L.A. wins World Series Game 3 on Freddie Freeman walk-off home run in 18th inning: Live updates and reaction

When they tell stories of Monday’s Game 3, it will seem certain that the memories have gone cloudy and the details have been confused. Surely it didn’t all happen on one night, in a single game, in a World Series classic that stretched across two different days in Eastern Standard Time.

One future Hall of Famer started it, and another entered to pitch out of a jam in the 12th inning? The great Shohei Ohtani homered twice, was on base nine times, and made an out only when his foot slipped off a base? The game kept going for nearly seven hours, each team certain it had won it, and then sure it had blown it, until another potential Hall of Famer won it in the 18th inning?

Are you sure?

It happened. It really happened. In a Fall Classic for the ages, Freddie Freeman led off the 18th and hit a late-night, walk-off home run to give the Los Angeles Dodgers a 6-5 win against the Toronto Blue Jays at a delirious Dodger Stadium.

By innings, it tied for the longest World Series game in history. Along the way, each team had a runner thrown out at the plate, and a runner thrown out trying to go first to third on a ball hit to an infielder. Each had the bases loaded in extra innings and failed to score. Each starting pitcher was out of the game in the fifth, and each bullpen was pushed to its absolute limit. Each team had chances to win, and mistakes that nearly let the whole thing slip away.

But only one team had Ohtani, and that alone nearly made all the difference. Ohtani went 4-for-4 with two doubles, two home runs, a four-pitch walk in the 17th inning, and four intentional walks, all in the ninth inning or later. He is the postseason leader in home runs and RBIs, and he will start Game 4 in a matter of hours.

For Game 3, all he had to do was hit, and in that role, Ohtani did more than anyone else to swing this series in favor of the Dodgers; so much so that the Blue Jays simply stopped pitching to him.

The Dodgers, notorious for the vulnerable bullpen that cost them in Game 1, used all nine of their relievers, who combined for 12 1/3 innings with only one run allowed. Edgardo Henriquez and Will Klein, who were not on the NLCS roster, pitched the final six innings, with Klein — the last Dodgers reliever in the pen — pitching the 15th through 18th. Yoshinobu Yamamoto began warming in the bullpen, two days after he’d thrown a complete game in Game 2.

Emmet Sheehan, who bore the brunt of the Game 1 damage, pitched the 10th and 11th and got the first two outs of the 12th before Clayton Kershaw entered for his first appearance of the series — and perhaps the last appearance of his career — to get out of a bases-loaded jam with a ground ball to second base, where Tommy Edman scooped and glove-flipped to first.

The Blue Jays also used all of their relievers — and their entire bench — finally turning to left-hander Brendon Little in the 17th and 18th. Swingman Eric Lauer had pitched from the middle of the 12th through the 16th, getting out of a bases-loaded jam in the 13th after Edman doubled and the Blue Jays intentionally walked both Ohtani and Mookie Betts.

The Blue Jays intentionally walked Ohtani in the 16th, too. And they pitched around him with two outs in the 17th. Such was the fear of what the Dodgers’ DH might do with a single swing.

Ohtani had led off the game with a ground-rule double, then he homered to put the Dodgers in front 2-0 in the third. When the Blue Jays pulled ahead with a four-run fourth inning, it was Ohtani who cut into that lead with an RBI double in the fifth, and he scored the tying run two batters later. When the Blue Jays went back in front in the seventh, and Ohtani tied it again with solo homer in the eighth.

He nearly played hero in the ninth when Blue Jays intentionally walked him with one out and Ohtani immediately tried to steal second base only to be tagged out when his foot slipped off the bag.

It was Ohtani’s only mistake of the night, and he wasn’t the only one who paired heroics with occasional blunders.

Edman, who’s fourth-inning error had opened the door to a four-run inning for the Blue Jays, made a game-saving play in the ninth when he slid for a ball that had ricocheted off first baseman Freeman and into right field. Edman popped up to make a perfect throw to third base to get the lead runner out.

If that throw were a split-second late, or a few inches to the left, the Blue Jays would have had runners at the corners with one out. Instead, Dodgers closer Roki Sasaki was able to get out of the jam with the game still tied.

The game was full of plays like that: close calls and what-might-have-been moments that changed everything and kept the marathon going.

The Blue Jays misinterpreted a strike call in the second inning, thought it was ball four, and Bo Bichette was picked off wandering from first base to second.

Edman’s fourth-inning error might have been a double play, and Blue Jays went on to score four runs in the frame, three of them on a go-ahead home run by Alejandro Kirk. Freeman was thrown out at the plate in the third inning, Dodgers right fielder Teoscar Hernández was thrown out at third to end the sixth, and Blue Jays pinch runner Davis Schneider was thrown out — by Hernández — trying to score from first base in the 10th.

Blue Jays designated hitter George Springer got hurt on a seventh-inning swing and had to leave the game, only to have his spot in the order come up six more times. Dodgers’ catcher Will Smith and third baseman Max Muncy nearly hit walk-off home runs in the 14th, and Hernández nearly hit one in the 16th.

At that point, it was hard to remember the game had started normally enough, with 41-year-old Max Scherzer making the 27th playoff start of his career. Hernández and Ohtani hit early home runs to put the Dodgers in front before Edman’s error — on a potential double play ball — kept the fourth inning alive long enough for the Blue Jays to pull ahead 4-2. Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow was charged with four runs (two earned) in 4 2/3 innings, and Scherzer allowed three runs (all earned) in 4 1/3. The game became a bullpen battle the rest of the way.

After Ohtani scored to tie the game on Freeman’s single in the fifth, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. nearly played hero in the sixth and seventh.

In the bottom of the sixth, the Dodgers were threatening when Edman reached on a two-out, infield single. Hernández saw an opportunity go from first to third on the play, but Guerrero Jr. charged the throw to first and — with an arm that used to play third base — fired a bullet to the hot corner, where Ernie Clement applied a perfect tag to get Hernández out.

A half inning later, Guerrero delivered a two-out single and scored from first base — on a single, with a nifty slide — to put the Blue Jays in front 5-4. It stayed that way until Ohtani’s second homer tied it at 5 in the eighth.

That felt like a turning point. It turned out to be just the beginning.