If this is the best Game 7 you've ever seen in the greatest World Series you've ever seen, there's no consolation in finishing second.
The prospect may emerge, if it ever does, in the coming days and years and controversy will follow.
But what a baseball ride it has been – not just this Blue Jays season, but the last 10 days of shock, skill and exuberance of the World Series.
A series of plot twists and changes, a great game with an unfortunate but fitting ending: a series like this can't end in the usual way.
Through 10 innings Saturday night, the Blue Jays were either leading or tied with the Los Angeles Dodgers and appeared headed for their first championship in 32 years. The Dodgers led only once, in the 11th inning on Will Smith's home run. The only clue they'll need.
The home run that made them back-to-back champions.
But before that, it was a night to cherish, remember, question, debate and marvel at the talents of some of baseball's best players. It was the seventh game itself that was like that.
Bo and Vlad were great
Let's start where most Blue Jays things always start, with Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette. Guerrero, who has been through the playoffs for years, brought his glove and hand to Saturday night's game. He had impressive fielding performances in the first, fourth, seventh and 10th innings.
This is a good month for a first baseman. It was just a night for Vlady Jr.who was one step away from the title of “Most Valuable Player of the Series.”
His great friend, Beau Bichette, also turned heads in Game 7 in a completely different way. He started the second inning with a walk, hit a home run off Shohei Ohtani in the third inning (the last pitch Ohtani threw), hit another single in the ninth, a line drive in the fifth, all on one leg.
He didn't just hit a three-run home run in the third inning, he watched the ball leave the park. He admired it. There was no tossing of the bat, just a confident flick of the wrist and release.
Here's a look at what we can do even without being able to run or move much.
The three-run lead held until the ninth inning when journeyman Miguel Rojas grounded Jeff Hoffman to tie the game 4-4.
In the series, Toronto outshot Los Angeles 34–26, committed no errors amid the Dodgers' many errors and wild pitches, hit .269 to .203 against Los Angeles, had a 3.21 earned run average to the Dodgers' 3.95.
Did the best team lose the Series?
Seven games almost always determine the best team in a series. In this case, one can vehemently argue that the best team in the Series lost.
And that's only part of the story.
The people involved – there are so many places to go. World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto won two games as a starter, one inning as a reliever, was the winning pitcher in games six and seven of the series, and became the first three-game series winner in 24 years.
Ohtani didn't get off to a good start in Game 7. In fact, he seemed to be out of order almost from the start. He struggled to throw strikes before giving up a three-run shot to Bichette that made it 3-0.
Ohtani's show of power in the series wasn't Game 7. We saw his historic night earlier, an 18th-inning win for Los Angeles, with two home runs, two doubles and five walks after that.
He went up nine times and was on base nine times. We'll never see this again. You will never see the same pitcher win three times, or in games six and seven. You'll never see the ball get stuck in the left field fence, which almost didn't determine the outcome of Game 6.
Has anyone seen any or all of this? Like many shows, we didn't see things play out the way they did.
But without controversy and speculation, it wouldn't be baseball. Isaiah Kiner-Falefa drove in a run for Bichette in the ninth inning of Game 7. Bichette singled. Addison Barger, whose line drive hit the base of the wall in the sixth, walked before Alejandro Kirk hit the pitch.
The databases were loaded. The game ended in a draw. One run and the Jays are screaming and celebrating.
Kiner-Falefa was at third base, Dalton Varsho was batting for Toronto, and there was one out on the bases. IKF took a short lead in third as a baserunner, and when Varsho hit a ground ball to second base, he was thrown out of the game at home.
IKF chose to slide at home rather than run at full strength. He could score by doing this. He would have scored with a less cautious lead from third base.
But one batter later, the remarkable Ernie Clement, with a playoff-record 30 hits, needed 31. He hit a deep shot to left-center that appeared unplayable to Kiké Hernandez. But Andy Pages, removed from the Dodgers' starting lineup for not hitting, was moved back to center field for defensive purposes.
Lots of failures
Pages and Hernandez collided, but Pages somehow kept his balance and caught the ball. If coach Dave Roberts hadn't switched to Page, that ball might not have been caught.
Clement would have been a World Series hero if he had hit the ball. Instead, he flew into the center of the field.
The whole series looked like this close and controversial.
But after Smith's home run in the 11th off Shane Bieber, the series ended rather quietly on Kirk's stunning double play hit.
In a classic Game 7, the Dodgers used all four starting pitchers of their series to claim the victory. The Jays used three of their four starters in a series that included a hit grand slam, two bad Canadian anthems, a rare complete game, a brilliant kid pitcher who struck out 12 and didn't walk. And much more.
How will we remember and conceptualize all of this when our minds are still beating and our hearts are still beating? Everything about this World Series juggernaut was perfect except the winner.
