There are few things in baseball more exciting than a bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off home run … as long as it’s your team that does the walking off, of course.

On Saturday night, there was a brief moment where Dodger fans – and even the batter himself, 25-year-old reigning National League MVP Cody Bellinger – honestly didn’t know if his fly ball to deep right field had cleared the wall at Dodger Stadium for a dramatic 4-3 walk-off win, or if had been caught by leaping Colorado Rockies right fielder Sam Hilliard. After all, the Scottsdale, AZ native, two-time All-Star, Gold Glover and Silver Slugger, and 2017 NL Rookie of the Year didn’t have the luxury of hysterical Dodger fans to confirm whether or not his ball had left the yard or not at a fan-less Dodger Stadium.

“I thought I hit it up in the air,” Bellinger would later tell reporters. “It was weird.”

When did Bellinger finally realize that he had, in fact, just given the Dodgers their MLB-best 21st win of the season?

“When I was halfway to second base because then I thought he caught the ball,” said Bellinger. “So, I didn’t know what was going on, really at all.”

And how did Bellinger feel once he (finally) learned that he had, in fact, walked it off?

“Obviously, it felt pretty good to give us the win,” he answered. “And then you don’t have to go into extras and save the bullpen.”

As Dodger fans know, Bellinger had been mired in a horrible slump for the past three weeks, watching his batting average reach a season-low of .139 on July 31. But even during the worst of it all, he continued to hit the ball very hard, and eventually, the balls began to drop.

To what does Bellinger attribute his recent success?

“More just focusing on the feel of myself as opposed to the results,” he answered. “As long as you’re feeling good, then you’ve got to trust that the results will come.”

Speaking of Justin Turner, the 35-year-old Long Beach, CA native and Dodgers third baseman (designated hitter, in this case), was hit by a pitch in the bottom of the seventh inning on Saturday night, to extend his recently set all-time franchise record to 76. Unfortunately, this one left a mark, as they say.

Turner was observed limping slightly as he left the dugout and headed towards the Dodgers clubhouse the following inning.

“He took a ball off the hamstring and it kind of swelled up on him a little bit after the game; got it treated,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said during his postgame Zoom media scrum. “I’ll see how he comes in tomorrow. It’s unlikely he’ll play third base, so it might be a DH, or we might just give him another day. We’ll see how he responds to treatment and how he comes in tomorrow.”

Play Ball!

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