Whicker: Barger, Blue Jays foiled by a ball that won't bounce in Game 6
October 31, 2025
By Mark Whicker
Canadian Baseball Network
They say you need the bounces to win the World Series.
They weren’t talking about this.
Toronto’s Addison Barger drove a baseball so hard that it lost consciousness in the ninth inning of Game 6 Friday night. Instead of bouncing off the left-centre wall, or bouncing against it, it found a nice little crevasse and took a nap.
As it lay there, stuck between the turf and the fence and in the middle of Toronto’s bid to win its first World Series in 32 years, the noise turned Rogers Centre into a car wash. Dodgers left fielder Kike Hernandez yelled at rookie centre fielder Justin Dean, told him to pick up the ball and play it, instead of signaling to the umpires and hoping the right thing would be done.
Pinch-runner Myles Straw appeared to score from first and Barger came around, too. But you can’t deafen the rulebook. This was a ground-rule double, and Straw went back to third and Barger to second. The fact that the frenetic Barger hadn’t drained his energy bank would come into play soon.
Roki Sasaki left the game and L.A. manager Dave Roberts checked to see if Kenley Jansen had signed a one-day contract somehow. Jansen hadn’t, so Roberts went to Tyler Glasnow, the Game 3 starter and the logical man to start Game 7. With nobody out Glasnow faced Ernie Clement, who loves to swing at first pitches. At that point you began to see separation between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays and the disparity between their tours of duty.
Clement flailed at a high fastball and popped out. That brought up Andres Gimenez, who had given the Blue Jays solid plate appearances all month.
This time Gimenez lined a pitch to left-centre, in the direction of Hernandez. Barger, the tying run, thought the ball could land, so he began digging. Hernandez said he couldn’t see the ball at first, but was willing to “let it hit me in the face” instead of stopping his charge. He caught it on the run and immediately sensed the situation, and threw to second as Barger backtracked. Miguel Rojas stabbed the one-hop throw as he fell backwards, but he kept the ball in his glove and kept a foot on the base. Double play, and the Dodgers won, 3-1. A most appropriate Game 7 greets us Saturday night.
Sports have given us The Play, The Shot and The Immaculate Reception, and if the Blue Jays lose this thing, we’ll have The Wedgie.
But Game 6s, historically, are like that, from Carlton Fisk in 1975 to David Freese in 2011 to Kirby Puckett in 1991 to Scott Spiezio in 2002 to Mookie Wilson in 1986. You need the Warren Commission to untangle all the situations, to determine who pulled the first thread that led to the complete unraveling. This wasn’t exactly like that, but the Dodgers were keeping their heads while the Blue Jays were losing theirs. It was almost as if Toronto felt it was facing elimination.
But Game 6s are discarded in a hurry as the stagehands arrange Game 7. The Blue Jays are going with 41-year-old Max Scherzer, going for his third championship ring in six seasons, with Shane Bieber at the ready. Closer Jeff Hoffman hasn’t worked since Thursday and left-handed weapon Eric Lauer has been idle since his performance in the 18-inning Game 3.
Roberts had a more ticklish choice even before he called upon Glasnow for three pitches on Friday. He will likely go with Shohei Ohtani on three days’ rest, but only for two to four innings. It’s better for Ohtani to start than to relieve, because he can start and then stay in the game as the DH. If he relieves he has to play a position. Not that he can’t leap over the scoreboard to bring back a homer, or turn a double play at second from the pike position, but he’s been asked to do enough.
It is difficult to envision a Game 7 that Ohtani does not influence. Mookie Betts found his stroke in Game 6 with a two-run single, and Will Smith drove in the first run with a double. The visitors shrugged off the fact that Toronto’s Kevin Gausman struck out the side in the first inning and also struck out seven of the first nine Dodgers. Yoshinobu Yamamoto was their answer. His final pitch was strike three to an overanxious Daulton Varsho with two on in the sixth, and he left with a 3-1 lead.
Any activity in the L.A. bullpen was like an oasis for Toronto fans, but lefty Justin Wrobleski turned it into a mirage. He struck out Gimenez with Clement on second, in the seventh. That ushered in Sasaki, who stranded two runners in the eighth but plunked Alejandro Kirk and gave up The Wedgie in the ninth. That was his 33rd high-turmoil pitch of the night.
A Game 7 victory without Sasaki, on paper, would be difficult to imagine if not for all the re-enlisted troops around him, especially guys like Rojas, who gave up his No. 11 for Sasaki in spring training.
More to the point, Rojas was a premium shortstop for the Marlins for nine seasons, a secret to everyone except those on field level. Now he is one of the Dodgers’ wise men, at 36, counseling the kids and still making plays himself. Before Clement doubled off Wrobleski, for instance, Rojas used his bare right hand to take Barger’s chopper and throw it out. That, not an abstract formula, is what Runs Saved actually means.
“Miggy has been a blessing,” Betts said.
A third Dodger championship in the past six seasons would be the most enervating and thus the most rewarding. The Cubs went to Cleveland and won Games 6 and 7 in 2016, and the Pirates went to Baltimore and did it in 1979, but it’s not the preferred route. Toronto also played a Game 7 just 12 days ago, in the same building, on a three-run homer by George Springer, who somehow squeezed out two hits Friday night with his left side still barking.
This World Series has overflowed with feats, foibles, plot twists, a 22-year-old pitching master, and a doubleheader in one night. The TV audience has responded and grown. A classic Game 7 will thrill one city or country, disappoint the other, and leave the general baseball fan in withdrawal. Maybe that’s why Addison Barger’s last hit got to its destination and just sat there. A Series like this deserves to be stuck in time.