, Stan Kasten stood on the dirt near the visiting on-deck circle and greeted old friends. It had been ten years since he had left the organization he helped turn into an annual contender, and a lot had changed. Atlanta had won its division in twelve of Kasten’s last thirteen years as team president, but they’d captured that crown just three times in the decade since. The biggest reason for that drop-off, of course, was the loss of Hall of Famers Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine, and John Smoltz to free agency and middle age. In some ways, the nineties Braves had set the standard for what the Dodgers were trying to do. Los Angeles could control winning the NL West most years by outspending everyone else. And since the playoffs were a crapshoot, the best way to win a World Series title was to buy a ticket to the postseason every year and hope for the best. The Braves had been very good under Kasten but they had also been unlucky. The club’s twelve division titles had produced five trips to the World Series but only one championship. Maybe it was because Atlanta hadn’t won a playoff series since 2001, or perhaps so many first- and second-round flameouts in the nineties had numbed fan excitement, but enthusiasm for the 2013 Braves squad around the city was tepid. The day before Game 1, Dodger officials were told that Turner Field still had eighteen thousand unsold tickets.
While Kasten pressed Atlanta flesh, Matt Kemp ambled his way up the dugout steps toward his teammates who were waiting to hit. As Kemp rested on his crutches, a cameraman circled him for a shot, and he became annoyed. “I think you got enough,” he said, as he stared out into space. Puig approached him, and Kemp said something awkward to him about steak and eggs, the meal Puig credited for giving him his power, and forced a laugh. It was not a coincidence that these two fan favorites were so uneasy around each other. Imagining the two of them playing in the outfield together for a championship team was difficult; they were like the same sides of a magnet, so fundamentally similar that they repelled each other. Puig was an alpha male in a group of alpha males, and did little to hide it. In a game in St. Louis in early August, Gonzalez was on first base when Puig doubled off the wall. After Gonzalez held at third rather than trying to score on the hit, a visibly angry Puig threw his hands in the air in disgust. Confused, Gonzalez turned to him and yelled “What?” across the diamond. After they both eventually came in to score, Puig screamed at Gonzalez in the dugout. Cameras captured the incident. Knowing viewers at home had seen his outburst, Puig waited until the camera was on him later in the game, and then went over to Gonzalez, smiled, put his arm around the first baseman’s shoulder, and patted his head as if he were a child. That sort of thing would never have flown with Matt Kemp. These Dodgers had won the West, but they played very few games with both Kemp and Puig in the lineup. The two men were contracted to play some combination of right and center field together in Dodger blue through the 2018 season. That seemed unlikely. And since Puig was much cheaper and younger, Kemp was more likely to be traded. He knew it.
Before he took his hacks in the cage, Puig removed his cap to put on his batting helmet and revealed a freshly shaved playoff Mohawk. In his first three months in the big leagues the rookie outfielder was exceptional at the plate, hitting .349 with an on-base percentage of greater than 40 percent. But he sputtered in September, posting a .214 batting average and a .333 OBP. “They found the hole in his swing,” said one Dodger staff member as he watched him take batting practice that evening. “It’s not where you would look at first, but they found it.” While Puig feasted on low fastballs thrown near his shoe tops, he struggled to hit heaters in the upper third of the strike zone—which was the wheelhouse of most players.
If Puig did have some kind of glitch it was understandable. Most ballplayers take years to perfect their swings in the minors. Puig was forced to make his adjustments at the highest level. Because the mechanics of his swing were otherwise almost perfect, opposing pitchers knew they had to beat him between the ears. The Dodgers’ coaching staff expected Puig’s emotions to be amplified in the playoffs, the time of year when the ability to slow the game down is most crucial. They worried that the more he tried to do, the less effective he would be.
To accommodate playoff television programming, Game 1 started at 8:07 in Atlanta—some fifty-seven minutes later than night games typically kicked off at Dodger Stadium. Kershaw did the math and wrote down the adjusted times for his pregame rituals. But it was clear from the first inning that the Dodgers’ ace did not have his best stuff. Though he struck out two hitters in the opening frame, he struggled to throw his fastball where he wanted and had to use nineteen pitches to get the first three outs. The big southpaw liked to paint the corners of the strike zone with four-seamers to get ahead of batters early in counts and then mix in his off-speed pitches to put them away. When he got ahead by two strikes, he was lethal. In 0-2 counts versus Kershaw, batters struck out more than 50 percent of the time, and were five times more likely to whiff than collect a hit. He gained such an advantage because he didn’t have to throw strikes in these counts; hitters often flailed at pitches in the dirt.
In the fourth inning, Kershaw threw first-pitch fastballs to each of the six Braves he faced. But they caught too much of the plate. Atlanta hitters capitalized on his lack of command, collecting two hits and a walk. And even though they managed only one run against him, they had made him throw seventy-seven pitches to get twelve outs—no minor victory. The best way to win a game Clayton Kershaw pitched was to somehow get him off the mound. Knowing this, in the fifth inning Kershaw decided to turn his fastball into a secondary pitch. It worked. Of the eight pitches he threw to B. J. Upton and Jason Heyward in the fifth, seven were sliders, the other was a curve. He struck them both out. He fanned the Braves’ best hitter, Freddie Freeman, the next inning without throwing him a fastball, either. After the game, some of the Braves said his slider was one of the best they’d seen all year. As a matter of fact, it was so good they hadn’t seen it at all. Kershaw struck out nine of the last eleven hitters he faced, and finished the game giving up one run on three hits—all singles—while striking out twelve in seven innings. His dozen strikeouts were the most by a Dodger in a postseason game since Sandy Koufax had struck out fifteen in Game 1 of the 1963 World Series. The Dodgers rolled over Medlen and the relievers brought in to back him up, scoring six runs on eleven hits, including three doubles and a home run.
Los Angeles took a 1–0 series lead but the win came with a cost: Kershaw had thrown 124 pitches, which made it unlikely that he’d be able to come back and pitch Game 4 on short rest. Zack Greinke and Hyun-Jin Ryu were scheduled to pitch Games 2 and 3, with Ricky Nolasco on track for Game 4. Though Nolasco had pitched well for the Dodgers in the regular season, he had never taken the mound in the playoffs in his eight-year career, and those around the team said he looked terrified. If the Dodgers dropped the next two games of the series, Nolasco would have to pitch an elimination game unless Kershaw could work on three days’ rest. Because of this, Mattingly was criticized for leaving Kershaw in to toss more pitches than he’d thrown in five months in a game the Dodgers appeared to have well in hand. But Mattingly knew how much his ace wanted to stay on the mound and said afterward that he felt he owed Kershaw the opportunity to try to get twenty-one outs.
Of course, there would be no need for Game 4 if Los Angeles could beat Atlanta in Games 2 and 3 and sweep the series. With Greinke on the bump for Game 2, the Dodgers liked their chances of heading back to L.A. needing one more victory to advance. They jumped out to a quick lead in the first inning, after Mark Ellis walked and Hanley Ramirez doubled him home. It was Ramirez’s first postseason appearance as well, but he seemed to the coaching staff to be as relaxed and confident as Nolasco was nervous. Greinke looked like the pitcher the Dodgers envisioned when they signed him in the off-season, giving up two earned runs in six efficient innings. Though he had thrown only eighty-three pitches and might have had another inning left in him, with the Dodgers trailing 2–1 and Skip Schumaker on second with one out, Mattingly opted to pinch-hit for Greinke in the top of the seventh with a new player on the team, the veteran infielder Michael Young. Young collected an infield single, setting up runners at the corners. But Carl Crawford grounded into an inning-ending double play.
The top of the seventh wasn’t Mattingly’s fault. Though Greinke hit well—he would go on to win the NL Silver Slugger award as the league’s best-hitting pitcher—Young was a .300 career hitter, and two years removed from finishing with the most hits in the AL. The bottom of the seventh threatened to cost Mattingly his job. He sent rookie flamethrower Chris Withrow to the mound to relieve Greinke. The trouble with being blessed with a fastball that travels 98 mph is that the man throwing it often has no idea where it’s going. Withrow walked the first batter he faced, then allowed a single. The Braves gave the Dodgers a gift out by asking shortstop Andrelton Simmons to bunt the runners up a base. Then Withrow bounced back, striking out Elliot Johnson looking on three pitches. With runners on second and third and two out, the pitcher was due up in the order. Atlanta sent light-hitting Jose Constanza to the plate to pinch-hit.
The left-handed Constanza had collected just eight hits on the year, all singles. Nevertheless, Mattingly was uncomfortable with the fact that all eight of those hits had come off right-handed pitchers, such as Withrow. So he replaced Withrow with lefty Paco Rodriguez. Braves manager Fredi Gonzalez countered by substituting right-handed pinch-hitter Reed Johnson for Constanza to get the matchup that he wanted. Rather than pitch to the veteran journeyman Johnson, who had hit just .244 with one home run on the year, Mattingly had Rodriguez intentionally walk him to load the bases for Jason Heyward, one of Atlanta’s best hitters. Heyward was a lefty, and the average left-handed hitter has a much more difficult time hitting left-handed pitchers, because the ball tails away from him. But Heyward was no ordinary player. In 2013 his batting average and on-base plus slugging percentage were both higher against lefties than righties. His numbers against southpaws were significantly better than Johnson’s, too. Knowing those numbers, giving Johnson a free pass to pitch to Heyward seemed like a mistake. It was. Heyward singled in two runs, and the Braves took a 4–1 lead. Mattingly’s gaffe was made even more painful when Hanley Ramirez hit a two-run home run the next inning that would have given the Dodgers the lead. Instead they lost 4–3. The club flew back to L.A. with the series tied at a game apiece, and two guys lined up to start Games 3 and 4 who had never thrown a pitch in a playoff game in their lives.
There was another reason the outcome was especially devastating to Mattingly’s hold on his job. Since the Dodgers had played .800 baseball for most of the summer, no one outside Los Angeles seemed to notice the manager’s in-game strategy decisions. But during the playoffs everyone was watching. National columnists eviscerated him. Some within the organization wondered if he would follow in the footsteps of Grady Little, the man who led the Red Sox to the 2003 American League Championship Series but was fired after the season because he left a tiring Pedro Martinez in the decisive Game 7 too long. Fredi Gonzalez was not considered a master tactician, so being outmaneuvered by him hurt worse. Because of this perception, players wondered if they would have to win the World Series for Mattingly’s job to be safe.
Game 3 of the NLDS was the Dodgers’ first playoff home game under the Guggenheim regime. Puig led the team onto the field, sprinting to his spot in right. Hyun-Jin Ryu took the mound and struggled from the start. Though he had pitched well in his first year in Los Angeles, Ryu was typically mediocre in the opening frame: he gave up seventeen runs in thirty first innings for a 5.10 earned run average. Like a marathon runner, he seemed to gain strength the longer the game went. While Ryu’s ERA in innings one through three was 3.50, he improved to 2.58 in innings four through six, and to 2.45 from the seventh to the ninth. It may have been his first time pitching in the playoffs, but Ryu was no stranger to big stages. He started the gold medal game in the 2008 Olympics for his native South Korea and pitched brilliantly in victory over Team Cuba, allowing just two runs in eight and a third innings.
Whether he was nervous or just melting in the ninety-degree heat, Ryu was sweating so much on the mound that it appeared he had difficulty gripping the ball. The Braves capitalized on his tentativeness right away, scoring two quick first-inning runs. But the Dodgers got four runs back in the bottom of the second off a sacrifice fly from Ryu and a three-run home run from Carl Crawford. The Braves evened the score in the top of the third, before the Dodgers exploded for six in the next two innings to take a 10–4 lead. Ryu admitted later that he was hurt by his failure to adjust his strategy for the playoffs. Because bullpens risked being burned out during the regular season, it was more valuable for a starting pitcher to go seven innings and give up three runs than go five innings and give up none. In the postseason it was the opposite. Relievers were no longer being stashed away for rainy days, and the best were often called upon to work more than one inning. A manager’s job was to try to get twenty-seven outs from his staff by any means necessary, while giving up as few runs as possible. Instead of throwing 91 mph fastballs so that he might conserve energy to go deeper in the game, Ryu would have been better served throwing 95 until he tired, because tomorrow wasn’t guaranteed. He gave up four runs in just three innings of work, but on that day the Dodgers didn’t need him to be great. Chris Capuano pitched a scoreless fourth, fifth, and sixth, and Los Angeles pounded the Braves 13–6 to take a 2–1 series lead.
Before Game 3, Mattingly insisted Nolasco would start Game 4. But the idea of losing and being forced to fly back to Atlanta for a winner-take-all Game 5 was too scary for the skipper and his staff to bear. So they summoned Kershaw on short rest to try to close out the series. Kershaw had never pitched on three days’ rest in his career, and his catcher was nervous. It wasn’t that A. J. Ellis didn’t believe in Kershaw’s ability. He was of the firm belief that his best friend was the best pitcher in baseball, and as mentally tough as anyone. But his talent didn’t change the fact that firing a baseball overhand is not a natural motion for a human arm; knots of lactic acid form from the shoulder to the elbow as thick as meatballs during starts. Some starters are in so much discomfort they never sleep on the pitching-arm side of their body. Others have trouble finding feeling in their hands. The four days between starts are necessary to drain that acid from their arm muscles, so that blood can flow to the tips of their fingers unimpeded.
Kershaw’s schedule in between starts was as regimented as his routine on game days. The day after a start he played catch. On day two he threw a bullpen session of forty or so pitches to stretch out his arm, a common practice many pitchers compare to an oil change. Day three was for long toss, and on day four he rested. Not only was Kershaw rushing that routine, but he was also coming off a game in which he had thrown 124 pitches and a season in which he’d tossed a career-high number of innings.
And there was something else: Kershaw still hadn’t signed his contract extension. While it was true that a pitcher risked serious injury every time he threw a ball, catastrophe seemed more likely to happen when a player was tired. Because baseball contracts were guaranteed, if he signed a contract for hundreds of millions of dollars the night before Game 4 and then went out and hurt himself and was never able to start another game, he’d still collect all that money. But if he got injured before signing, Los Angeles could, in theory, significantly lower its off-season offer. Kershaw was still under the Dodgers’ control for 2014, but after that he would hit a free agent market that didn’t like to give injured pitchers long deals, regardless of pedigree.
C.C. Sabathia had been one of the best pitchers in the game when the Yankees rewarded him with a seven-year, $161 million contract before the 2009 season. Sabathia was coming off an extraordinary year during which he posted a 1.65 ERA in 130 innings for Milwaukee in the season’s final two and a half months to help the team to its first playoff berth in twenty-six years. That workload came with a cost. Because they were in a tight race to the finish, the Brewers sent Sabathia to the mound on three days’ rest three outings in a row to close the season. Some wondered if the decision to risk his arm health was perhaps made easier by the fact that the Brewers knew they could not afford to re-sign him once he became a free agent. An exhausted Sabathia pitched poorly in his only playoff start for Milwaukee, allowing five earned runs and getting just eleven outs with ninety-eight pitches. Sabathia pitched well in his first four seasons with the Yankees before injuries from overuse compromised him at age thirty-two.
Kershaw was just as competitive as Sabathia. Regardless of the money at stake, he wanted the ball with the chance to clinch. Facing elimination, the Braves countered with Freddy Garcia, a thirty-seven-year-old journeyman pitcher who had been on their roster for a month after spending most of the summer in the Orioles’ minor-league system. On paper it didn’t seem to be a fair fight. But the game began on an ominous note, with Adrian Gonzalez, a Gold Glove Award winner, booting a grounder hit to him on the first play of the contest. Kershaw got the next three outs without the ball leaving the infield. It looked as though the Dodgers might beat up Garcia from the start after Carl Crawford greeted him with a leadoff home run in the bottom of the first. But aside from another solo shot from Crawford in the third, Garcia gutted through a stellar performance, allowing just those two runs in six innings—which was more than the Braves could have hoped for.
Kershaw was his usual self, striking out four and allowing just one hit through the first three innings. Then Freddie Freeman led off the fourth with a single, and Evan Gattis grounded an easy double-play ball to Gonzalez. But Gonzalez threw the ball away. So instead of two out and the bases empty Kershaw was forced to face the Braves’ star catcher, Brian McCann, with no out and runners on first and second. He struck McCann out. But Chris Johnson singled in a run, and a ground-out from Andrelton Simmons tied the game. The score stayed even at two through six, and both managers pulled their starting pitchers.
Kershaw became the first pitcher to go six innings and give up no earned runs on three days’ rest since his teammate Josh Beckett did it in the 2003 World Series ten years earlier with the Marlins. But because of Gonzalez’s fluke errors, it didn’t look as though it would be enough. Ronald Belisario came in to pitch the seventh inning for the Dodgers and surrendered a triple and a single to give the Braves a 3–2 lead. Gonzalez had a chance to atone for his earlier mistakes in the bottom of the seventh, when he came up with two on and two out. He flied out to right. Despite Kershaw’s efforts, he couldn’t will the team to victory by himself. And when the Dodgers went to bat in the bottom of the eighth inning, it felt as if their season was on the line as well. The Braves were three outs from giving the ball to Craig Kimbrel, their excellent closer. If Los Angeles did not score in the eighth, the club would almost certainly have to fly back to Atlanta for a winner-take-all elimination game on the road.
Puig led off with a double. When he reached second base he slapped his hands together and threw his fist at the sky. Juan Uribe was up next. After staggering through his first two miserable years with the Dodgers, Uribe had worked hard to prepare for his final season under contract, and came into 2013 looking to somehow salvage his time in blue. “If you don’t play good people don’t remember you,” he said a month earlier. So the free-swinging Uribe stepped up to the plate looking to do something people would not forget. But Mattingly asked him to bunt. It was a strange call. The Dodgers needed only a run to tie the game, and Puig was fast enough to score from second on a single. Perhaps a better plan would have been to let the three men behind Puig try to get a hit to drive him in, rather than give the Braves an automatic out to advance him ninety feet. It was also head-scratching because Uribe had sacrificed only three times that season and once the year before. But Mattingly preferred Puig on third with one out to his being on second with no out, reasoning that a fly ball from Skip Schumaker could sacrifice him home. Uribe tried twice to get the bunt down and failed.
After taking the next two pitches to work the count to 2-and-2, Uribe waited for the next offering from Braves reliever David Carpenter. Kimbrel stood in the bullpen, furious. He had told his manager that since the club would be eliminated if they lost, he wanted to get the last six outs. Gonzalez’s decision to let Carpenter start the inning was defensible. The third-year man had been excellent for Atlanta in sixty-five innings that season, striking out seventy-four hitters with a 1.78 ERA. But once Puig made it to second base with no outs, Kimbrel wanted in the game. Brian McCann flashed a signal for Carpenter to bury a slider in the dirt, while Uribe stared out at the reliever, flicking his bat back and forth over his right shoulder. It was the worst possible moment in David Carpenter’s young life to hang one, but that’s what he did. The ball floated straight down the center of the plate parallel to the blue lettering on Uribe’s white jersey. Uribe unloaded, crushing the ball high into the Los Angeles night toward the Dodgers’ bullpen. When it landed just inside the left-field foul pole to give Los Angeles a 4–3 lead, the fifty-four thousand people who were in attendance that night all seemed to scream and bounce in unison. Uribe rounded the bases, touched home, and ran back to the dugout, where he was mobbed by teammates. Los Angeles faithful remained on their feet. It was the biggest hit by any Dodger since Kirk Gibson’s homer that won Game 1 of the 1988 World Series. Kimbrel stood in the bullpen with his hands on his hips and cursed. Kenley Jansen then struck out Jordan Schafer, Jason Heyward, and Justin Upton to end the game and send the Dodgers to the National League Championship Series.
After the game Kershaw returned to the locker room to find Sandy Koufax waiting for him. While his teammates hollered and sprayed champagne and beer around him, Kershaw embraced his idol. Uribe was the last Dodger to leave. Hours after his home run he was still in uniform, drenched in liquor, standing on the soaked carpet in his soggy socks, as if the moment he changed back into his street clothes the night would no longer be real. In a roller-coaster season when so many of these players struggled to exist in the same clubhouse, it was fitting that the team’s most popular player got the hit that put them in the National League Championship Series. “Juan has been, I think consensus, he’s probably been the most liked teammate we have,” Kershaw said after the game. “He’s always the same no matter what. You couldn’t tell if he’s one-for-thirty or thirty-for-thirty. The way he plays, I couldn’t be happier for him. I just love him to death.”
When Jansen recorded the final out, a relieved Mattingly hugged his coaches. What no one outside the coaching staff and front office knew was that when the Dodgers advanced to the National League Championship Series, Mattingly’s contract automatically vested for 2014. But there was no celebratory press conference. His players didn’t even know he would be back. The club made no announcement.
• • •
Mattingly assumed that silence meant he was out. In that way, whatever the Dodgers did versus the Cardinals wouldn’t matter to his future. Even though the Dodgers’ trip to the NLCS triggered a clause in his contract, all that meant was that the club would have to pay him for the 2014 season. They could give him that money and fire him. Yes, it would be harder for them to let go of the man who took them to their first World Series in twenty-five years if he accomplished that, but the lack of acknowledgment that his contract had vested stung him. After all, this was an organization that sent out regular press releases about national anthem singers and garden gnome giveaways. When the Dodgers flew to St. Louis to take on the Cardinals for the first two games of the NLCS, they did so with a manager who did not feel wanted.
For National League teams, the road to the World Series always seemed to go through St. Louis. In the past fourteen seasons, the Cardinals had made it to the NLCS eight times, and won World Series titles in 2006 and 2011. Their eleven world championships were most in the NL and second only to the Yankees. That the Cardinals were able to field championship-caliber teams year in and year out was remarkable, given their market size. The Dodgers had bullied their way to the National League Championship Series by spending well over $200 million on player salaries. The Cardinals paid their players about half what Los Angeles did. What the St. Louis starting nine lacked in talent they made up for in depth. They were so good at drafting and developing young players that they seemed invulnerable to injury. If a guy got hurt, the organization suffered minimally because it had no shortage of viable replacements. Magic Johnson stood on the cut of the Busch Stadium grass before Game 1, visibly anxious. “I’m nervous and I’m crazy and I’ve gotta sit in the stands and be more nervous and crazier,” said Johnson. “The Cardinals are the model. We want to build the same thing back in L.A.”
When Vin Scully described the inside of Busch Stadium as looking like an internal hemorrhage, he meant it with great affection. Scully deeply admired the Cardinals’ winning ways and loved to talk about how the organization had both the first female owner and the first infielder who wore glasses. Since Kershaw had pitched the final game of the NLDS and needed to rest, the Dodgers sent Greinke to the mound for Game 1. St. Louis countered with young Joe Kelly, who had pitched fewer innings in his career than Kershaw had that season. But Cardinal youth weren’t wired with the same tremors as young players on other teams. They seemed bred from birth not only to expect to play in maximum pressure situations, but to thrive.
After the public address announcer said Carl Crawford’s name, Kelly stood on the mound holding the ball with both hands and breathed in the weight of the moment. Then he fired strikes one, two, and three. Crawford walked back to the dugout. Mark Ellis stepped into the batter’s box next to polite applause from St. Louis fans. Quiet and midwestern nice, Ellis did not have much in common with most of the better-known Dodgers. Whether or not they were arrogant, there was no denying that Los Angeles played with a panache that bothered opponents. The Cardinals preferred the kind of hard-nosed, head-down, aw-shucks baseball that had long been glorified as the “right way” to play the game. They were like the Diamondbacks, but better. The 2013 NLCS was more than just a battle for a spot in the World Series: it was a culture war.
Ellis singled.
Since the Cardinals had home-field advantage, the Dodgers would have to win at least one game on foreign soil to take the seven-game series. Swiping Game 1 with Kershaw on deck to pitch Game 2 would be ideal, and doing it by drawing blood in the first inning to knock the optimism out of the home crowd would be even better. Hanley Ramirez walked up to the plate looking to drive in Ellis. Ramirez had scorched the ball during the NLDS, going 8-for-16 with four doubles, a triple, and a home run. His six extra-base hits tied a playoff record for most ever in a National League Division Series. To say he had enjoyed a great year at the plate was an understatement. Ramirez’s 1.040 OPS was the best in major-league history for a shortstop with at least 300 at-bats. It was also tops in the NL, and second-best overall, behind only Detroit’s Miguel Cabrera (1.078). Had he played in enough games, he might have been the National League’s MVP. And unlike Puig, Ramirez didn’t rattle. Cardinal pitchers knew it.
Teams in the NL Central had developed a reputation for pitching inside to brush hitters off the plate. In 2013, the four NL teams that hit opposing batters the most were in the league’s Central Division, with Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, and St. Louis going 1-2-3, and the Cubs taking fourth. It wasn’t that they were necessarily trying to hit opponents on purpose. A good way to gain an advantage over a hitter was to buzz him with an inside fastball to move him off the plate. If that player got hit, well, so be it. The free base was annoying, but it was the cost of the strategy. Plus, many of the hit batsmen were dangerous sluggers that opposing teams wanted to pitch around anyway. The approach was economical, too: hitting a guy cost only one pitch, but walking him required four.
It’s not often that the most important pitch of a seven-game series is thrown in the first inning of the first game. But that’s what happened. After getting ahead of Ramirez in the count 1-2, Kelly drilled him in the left flank with a 95 mph fastball that ricocheted off his body so hard it sounded as though it had hit his bat and cracked it. Ramirez reeled away in agony, and after talking with Dodgers trainer Sue Falsone, walked to first base. At first it was difficult to tell how badly Ramirez was injured. He had been so brittle during the season—playing in just eighty-six games—that every time he ran or threw or swung he seemed to wince. Each trip around the bases was an adventure. With Ellis and Ramirez on first and second with one out, Gonzalez and Puig both struck out to end the threat. Ramirez remained in the game, hopeful he had just sustained a bone bruise. But as the innings wore on, the sharp pain near his skin radiated deeper, through his bones and into his lung. Each breath he took felt like a mistake.
Greinke mowed down the first six Cardinal hitters he faced, allowing only one ball to leave the infield. Carl Crawford doubled to lead off the third inning for the Dodgers, and Ramirez came to bat again after Ellis grounded out. This time Kelly walked him. And then, unable to locate the strike zone, he walked Adrian Gonzalez to load the bases for Puig. With the count 2-1, Puig grounded into a force-out at home. Then Uribe came up with two out and slapped a first-pitch sinkerball up the middle to drive in Ramirez and Gonzalez. Those two runs looked like they might be enough for Greinke, who took the mound in the bottom of the third and struck out Cardinals third baseman David Freese and shortstop Pete Kozma to start the inning. But Kelly worked a two-out hit, and leadoff hitter Matt Carpenter walked, bringing up the dangerous Carlos Beltran with two on and two out. Beltran whacked a changeup from Grienke toward the deepest part of center field. Andre Ethier sprinted back to the fence, jumped, and missed it. Two runs scored. Ethier was playing out of position, but the Dodgers had had little choice but to put him in center with Matt Kemp injured and unable to play. By October, even the players who weren’t on the disabled list were battling some kind of nagging injury. For Ethier it was shin splints. Perhaps the most amazing thing about these Dodgers was that they were playing for the National League title without a true center fielder on their roster. An excellent defender would have caught Beltran’s fly ball. The game was tied 2–2.
It stayed that way for ten more innings.
Greinke went eight full frames, giving up two runs and striking out ten. He became the first pitcher to strike out double-digit Cardinal hitters in a playoff game since 1944—an extraordinary feat considering St. Louis had participated in more postseason games in the last sixty-nine years than any other team in the National League. In his two playoff appearances with the Dodgers so far, Greinke had given the club fourteen innings while surrendering just four runs, debunking any lingering concerns about his anxiety disorder.
With the contest tied at two in the eighth, Adrian Gonzalez led off with a walk. Because Gonzalez represented the potential winning run and also possessed the slowest feet of any Dodger player, Mattingly opted to have the speedy Dee Gordon run for him and substituted Gonzalez out of the game. It was a questionable move: Ramirez had struck out to end the previous inning, and the shortstop was in obvious pain. Removing Gonzalez from a tie game meant that if the contest went to extra innings, the Dodgers’ lineup would be without its cleanup hitter on an evening when its number-three hitter could hardly swing a bat. Gordon was fast, but the Cardinals’ catcher, Yadier Molina, was the toughest backstop to run on in the league. While it was possible that Gordon could successfully steal second off him, Mattingly didn’t send him, which all but negated the value of subbing him for Gonzalez.
Some Dodger players could not believe Gonzalez was being removed from a tie game. It didn’t help their frustration when Gordon was erased a batter later after Puig grounded into a fielder’s choice. Mattingly put Michael Young into the game for Gonzalez at first base, and it was clear he was quickly becoming the skipper’s favorite bat off the bench. The Dodgers had claimed the veteran Young off waivers from the Phillies in late August, and he had fit in well with his teammates right away. Young had never won a championship during his fourteen seasons in the big leagues, though he did finish as a runner-up on the Texas Rangers team that had their hearts broken by these Cardinals in the 2011 World Series. Texas had been one strike away in back-to-back innings from its first-ever title in Game 6, only to lose to furious comebacks by St. Louis.
Young was dealt to Philadelphia before the 2013 season. As he was nearing the end of his career, the thirty-six-year-old infielder told the Phillies he didn’t want to be traded again. But when the Dodgers gauged his interest, the situation was too good to pass up. Young had been born and raised in Los Angeles County, and grew up a Dodger fan. What could be better than winning a ring with his hometown team? Beating the Cardinals to do it, perhaps. Heading into the series with St. Louis, Young was perhaps the most outwardly animated Dodger; he sent many inspirational expletive-laden messages to a group-text chain of eight or so teammates in hopes of firing them up.
Batting in Gonzalez’s spot, Young got his chance to be the hero in the top of the tenth inning. After Carl Crawford flied out to right, Mark Ellis tripled, becoming the first Dodger to make it to third base since the third inning. The Cardinals then walked Ramirez intentionally again to set up a potential double play but also because whether he was injured or not, they didn’t want any part of him. With one out and runners on first and third, all Young had to do to give Los Angeles a lead was hit a fly ball deep enough to score Ellis. With that in mind, he got under a pitch from Cardinals closer Trevor Rosenthal—who was in his second inning of work—and drove it to right field. Carlos Beltran caught the ball, and Ellis broke toward home. Dodgers third-base coach Tim Wallach knew Beltran had a strong arm in right, but he also knew that Puig, who was due up next, had failed to hit the ball out of the infield in four earlier attempts that night, so this might be the Dodgers’ best chance to score. Ellis sprinted for home. Beltran threw him out by an eyelash.
Young got another chance in the top of the twelfth. Crawford led off the inning with a single and Ellis bunted him over to second. The sacrifice opened up a free base to put Ramirez on at first, which is what the Cardinals did, avoiding the Dodgers’ best hitter again. With runners at first and second and one out, Young grounded into a double play. Then in the bottom of the thirteenth, Beltran singled home the winning run. The Cardinals took a 1–0 series lead.
‘That was probably one that got away,” Mattingly said afterward. And who knows how it would have turned out had Gonzalez remained in the lineup? Gonzalez led the Dodgers in runs batted in, which usually didn’t say much about a hitter, except that in Gonzalez’s case it did because he was much better at hitting with runners on base than with nobody on. Batting in his place, Young had stranded four runners. That hurt. But what hurt worse was the sight of Hanley Ramirez sitting at his locker after the game, doubled over his knees with his forehead resting in his hands. For almost ten minutes, he did not move or speak. This was not good: as Ramirez went, so went the Dodgers. They had suffered countless calamities during this crazy season and they had survived. After everything they had overcome, would their dream year end on a hit-by-pitch? No one knew whether Ramirez would play again. And no one knew whether Puig would start hitting. The only certain thing was Kershaw. He got the ball for Game 2.
• • •
The day began with Ramirez penciled in the Dodgers lineup. But minutes before Game 2 started, the ailing shortstop was scratched. Though X-rays came back negative, he was unable to swing a bat because of the pain in his side. The training staff offered to give him a Toradol injection, but Ramirez was terrified of needles. A powerful anti-inflammatory painkiller, Toradol had a reputation for keeping broken athletes on the field when there was no time to rest. Dallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo—who often dealt with rib and back fractures—had relied on a weekly shot of the drug to save his career. During Game 3 of the NLDS, Carl Crawford had crashed into the stands to catch a foul ball and landed on his shoulder with his feet over his head. He received a shot after the game. The following day, he homered in his first two at-bats. Afterward, when he was asked about the pain he laughed and said he didn’t feel much of anything.
Ramirez did not win any friends in the locker room by nixing the painkilling shot. He was the best hitter on the team and the Dodgers’ offense had gone limp without him; the same hitters who hung thirteen runs on the Braves in a playoff game had failed to score one run in the previous ten innings. Whether it was fair to expect Ramirez to swing a bat through pain, this was the playoffs, and it was difficult to imagine champions like Tom Brady, Kobe Bryant, or Michael Jordan asking out of a postseason lineup unless they were facing limb amputation. Dodger players weren’t happy with Ethier, either. After he said he couldn’t go in Game 2 because his shin hurt, his replacement in center field, Skip Schumaker, took him aside and chewed him out. When Ramirez was scratched, the club still believed his rib was merely bruised. A later MRI would show a hairline fracture.
Opposing Kershaw was Michael Wacha, a twenty-two-year-old rookie with a nifty changeup who had made just nine regular-season starts in the major leagues. Wacha stood on the mound and wiggled his limbs to stretch all six foot six of himself with a detached calmness, as if he had no idea he was pitching the biggest game of his life. What he lacked in experience he made up for in confidence. During his final start of the regular season, he came within one out of no-hitting the Nationals. In his next start, in Game 4 of the NLDS versus the Pirates, he saved the Cardinals from elimination by pitching seven-and-a-third innings of one-run ball, striking out nine. Still, no one thought Wacha would best Kershaw, except maybe Wacha himself.
Wacha flummoxed Dodger hitters from the start. Figuring Kershaw would throw him a first-pitch fastball, the Cardinals’ leadoff hitter, Matt Carpenter, ambushed him by swinging hard at his first offering of the game. He tripled. But Kershaw stranded Carpenter at third by not allowing the next three St. Louis batters to hit the ball out of the infield. He retired the side in order in the second, third, and fourth, too. The pitcher’s duel was on.
Wacha was just as dominant. He set Los Angeles down in order in the second, third, and fourth; the Dodgers had managed to hit only a few lazy fly balls. When Puig struck out for the second time to end the fourth inning, it was clear Yadier Molina was in his head. Molina had been playing Puig like a marionette in the series. When Puig looked for a ball up, Molina called for one down. When Puig looked outside, Molina went in. The Cardinals’ catcher had company in Puig’s psyche. The drug cartel that helped smuggle Puig to the United States was always around and asking for more money. It was unclear how much they would need to be paid to go away forever, but those close to Puig felt the extortion might never end. What could he do? If he didn’t pay them what they wanted, they threatened to kill him and his family. His mother worried constantly. Opposing fans hated Puig for being a cocky, rich punk—but in reality he was nearly broke. Puig had signed a seven-year contract worth $42 million in the summer of 2012, and received $12 million up front as a bonus. After taxes, most of that money had gone toward paying off the people who had orchestrated his escape from Cuba, as well as agents, lawyers, and managers. Plus he was being sued by one of the men he defected with.
And then there were the new friends who were ripping him off. One of them asked to borrow his Lincoln, and Puig said sure, because he always did. Unbeknownst to Puig, his friend took the car to get expensive work done to it to make it flashier, then slapped Puig with the bill. Puig may have been naïve but he wasn’t stupid: the figure sounded too high. His security team got rid of the friend after that. Puig’s financial troubles were not uncommon among young ballplayers. But his recklessness, and the fact that he went from an unknown kid to a superstar overnight in the country’s second-biggest market, amplified the tension. Everyone wanted a piece of him. It weighed on all he did.
The Cardinals scored an unearned run in the bottom of the fifth off a double, a passed ball, and a sacrifice fly to take a 1–0 lead. Kershaw led off the top of the sixth with a single to left and clapped toward the dugout after he reached first base. Crawford followed with a ground ball that took forever to skid into the glove of Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter. Because he had to rush to catch the speedy Crawford at first, Carpenter chucked the ball into a camera well. Kershaw took third and Crawford trotted over to second. With nobody out, runners at second and third, and the meat of the Dodgers’ order coming up, it looked as if the club might score its first run in its last sixteen playoff innings. Some in the Cardinals organization noted that the Dodgers had an advantage going into the series because Mark McGwire, the club’s former hitting coach, was intimately acquainted with the strengths and weaknesses of St. Louis hitters. But McGwire’s intel didn’t matter if the Dodgers couldn’t score. Through the first nineteen innings of the NLCS, L.A.’s potent offense had managed just two runs. “Two and a half billion dollars,” a team executive said later. “And two fucking runs.”
The Cardinals drew their infield toward the grass for a possible play at the plate. Mark Ellis stepped into the box just needing to hit a fly ball deep enough for Kershaw to tag up and tie the game. He took a ball from Wacha, then popped up the second pitch he saw to Carpenter. One out. Adrian Gonzalez was up next. With one out and first base open, Molina called for Wacha to issue the first intentional walk of his career, loading the bases for Puig. Although the Dodgers’ right fielder had pummeled Atlanta pitching in the Divisional Series, going 8-for-17 and accounting for more runs (5) than strikeouts (4), the Championship Series had been a disaster for him. Puig had gone a miserable 0-for-6 in Game 1, leaving a game-high seven runners on base. He had struck out in his first two at-bats in Game 2. But with the bases loaded and the Dodgers down 1–0, the young Cuban could give his club the lead and change the momentum of the series with one swing.
Wacha surprised Puig with a first-pitch 95 mph fastball down the middle of the plate. Puig was late and swung through it so violently that he fell down to one knee. Wacha threw another fastball that nicked the bottom of the zone for a called strike two. Puig thought that pitch was low, and he turned around and glared at home-plate umpire Mark Carlson. The crowd got even louder. Puig took the next pitch, and the next and the next to work the count full. With the bases loaded and nowhere to put Puig, Wacha threw a fastball in the dirt. Puig started to swing, then tried to stop himself. It was too late. He struck out with a feeble stab at the ball, then began the slow walk back to the dugout with his head down. He descended the steps past Mattingly, turned right down the tunnel that led to the batting cages, collapsed against the wall, and sobbed. His new translator, Roman Barinas, found him huddled against the wall just as Michael Young passed him on his way back to the dugout from the indoor batting cages. Young, who had been preparing to pinch-hit if necessary, leaned in to console Puig. “It’s not over yet, we need you,” Young said. Barinas translated. “You’re gonna get another chance.” The Dodgers trailed by only a run but it didn’t matter. Puig had come to St. Louis to show the people who wanted to see him fail that he could lead the Dodgers to the World Series. And now he was humiliated.
While this was going on, Uribe came up to bat with the bases loaded and two out. He struck out. Puig dried his tears and jogged back out to his position in right. The next nine Dodger hitters went down in order, save for a Nick Punto single. Puig struck out looking in the ninth. Kershaw had been brilliant again, allowing two hits and no earned runs in six innings. Desperate to generate offense, Mattingly had pulled him for a pinch hitter in the top of the seventh after he’d thrown just seventy-two pitches. Kershaw removed his cap and stood alone with his hands on his hips and watched as Young hit for him. He flied out to end the inning. In nineteen playoff innings in 2013, Kershaw had given up one earned run. Despite managing only two hits in Game 2, the Cardinals won to take a commanding 2–0 NLCS lead. The series headed back to Los Angeles for Games 3, 4, and 5.
If the Dodgers could win at least two of those games, the clubs would be forced to return to St. Louis for Games 6 and 7. But after the brutal Game 2 loss, even pushing the series to five games seemed like a tall order. The Dodgers had already burned Greinke and Kershaw, while St. Louis had held on to its ace. In Game 3, Hyun-Jin Ryu would face off against the superb Adam Wainwright, the only pitcher in the National League who had thrown more innings than Kershaw that season. After Game 2, Hanley Ramirez sat quietly at his locker with his shirt off and two large bandages covering his left side. A large contingent of media gathered around Puig’s locker, waiting for him to appear from the showers. Of the sixty or so people in the room, the only person making any noise was Matt Kemp, who was riding around on a scooter chirping “meep meep.” Puig emerged ten minutes later to face reporters with wet, red eyes.
• • •
If Don Mattingly was worried about being fired, at least he knew he had one powerful ally in his corner. Before Game 3 in Los Angeles, Mark Walter and his daughter, Samantha, approached him on the field during batting practice at Dodger Stadium and threw their arms around him. If the front office wanted to get rid of Mattingly, they would have to come up with reasons compelling enough to trump Walter’s obvious affection for the man. Though he valued the opinion of others in the organization, Walter was the self-described decider-in-chief. He would ultimately make the call.
Hyun-Jin Ryu had played it safe against Atlanta in the NLDS, and his conservative approach led to his removal after three innings. He arrived at Dodger Stadium before Game 3 of the NLCS vowing not to make the same mistake. Rather than conserve energy so he could stick in the game longer, Ryu signaled the sense of urgency the entire team felt by pumping a 95 mph fastball to Carlos Beltran in the first inning. It was the hardest pitch he’d thrown all season. Ryu cruised through the first four innings and did not give up a hit until the fifth. The life on his fastball caught the Cardinals flat-footed; in the seven innings Ryu pitched, St. Louis was able to muster only three singles and a walk. Nobody made it to third base.
As Cardinal bats remained cold, Dodger bats heated up. Ramirez returned to the lineup without the Toradol injection, and it sparked the club. Despite his broken rib, the shortstop singled in the first, hit a fly ball deep enough to advance Mark Ellis to third in his next at-bat, and beat out an infield single that plated a run in the eighth. Puig snapped out of his funk, too. After striking out looking in the second inning, he tripled in a run in the fourth. When the ball left his bat he assumed he had hit it out of the park, so he flipped his bat, raised his arms in celebration, and stopped to watch it fly. Upon realizing it bounced short of the fence and remained in play, Puig sprinted to third and celebrated again. This did not sit well with those who thought he was a hot dog. Puig didn’t care. He had been mortified to tears during the previous game and probably would have executed a front flip on third base now if it had occurred to him. Brian Wilson and Kenley Jansen closed out Ryu’s gem, and the Dodgers took Game 3 to crawl back into the series, besting Adam Wainwright 3–0.
The Dodgers’ coaching staff thought about moving Greinke and Kershaw up a day to pitch on short rest for Games 4 and 5 but quickly nixed that idea, in part because they didn’t want to push Greinke, but also because they didn’t want to find themselves in a situation where Ricky Nolasco had to pitch an elimination game on the road. So Nolasco took the mound in Game 4, and it marked the first time he had pitched in more than two weeks. Nolasco looked as uncomfortable as Ryu had appeared confident the day before. He got through the Cardinals lineup the first time just fine, but fell apart the second time through the order, giving up a single, a double, and then a mammoth home run to Cardinals left fielder Matt Holliday that gave St. Louis a 3–0 lead. The Dodgers battled back in the bottom of the fourth, with RBI singles from Puig and A. J. Ellis. With two on and one out, Mattingly pinch-hit Schumaker for Nolasco. Schumaker grounded into a double play. The Dodgers never got another good chance after that and dropped the contest 4–2, pushing them to a loss away from elimination. After the game, Ramirez said he was in way more pain than he was the day before. His discomfort was obvious; after fouling a pitch off in the first inning he grabbed his side and bent down in agony in the batter’s box. He struck out three times.
The mood in the Dodger locker room was glum, but Mattingly told reporters he wasn’t nervous. “I’ve got one of the best pitchers in the world going tomorrow,” he said of Greinke. But Greinke was antsy. He had never pitched twice against a team in the same series in his career, and his restless mind worked through all the possibilities of how Cardinal hitters might try to attack him. “They’re going to make an adjustment,” he said before Game 5. “And you’ve got to be faster than them at it.” But being quick with countermoves was going to be difficult. Of all the teams Greinke had faced in his ten-year career, he felt the Twins and the Cardinals adjusted the fastest.
Ramirez still hadn’t taken the Toradol shot and his status for Game 5 remained in question. Even though the Dodgers had Greinke and Kershaw lined up to potentially even the series, the players seemed nervous before Game 5 and barely spoke to each other. Ramirez sat in the dugout and a media scrum formed around him. “I owe it to the city and to the fans to play today,” he said. It seemed to make people feel better, as if having an injured Ramirez in the lineup was better than no Ramirez at all. But by the seventh inning he would be pulled from the game and replaced by Nick Punto because he could no longer move. When Greinke took the mound in the first inning he had the same uneasy look in his eye as Nolasco the day before. His discomfort was made even more obvious by the amount of time he took between pitches, which was much longer than usual. The Cardinals jumped on him, loading the bases with a single, a walk, and another single before many fans had made their way in from the parking lot. Their big power-hitting lefty Matt Adams came up to the plate in a dream scenario: with no out and the bases loaded. Greinke outsmarted him and employed the strategy Kershaw used in Game 1 of the NLDS to wiggle out of the jam. Of the nine pitches the first three St. Louis hitters saw, eight were fastballs. Greinke started Adams with a fastball, and Adams took it for a called strike. It was the only heater he would get. With Adams looking fastball all the way because there was nowhere to put him, Greinke used three curveballs and a changeup to fool him, striking him out on a pitch in the dirt. He then got Molina to ground into an inning-ending double play with another curveball. As Greinke settled down, Dodger hitters stayed hot. Crawford and A. J. Ellis each homered, and Gonzalez homered twice. Greinke went seven and allowed two runs, and Los Angeles won 6–4 to push the series back to St. Louis.
The Dodgers had never overcome a 3–2 game deficit in a postseason series in club history. But based on the way the guys were goofing around on the field before Game 6, one might have assumed they were up 3–2. After the Dodgers won Game 3, Adam Wainwright described some of the club’s on-field celebration antics as “Mickey Mouse.” A Cardinal fan Photoshopped a picture of Gonzalez wearing Mickey Mouse ears on Dumbo the elephant ride and called it Dumbo and Dumber. He turned the picture into a poster and made another poster comparing Puig to a squirrel. Gonzalez and Puig saw the posters during batting practice and loved them. They ran over to the fan, signed the artwork, and happily posed for pictures. Gonzalez had worn a Mickey Mouse T-shirt the first day he showed up to Dodger Stadium after being traded from Boston. He had come full circle. It was an odd scene, but the Dodgers felt good for a few reasons. First, they had Kershaw taking the mound. Second, the Cardinals had coughed up a 3–1 NLCS lead to the Giants the year before and San Francisco went on to win the World Series. The possibility of history repeating itself weighed on St. Louis heavily. “We got Kersh going tonight, then in Game Sevens anything goes,” Dodger players said to reporters and to each other. And they believed it. With Kershaw on the hill there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that the series was going seven. And then it would be all hands on deck.
The Dodgers were facing Michael Wacha again, but they felt they had a better shot at getting to him this time with Ethier and Ramirez back in the lineup. Ramirez thought the off day between Games 5 and 6 would help his rib cage feel better, but it had the opposite effect. When Game 6 started the temperature in St. Louis was fifty-two degrees—thirty degrees colder than it had been at first pitch for Game 5 in L.A. The chill made his ribs hurt worse. The Dodgers’ training staff had tried everything to ease Ramirez’s pain and gift him some mobility: ice, steam, ultrasound—to no avail. Ramirez finally acquiesced to the needle.
It was fitting that the Dodgers were entrusting their season to Kershaw. At just two wins away from a National League pennant, Los Angeles was the closest it had been to a World Series berth in twenty-five years. When the Dodgers made the NLCS in 2008 and 2009 the Phillies needed only five games to eliminate them. Game 6 started out on a promising note, with Crawford beating out an infield single. But Mark Ellis grounded into a double play, and after getting ahead in the count 3-0 Gonzalez tapped out to third. If Cardinal fans were worried about a redo of the previous year’s collapse, it was perhaps a blessing that Wacha was a rookie and those ghosts didn’t occupy his psyche.
Puig came up to bat with the bases empty and two out in the top of the second. He lowered his bat, carved a cross into the dirt just outside the batter’s box, and took a deep breath. With the game still scoreless and no men to drive in, he was looking to untie the contest with one swing. Puig had posted one of the best rookie seasons ever and was now one of the most famous players in the game. He knew that. He also knew that his brazen style of play inspired his detractors to hate him as much as his fans loved him. He was the most polarizing player since Barry Bonds. But unlike Bonds, who grew up in MLB locker rooms when his father played and learned how to isolate himself in a bubble of indifference, Puig had not mastered the art of self-protection. He believed that he could win Game 6 by himself. But Wacha had found the hole in Puig’s swing. After falling behind 2-0 Wacha threw Puig a high fastball that he swung at and missed. Then, he threw him another high fastball that he fouled off. With the fifth pitch of the at-bat he struck him out looking with yet another fastball. Puig stepped back over the cross and walked back to the dugout.
The only Dodger who could will the team to Game 7 was perhaps Kershaw himself, and he wouldn’t have had it any other way. Two hundred days earlier he had taken the mound on the opening day of this wild season, and he had shut the Giants out and hit a home run. He had won the National League’s ERA crown for the third consecutive year by posting a minuscule 1.83 ERA, the best mark for any pitcher in either league since Pedro Martinez finished the 2000 season with a 1.74 ERA for the Red Sox. He was weeks away from winning his second Cy Young Award before his twenty-sixth birthday. He possessed the best slider in the game, and a top-three curveball. His stuff was as good as his karma. For all those reasons, what happened next was shocking.
Kershaw collapsed.
The first sign that Kershaw was fighting an unusual battle came in the bottom of the second when, after getting the first two hitters to pop up, he gave up a single to Shane Robinson and then threw two wild pitches to advance Robinson to third. In the Division Series, he salvaged a night when his fastball sailed on him by sticking his curveball and slider for strikes. But he seemed to have trouble spinning the curve in the cold, and it failed him. He watched, helpless, as one of his most potent weapons abandoned him when he needed it most. With Robinson on third, he went back to his fastball and struck out Cardinals shortstop Pete Kozma to end the inning.
Cardinals second baseman Matt Carpenter would go 1-for-4 in Game 6. No one would remember the three times he made an out. With one out in the third, Carpenter took ball one, then fouled off seven straight pitches. Left-handed batters had hit .165 against Kershaw that season, with a .253 slugging percentage. He had faced 171 lefties, and struck out 71 of them. Because of these numbers, opposing managers went out of their way to stack their lineups with righties against him (though their odds were just slightly improved). With each hack Carpenter took, it became more and more evident that something was wrong with Kershaw. He simply could not put Carpenter away. On the eleventh pitch of the at-bat, Carpenter doubled. Carlos Beltran followed that up with an RBI single. Kershaw rebounded to strike out Matt Holliday, but then gave up singles to Molina and David Freese. With the score 2–0 and two runners on, Kershaw walked Matt Adams on a 3-2 pitch that probably should have been called strike three. Then, with the bases loaded, Shane Robinson smacked a single to right, which Puig threw away. The Cardinals became the first team to bat around on Kershaw in an inning in four years.
It was only four runs, and L.A.’s potent lineup had eighteen outs left to match that total. But after watching their ace get knocked around, Dodger hitters looked as if they’d just walked away from a bus wreck. Michael Wacha didn’t worry about them anyway. The rookie starter was brilliant, scattering just two hits and a walk over seven shutout innings. It was the line many expected Kershaw to post, and it demonstrated the beauty and the agony of the game. Kershaw remained on the mound after his torturous third inning but was pulled after giving up hits to the first three batters he faced in the fifth. It was his shortest start not related to the flu in over three seasons. When it was all over, he was charged with seven runs on ten hits. In a season of improbable highs and lows, the impossible had happened. The Dodgers went out with a whimper, losing 9–0.
After the game, Kershaw stood at his locker with his arms folded in front of him and his eyes fixed straight ahead. He maintained his composure when he spoke, but when he paused to consider a question his lips constricted into an upside-down horseshoe. He made no excuses. He had pitched poorly when his team needed him most, and there was nothing left to say. He had failed, for the first time in his professional career. And he had done so in the biggest game of his life. He would blame himself, but he was not the only Dodger who had failed. With their season on the line, their vaunted offense had mustered two hits against a pitcher who had spent most of his season in the minors. As players dressed in silence, Mark Ellis stood in front of his locker and shook his head. “This team is too good to be done,” he said. “There’s way too much talent in this room for it to be over.” The Cardinals were headed to the World Series. The best team money could buy was headed home.
• • •
When the Dodgers sent out a press release announcing a year-end media session the Monday after the club was eliminated from the playoffs, reporters arrived at Dodger Stadium expecting nothing more than clichéd sound bites to sum up a disappointing end to a championship run. It had been a surreal season, but one of the reasons Mattingly had hung on to his job when the team flailed was that he was a man who chose his words carefully. He toed the company line even better than his mentor, Joe Torre, and for the most part resisted saying anything that would draw attention to the club’s personality clashes. When he and his coaching staff disagreed with the front office over how to discipline Yasiel Puig, he said nothing about it to the press. When the Dodgers didn’t announce that his contract for 2014 had automatically vested he kept his mouth shut. But perhaps trotting out Mattingly to answer questions about his future with the team when he still had no idea whether he would be back was the final insult.
Three days after the Dodgers were eliminated, Mattingly took his seat on a dais next to Ned Colletti. The interview room was jammed with so many media members that many were forced to lean against walls. Though Mattingly and Colletti sat in identical chairs behind the same table, there was an awkward distance between the men, as if a third person had been invited to sit between them but failed to show up. Mattingly sat with his arms crossed and his back turned slightly away from Colletti. It was unusual to see the skipper field questions in jeans and reading glasses. Baseball is the only of America’s big four sports where the club’s coaches wear uniforms like the players. Perhaps wearing clothes without the word DODGERS across his chest gave Mattingly the psychological distance he needed to speak out.
Colletti opened the session by giving a positive review of the season. “This team went from at one point being nine and a half games out and twelve games under .500 to win the West by eleven,” he said. “We beat Atlanta in the first round—a very good team—and came two wins from going to the World Series. I think it was quite a remarkable season.”
When it was Mattingly’s turn to talk, a reporter asked him about his job status.
“My option vested once we beat Atlanta,” Mattingly revealed to a room of reporters who had no idea. “That doesn’t mean I’ll be back.” He continued: “I love it here. But I don’t want to be anywhere where you’re not wanted.”
His words stunned the room. The new ownership group had, for the most part, been pitch-perfect in its two seasons running the team. But it had made its first major misstep: underestimating Don Mattingly.
Regardless of his perceived tactical deficiencies, Mattingly had taken a room full of pernicious egos that sat in last place at the season’s midway point to within two wins of the World Series. Had Hanley Ramirez not been neutralized by a fastball to the ribs the Dodgers might have won the whole thing. He kept his cool when the habitually tardy Puig turned a deaf ear to him. Another manager might have leaked stories about how impossible the kid was to coach to make himself look better. But when Mattingly had the chance to criticize Puig, he pointed out, time and again, everything his right fielder had been through even to get to Los Angeles. He called Puig a good kid. And he had done all of this as a lame-duck manager, knowing he was hiding the team’s inner turmoil from the public when he wasn’t sure if management had his back. Even if ownership agreed to let him return to manage for one more season, Mattingly told friends he would rather leave than work on a one-year contract again and have to answer questions after every two-game losing streak about whether he thought he would get fired. “This has been a frustrating, tough year, honestly,” he said.
Colletti sat and listened while Mattingly spoke and appeared nervous that Mattingly was lumping him in with the people who perhaps did not want him back. “I hired Donnie, and I’ve been supportive of him all the way through,” said Colletti. “Even in April, May, and June.”
So if Colletti wanted Mattingly back, as he claimed, and Mark Walter was obviously a fan, then who wanted Mattingly gone? Stan Kasten was not present for Mattingly’s press conference, but he couldn’t have been happy with what was said. What Kasten valued most was control, and his soldier had gone rogue. The rest of the Dodgers’ coaching staff was also at Dodger Stadium that day for organizational meetings. They watched Mattingly’s press conference on a television in a room just down the hall. When it was over, Mattingly left the stage and joined them. They took turns high-fiving him.
The next day, Mattingly flew home to Indiana without resolving whether he would be back in 2014. Kasten flew to Chicago to meet with Walter. Mattingly’s calculated risk turned out to be smart. Even if the front office wanted him gone, Mark Walter, king of common sense, would require someone to come up with the name of a man who could do a better job under the same circumstances. It was easy to second-guess Mattingly’s game management, but far more difficult to find someone else who could handle that locker room. Puig wasn’t going anywhere. Matt Kemp probably wasn’t, either, at least not before the 2014 season began. Next year, the Dodgers figured to enter camp with the same four outfielders, each expecting to start. It was not easy to manage these personalities and there were no obvious outside candidates to take Mattingly’s place.
So Mattingly went home and waited for a phone call. The day after his press conference, the Dodgers announced the firing of his bench coach, Trey Hillman. Two weeks later, with his job status still up in the air, Mattingly was named runner-up for National League Manager of the Year.
The following day, Clayton Kershaw earned his second Cy Young Award, collecting twenty-nine of the thirty first-place votes.
• • •
That blockbuster trade between Los Angeles and Boston a year earlier did propel one team to glory—but not the Dodgers. Thanks to L.A.’s willingness to take on hundreds of millions in salary commitment, the Red Sox used their newfound financial freedom to build a team that won the American League pennant in 2013. Then they beat the Cardinals to win the World Series.
Just before the Red Sox hoisted that trophy, Dodger players packed up their lockers ahead of a long off-season. Yasiel Puig was one of the last to leave the stadium. On his way to the elevator, a reporter asked him through a translator if, now that it was over, he would like to talk about all the crazy things that had happened during his incredible rookie season, to separate fact from fiction once and for all. He smiled. “In twenty years we can sit down and I’ll tell you everything,” he said in perfect English.