Whicker: Smith leads Dodgers to World Series win over Jays

November 2, 2025

By Mark Whicker

Canadian Baseball Network

Back in 1960, in the Game 7 that shone alone in the baseball firmament until it was eclipsed Saturday night, there was also a catcher named Smith who went deep when needed.

Hal Smith of the Pirates crashed a three-run homer off Jim Coates in the eighth inning, and Pittsburgh suddenly led the Yankees, 9-7.

And there was another pitcher who had worked Game 6 the day before and had no problem joining in. Well, Bob Friend didn’t work long in either case. He pitched the first two innings in a 12-0 loss — the Yankees outscored Pittsburgh 55-27 over seven games — and then, the next day, appeared in the ninth to protect that lead that Smith had authored. Friend immediately gave up singles to Bobby Richardson and Dale Long and disappeared, the Yankees tied it 9-9, Bill Mazeroski led off the ninth, and left fielder Yogi Berra looked up at a season disappearing into white shirts.

People in Pittsburgh still get their lawn chairs and camp out at where Forbes Field used to be, and listen to the replay on its anniversary, and it always ends with Mazeroski fighting through fans to get to the plate.

On many Nov. 1sts to come, our contemporaries and descendants will be trading tales about this Game 7 in Toronto, a night of astonished stares and double-takes and wonderment over what’s next. The ones in Ontario will be obsessed, for a good while, about the many ways the Blue Jays could have won and the inside straights that allowed the Dodgers to.

Will Smith came up in the 11th inning with two out against Shane Bieber. There were two out, nobody on. Bieber tried to be careful, but when you’re careful against Smith and most of the Dodgers, you give up control of the ball-strike count. On 2-and-0 Bieber went to a slider that sat there and waited to become a passenger. Smith’s home run to left field gave the Dodgers a 5-4 lead, their first of the entire game, and eventually gave them their second consecutive World Series championship. No one had done that since the 1999-2000 Yankees, and no National League team had done it since the 1975-76 Big Red Machine from Cincinnati.

This followed a game-tying home run in the ninth by Miguel Rojas, his second all year off a right-hander, his second hit of the night and his second hit in a month, and his second homer since July 19.

In the end the Dodgers, so often minimized by those who are struck by their payroll, showed just what desperate measures they would take. Yoshinobu Yamamoto had thrown 96 pitches in Game 6 on Friday. Now he came in to replace Blake Snell. The four prominent members of the starting rotation all pitched in this game, all of them commodities with a combined $1.343 billion in total value, none of them the least bit interested in protecting themselves. This was no cameo for Yamamoto. He faced the final 10 hitters, and although it was dicey at times, he broke Alejandro Kirk’s bat and got the ground ball to Mookie Betts that became the conclusive double play. Had Kirk made only one out or done something else, with Vladimir Guerrero on third, Clayton Kershaw likely would have come to face Daulton Varsho.

Manager Dave Roberts kept his bullpen on the viewing stand, and away from the volcano, as long as he could through seven games. He might have changed pitching strategies from this day forward. Do you really need closers when you have starters so unconcerned with physical risk? And what starter would dare beg off such a request in the future?

This game was a gift box of Russian nesting dolls, with a supply that couldn’t be exhausted. Does anybody remember that Trey Yesavage, the 22-year-old new kid in town, came in to get five outs? That both benches cleared when the Dodgers’ Justin Wrobleski threw inside three consecutive times to Andres Gimenez and finally hit him? That Varsho and Vladimir Guerrero made spectacular grabs, the kind that should have earned them goalie contracts with the Maple Leafs, and held the Dodgers to one run in the fourth? That Guerrero spearheaded a 3-6-3 double play off Freddie Freeman’s bat that ended the seventh inning, with the Jays ahead 4-2 and smelling napalm?

Probably not. Certainly not in Toronto, where the prevailing theme will be the inches that separated the Blue Jays from victory. The chair was pulled on consecutive plays in the ninth.

Pinch-runner Isaiah Kiner-Falefa was on third on a bases-loaded situaton with one out and Varsho at the plate. A medium-deep fly ball means a championship. Case closed. Or a hard ground ball gets through the Dodgers’ constricted infield and also means a championship.

Varsho, who became more of a liability as the Series went on, got his grounder, right to second baseman Rojas, who stumbled, scrambled to his base, still double-clutched, and threw home. Smith stretched out for the force. He got it by a molecule, mainly because Kiner-Falefa was hugging third base at the time. A bigger lead for Kiner-Falefa, maybe a better jump? It’s the type of replay Toronto has no interest in watching.

Now there were two out and Ernie Clement was up. Considering that Clement would end the postseason with a record 30 hits, this was not a bad situation either. And, sure enough, Clement drilled the first pitch to the wall in left field. Kiké Hernandez was running back to see what he could do, reached up….and was shoulder-blocked into the warning track by Andy Pages, who had just come in to play centre field. As the unquenchable crowd began bellowing and looking for the ball simultaneously, Pages, somehow caught it.

At that point you figured several Big Dodgers In The Sky were setting their vodka-tonics on the table, pulling the strings and laughing. But then the Dodgers loaded the bases with one out in the 10th and didn’t score. That’s when Yamamoto came out for his third inning and took care of the Blue Jays in 13 pitches, as he fell behind George Springer 3-and-0 and still struck him out. That meant Will Smith would get another crack.

Ohtani will be the Most Valuable Player in the National League, everyone knows that. Those who raptly watched the Dodgers might tell you that Smith was actually the team’s MVP. He hit .337 with men in scoring position and had a .901 OPS, as opposed to .760 in 2024. He also had a .497 slugging percentage, and he threw out 27.2 percent of basestealers. That fell short of his league-leading figure of 33.3 percent last year, but it beat the league average, and he made only four errors. In this postseason he set a record for innings caught, including all 18 on Monday, all 11 on Saturday.

Smith signed a 10-year, $140 million contract last year. That makes him a blue-light special, and allows the Dodgers to throw money elsewhere. Mostly he adds to the workingman’s approach in the clubhouse. Maybe he even leads it. At Louisville he was known as “Dad” for his responsibility and lack of frivolity. As a kid he caught 299 consecutive baseballs on a throwback machine but when he muffed No. 300, he went right back to No. 1.

Critics also pointed to Smith’s short arms. He’s been known as “T-Rex” to various Dodger studio commentators. But late on Saturday night, with carnage and smoke and charred hopes at his feet, Smith showed that a man’s grasp can exceed his reach, or what’s a Blue Heaven for?

Smith actually pitched at Louisville Country Day and slowly worked his way into catching, where the arm served him. All that was left was the hitting, and Smith did it well enough to zoom from middle-round doubts to the 32nd overall pick, to the Dodgers. After Smith had spent just a few days with the big club in 2019, at age 24, Justin Turner made a note of telling Roberts, “This kid gets it.”

Little did Turner, Roberts or anyone else know that Smith’s terse words and eloquent actions would be the power strip for a team that has everything money can buy and many other qualities it can’t. When a championship is left lying there unclaimed, the Dodgers somehow know they’ll get it.