How Los Angeles Dodgers made it to third World Series in six years
USA TODAY Sports’ Gabe Lacques breaks down how the Dodgers dominated the Brewers en route to another World Series appearance.
Sports Pulse
TORONTO – With a pair of home runs and a .960 OPS through six games, George Springer has stood tall in this American League Championship Series.
Except when he was down in the dirt, a 95-mph pitch from Seattle Mariners right-hander Bryan Woo drilling him directly in the right knee. Or, two nights later, when he came back for a game the Toronto Blue Jays had to win, took four plate appearances without incident, but then winced and hopped and grimaced through the searing pain in his fifth.
And now here he is, in a place so foreign to nearly every major leaguer but almost a second home for him: Game 7, the fifth in his career as he chases a second World Series title.
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The knee? Perhaps it will flare up again, or maybe the spray of champagne will soothe it, or maybe Springer and the Blue Jays will go home for the winter.
Whatever. With Springer, the point is not necessarily in the outcome but in the doing – being there for his club, serving as a beacon for a once-young yet increasingly saltier roster.
Regardless of how he feels.
“I have a job to do, so I expect to go do it. It doesn’t really matter how I feel,” Springer said Oct. 20 in the hours before Game 7. “I don’t really think it’s a secret. I got hit in the kneecap. It’s not ideal.
“So it’s not necessarily the best thing, but at this point I’m going to play.”
At 36, Springer has learned that piece of it is so important. Signed to a six-year, $150 million contract to usher in the Blue Jays’ most serious era in decades, he’s put up an All-Star season and also two injury-shortened ones. Has watched Vladmir Guerrero Jr. and Bo Bichette cross the threshold from dynamic young players to superstars or staples.
And now, in this season in which the Blue Jays returned to the ALCS for the first time since 2016, reestablished his greatness, with 32 homers, a .959 OPS, and making his post 140 times this year.
Springer’s time in Toronto has almost had three phases, all of them with varying success for team and player. The Blue Jays have seen him at his best and worst and their regard has never wavered – especially as they’re reaping the rewards this season.
“He’s set the tone of who we are,” says Blue Jays manager John Schneider. “This team has an identity more so than any team I’ve been a part of.
“Not that we didn’t in years past, but I think that George does a phenomenal job of leading by example, but also talking about what we stand for, and then when he does it, everyone else kind of has to fall in line.”
It’s not dissimilar to his time in Texas, where he was the bell cow for a Houston Astros team that went from laughingstock to perennial contender, loaded with young talent that coalesced in a 2017 World Series title.
And along the way, “Playoff George” became playoff-hardened.
Game 7s in the 2017 ALCS and World Series, Springer winning MVP honors in their vanquishing of the Dodgers. And then the other side of the coin, a gut punch Game 7 loss to the Washington Nationals in the 2019 Series, followed by a seven-game ALCS setback to Tampa Bay in the pandemic bubble of 2020.
Hey, what’s one more winner-take-all?
“I mean, this is what you play for as a player,” says Springer, whose next home run will be the 23rd in his postseason career, which would tie Kyle Schwarber on the all-time list.
“This is what you want. I don’t think here’s anybody across the league that if you said in spring training, ‘Hey, you’re going to be in Game 7 of the ALCS,’ that you’re going to say, ‘Oh, man, no.’”
Win or lose, it remains a watershed season for the Blue Jays, who re-signed Guerrero to a $500 million contract and have Springer through next season. The dream when he signed here, articulated by club president Mark Shapiro and GM Ross Atkins, has coalesced.
“Everything that I envisioned has happened,” he says. “This is why I’m here, to play in these games, these moments. I mean, our fans have been unbelievable all year.
“This stadium has been electric all year.”
