Dodgers Outlast Blue Jays in 18 Innings To Win Epic World Series Game 3

An all-time World Series classic was played on October 27, 1991. That was the Game 7 where Jack Morris and John Smoltz matched zeros until the Minnesota Twins ultimately edged the Atlanta Braves 1-0 in 10 innings. Thirteen years later, on that same date in 2004, the Boston Red Sox won their first World Series championship since 1918. In both cases, baseball history was made in memorable fashion.

What took place on October 27, 2025 at Dodger Stadium ranks right up there with the best World Series games ever played. In an affair that lasted deep into the night and featured heroics from multiple players, it was Freddie Freeman who finally ended it. Leading off the bottom of the 18th inning, the Dodgers first baseman launched a home run to straightaway center field to walk off the Blue Jays, 6-5, in Game 3 and give Los Angeles a two-games-to-one lead in the World Series.

The game started uneventfully, with Dodgers starter Tyler Glasnow retiring the side in order in the first. But from that point forward the word “uneventful” was nowhere to be found — not for the remainder of a Monday night that turned into the wee hours of Tuesday for most of Canada and the continental United States, for all but the time zone in which Game 3 was played.

Max Scherzer — making his 27th postseason start and 501st overall — was on the mound for Toronto, and Shohei Ohtani began the bottom of the first by lining his second pitch into the right field corner for a double. Three batters later, the inning was over courtesy of two fly outs and a strikeout.

Enter eventful at stage right.

Bo Bichette led off the second by lining a 3-1 sinker up the middle for Toronto’s first hit, after which the Dodgers caught a break. Daulton Varsho took a 3-1 pitch that was clearly above the zone — it was higher than the previous pitch, which had been called a ball — only to have home plate umpire Mark Wegner call it a strike. The call came late, after Varsho had already started for first base. He then paused as if to make sure he’d heard the call, then tossed his bat away and began to unstrap his elbow guard; thinking that Varsho had drawn a walk, Bichette trotted toward second base — not a prudent decision — and was summarily tagged out by Freeman, who’d received a throw from Glasnow during the confusion.

As Blue Jays manager John Schneider later told dugout reporter Ken Rosenthal during an in-game interview, “It was a weird play.”

It was far from the last weird play.

Varsho ultimately drew ball four from Glasnow, then advanced to third on a single by Alejandro Kirk. The threat came for naught. Addison Barger fanned, and Ernie Clement lined out to center. Inning over.

Teoscar Hernández homered in the bottom of the frame, his 109-mph, 412-foot blast clearing the fence in left-center. Impressive as the blast was, it had nothing on the bat flip that accompanied it. The former Blue Jay clearly enjoyed putting his old team in arrears, 1-0.

An effortless third inning by Glasnow — 11 pitches, three easy outs — was followed by another Dodgers solo shot in the bottom half. This time it was Ohtani doing the honors, pulling a Scherzer four-seamer 389 feet into the right field seats. The score was now 2-0 and the game’s best player had six total bases in his first two trips to the plate. He was far from done.

A hot Ohtani is lethal for opponents, and for the most part that hasn’t been the case in October. Coming into the game he was just 11-for-49 with six home runs and 19 strikeouts in the postseason, and if you don’t count his epic performance in NLCS Game 4, he was just 8-for-46 with three home runs. Outside of a few big swings, he’d been surprisingly quiet.

The Blue Jays had a loud fourth inning, but it wasn’t all Glasnow’s fault. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. walked on a 3-2 pitch — barely checking his swing — after which Bichette hit what should have been a double-play ball. Instead, Dodgers second baseman Tommy Edman had the routine grounder go under his glove, putting runners on the corners. They remained there when Varsho popped to short left… but not for long. Kirk crunched a first-pitch Glasnow curveball 394 feet, and all of a sudden it was 3-2 Toronto.

Barger, who’d thrown out Freeman at the plate from right field to end the previous inning, followed Kirk’s homer with a single, and Clement did the same. Andrés Giménez proceeded to bring home Barger with a sac fly, and now it was 4-2. When Glasnow finally fanned George Springer for the third out, it was on the right-hander’s 29th pitch of the inning. Were it not for Edman’s error, it most likely would have been 11 pitches. More importantly, no runs would have crossed the plate.

It wouldn’t be reasonable to say that manager Dave Roberts left his starter in the game too long. Not only is the Dodgers bullpen… well, Dodgers bullpen, but Glasnow was mostly strong throughout. When he was lifted with two out in the fifth inning, he’d thrown 85 pitches, eliciting 10 whiffs and 11 called strikes, having allowed no meaningful damage outside of the ill-fated fourth.

Scherzer was also pulled in the fifth inning, and he too had pitched well. Walking off the mound for what could be the final time in his career, the future Hall of Famer had just gone 4 1/3 innings and allowed just a pair of runs — those coming on the Hernández and Ohtani homers. He’d thrown 79 pitches — 47 of them fastballs — generating 13 whiffs and seven called strikes. Much like his mound opponent, Scherzer pitched better than his final line suggested.

Enrique Hernández, who came into the game with just an .558 OPS over 70 World Series plate appearances despite his overall postseason success, led off the inning with a single, after which Scherzer induced a fly out on what turned out to be be his last pitch. The Blue Jays bullpen didn’t hold the lead it inherited. With Scherzer watching from the bench, Mason Fluharty allowed a run-scoring double to Ohtani — now 3-for-3 with eight total bases on the evening. Two batters later, Freeman drove Ohtani home to knot the contest at four apiece.

When Fluharty came in to face Ohtani, it wasn’t solely because it made for a left-on-left matchup. Not only is Scherzer long in the tooth — at age 41 he’s one of the oldest pitchers ever to start a World Series game — but also his third-time-through-the-order numbers this year represented a red flag. While his career .230/.298/.388 mark when facing an opposing lineup for a third time in a game is nearly identical to his second-time-through numbers, this season that line was .302/.343/.730. Moreover, it came with eight home runs in 67 plate appearances. Manager John Schneider made the right move… at least on paper.

Leading off the seventh, Springer swung at the first pitch he saw from lefty reliever Justin Wrobleski, fouled it off, and immediately grabbed his right side near his oblique. He signaled to the Blue Jays bench and started walking off the field. Schneider said after the game that Springer went for an MRI and that the team was awaiting the results. Ty France replaced him and struck out. After Nathan Lukes flied out to left, the Dodgers brought in Blake Treinen, and for the second time in the game, a player who ended the previous inning with great defensive play scored a big run. Guerrero, who threw out Teoscar Hernández at third base to close out the sixth, singled to center off Treinen, then proceeded to score from first base on a two-out single to right field by Bichette in the seventh. At 5-4, the lead once against belonged to Canada’s team.

Two batters after “Take Me Out To The Ballgame” was sung, it was Ohtani time once again. With Seranthony Domínguez now toeing the rubber for Toronto, the Oshu, Japan native launched his second home run of the night, making him 4-for-4 with 12 total bases on the evening. The score now stood 5-5. Dodger Stadium was rocking.

To say that Ohtani has been rocking Dodger Stadium of late would be an understatement. With the superstar’s epic performance in the NLCS clincher also having come at home, Ohtani was 7-for-7 with two doubles, five home runs, and a walk in his last two games in Chavez Ravine.

On October 27, 2007, Daisuke Matsuzaka became the first Japanese starting pitcher in World Series history when he took the mound for the Red Sox against the Rockies in Colorado. Six years later, the first World Series game to end on a pickoff occurred when Boston closer Koji Uehara nabbed St. Louis’ Kolten Wong. Game 3 on Monday night began with Hideo Nomo, the first Japanese-born superstar in the United States, throwing out the ceremonial first pitch. Japanese representation in Major League Baseball has come a long way since Nomo, Matsuzaka, and Uehara achieved their respective firsts, and no team in the Western Hemisphere features more Japanese players than the Dodgers. In addition to the two-way sensation Ohtani, the Los Angeles rotation also includes Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who pitched his second consecutive complete game in Game 2 on Saturday night and who was warming up in the bullpen on just one day of rest in the 18th inning of Game 3. And then there’s the rookie right-hander Roki Sasaki, who signed as a starter with the Dodgers during the winter, struggled and missed more than four months with a shoulder injury, and then returned in time to become their closer in the postseason. With the game on the line Monday night, he made an impactful relief appearance in the eighth.

Replacing lefty Jack Dreyer after Barger had reached on a Mookie Betts error and Giménez had singled with one out, Sasaki retired France and Lukes to strand two runners in scoring position. An inning later, Sasaki put two runners on base himself with walks, but he stranded them as well. Going into the bottom of the ninth, it was a tie game… with Ohtani due up second.

Schneider wasn’t about to let Ohtani be the hero. With one out, the Toronto manager had closer Jeff Hoffman walk Ohtani intentionally with the bases empty. (Could even the most strident opponents of intentional walks argue against his doing so?) Attempting to steal second, Ohtani was then called out when he lost contact with the bag, a play unsuccessfully challenged by the Dodgers. One out later, and it was on to extra innings.

Edman redeemed himself in the top of the 10th. Making up for his earlier error, the second baseman retrieved a two-out Lukes base hit in short right field and threw out pinch-runner Davis Schneider at the plate, trying to score from first. The Blue Jays challenged, claiming that Will Smith had blocked the plate, but the call stood.

For the third time in the game, a player making a key inning-ending throw had a chance to come up big when his team next came to the plate. It didn’t happen. Edman popped up for the final out with the winning run on second base, sending the game to the 11th… an inning in which Ohtani was issued another intentional walk, this time with two out and the bases empty. When Betts — named the winner of this year’s Roberto Clemente Award earlier in the day (or was it the day before?) — followed with a hit, the Dodgers once again had the deciding run in scoring position. Freeman, who has worn the hero’s cape on many occasions, most notably with his walk-off grand slam in Game 1 of last year’s World Series, stepped in to face rookie right-hander Braydon Fisher and proceeded to fly out innocently to left.

The 12th inning was a cherry on top of a game that will long be remembered. After Kirk led off with a walk, John Schneider opted to use the final man on his bench, backup catcher Tyler Heineman and his 24th-percentile sprint speed to pinch-run for Kirk and his second-percentile sprint speed. Myles Straw failed to get down the sacrifice bunt, and then a Clement groundout advanced Heineman to second. So with two out and first base open, the Dodgers opted to walk Giménez — Toronto’s nine-hole hitter — to bring up Davis Schneider. Then things got even crazier. Schneider dribbled a ball toward third, with Heineman reaching the bag just before the ball rolled into the glove of third baseman Max Muncy, who was stretching for it with his right foot on the base.

As if things couldn’t get more dramatic, the Schneider single sent Roberts to the mound to relieve Emmet Sheehan; the bullpen gate swung open and out came Clayton Kershaw to pitch for perhaps the last time in his legendary career, carrying with him the burden of greatness and his well-documented history of postseason failures. Bases loaded, two outs, tie game. On his eighth pitch, Kershaw got Lukes to chase a 3-2 breaking ball to end the inning. It was pure theater.

Ohtani was walked intentionally again in the 13th inning. Per the great Sarah Langs, Ohtani thus became the first player in major league postseason history to reach base seven times in a game. Yet another intentional walk was to follow in his next plate appearance. Remarkably, by the time the game was over, Ohtani had been issued four intentional walks and had reached base nine times, with two doubles, two home runs, and five total bases on balls. As Langs noted, Ohtani is the fourth player ever to reach nine times in a game.

Through 14 innings, a total of 17 pitchers had combined to throw 483 pitches. When Will Klein took the mound for the top of the 15th inning, he was the 10th pitcher to do so for the Dodgers. Yes, that is also World Series record. Toronto’s eighth pitcher of the game, Eric Lauer, threw 4 2/3 innings — along with the Glasnow, the most of anyone who saw action. They were all scoreless, as were the ones that Klein provided Los Angeles.

When the 18th inning rolled around, 19 pitchers had combined to throw 579 pitches. Klein was still on the mound, and Yamamoto was warming up in the bullpen two nights after throwing 105 pitches in Game 2. It was now approaching midnight in Los Angeles. The Dodgers and Blue Jays had played for six-and-half hours and were six outs shy of having gone the equivalent of two full games.

Yamamoto wasn’t needed. Klein, who had never thrown more than two innings or 34 pitches in a big league game, dug deep and fanned Heineman to strand two runners in scoring position to survive the 18th. He finished with four scoreless innings and 72 pitches.

When Freeman blasted the 3-2 sinker from Brendon Little over the center field fence in the bottom half of the frame, the second-longest game in Fall Classic history had culminated in a 6-5 Dodgers win. (Game 3 of the 2018 World Series also went 18 innings, but it lasted seven hours and 20 minutes.) Klein was the pitcher of record, and it wasn’t simply the biggest win of his young career. Having been a co-hero in an all-time classic, he will likely never win a bigger one.