World Series Game 3 made for an epic night — and morning

Baseball was the proverbial game without a clock, at least until a few years ago when officials decided to speed up the process with a clock to keep millennial and Gen Z fans tuned out.

But it can still go on forever, as evidenced by Game 3 of the World Series, an 18-inning classic that ended with the Los Angeles Dodgers defeating the Toronto Blue Jays 6–5. Freddie Freeman home run.

Everything you can imagine happened from The Heroism of Shohei Ohtani cameo by Clayton Kershaw to help another “you must be beeping at me” moment in the career of referee Mark Wegner, although without the memorable call of Hawk Harrelson.

This was the best October baseball ad we've seen since epic game seven of the 2016 world series.

Due to a conflict at work, I was forced to follow the third game on my phone and laptop until coverage of the Chicago Bulls' 128–123 victory over the Atlanta Hawks at the United Center. But such is the life of modern sportswriters, multitasking for work and pleasure. One eye is on the game, the other on a baseball game thousands of miles away.

Thanks to a kind Bulls employee, the team tuned one of the televisions in the media room to the game, allowing baseball fans in attendance to follow the game during halftime and after the Bulls game ended. While waiting for one of the Bulls players to talk in the locker room afterward, Bulls.com reporter Sam Smith and I discussed Ohtani's stellar postseason performance as if we were in the press box at Dodger Stadium.

After rushing home from the United Center, listening to Boog Sciambi's call on the radio, I returned in time for the 11th inning and settled in to watch the finale. Sometime around 1 a.m. Tuesday, I received a text from KC Johnson, a reporter for the Chicago Sports Network Bulls.

“I’m coming out,” Johnson wrote. “I lived to be 15.”

A few hours earlier, after covering the Bulls' win, we hung around in the media room to see if Ohtani would complete the win in his ninth inning at-bat. Johnson predicted that Blue Jays manager John Schneider would intentionally walk Ohtani when no one was on base. he went 4 for 4 with two home runs. entering the battle.

As a supposed baseball expert, I told him that only Barry Bonds would receive that treatment, and I couldn't imagine Schneider hitting the winning run on base in the ninth inning of a World Series game.

But Johnson was right and boasted: “I know baseball.”

After Ohtani was kicked out while trying to steal the second one, we decided to go to the parking lot together. But then we stood in the hallway and watched Mookie Betts play. The third game became a magnet, pulling us back with a force that none of us could resist.

I don't want to text my married friends late at night because they usually fall asleep before me. But after Schneider allowed Ohtani a second intentional walk to empty bases, I texted Johnson. Tweet @SlangsOnSports It showed that the only time this happened in the World Series was to Albert Pujols in Game 5 in 2011.

This started a long text conversation in which we both tried to guess the manager's next move, welcomed a call from Fox Sports' Joe Davis, and tried to stay awake. When Johnson left the game after the 15th, I was left alone.

But soon the phone rang again. “I'm rallying,” Johnson wrote, pointing to a report from Fox's Ken Rosenthal that Dodgers manager Dave Roberts was considering using a position player on the mound and reliever Will Klein tired in his third inning of work.

This led to a conversation about what position a player should play in one of the greatest World Series games of all time. I imagined how cool it would be to have an iPhone during Game 6 of the 1975 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and Cincinnati Reds, when Carlton Fisk hit a home run and waved his hand that it was only fair to end yet another game we never wanted to see end.

Text messages and wondering what would happen next kept us awake long enough to see Freeman's home run. I sent an “oof” emoji. Johnson responded, “Sports, man!”