Baseball fans – especially Dodgers fans – all season long have had to endure endless hype and hoopla about how good the San Francisco Giants were … ad nauseam. I mean, you couldn’t turn on a national sports program without hearing how Giants manager Gabe Kapler‘s team was preordained to win it all.

Sorry, national media, Gabe Kapler’s team is not going to win it all.

Oh, sure, the fact that the Giants won the National League West with a remarkable 107-55 record is… well… remarkable. But the NL West second-place Los Angeles Dodgers finished the 2021 regular season with an only slightly less remarkable 106-56 record; good enough to make it into the NL Wild Card Game, which they won on a dramatic bottom of the ninth-inning walk-off two-run home run by Dodgers left fielder Chris Taylor to earn a spot in the National League Division Series against those preordained World-Series-winning Giants – according to all that media hype and hoopla.

There is no denying that the 2021 best-of-five NLDS – which went the full five – was one of the best ever played, with two very evenly matched teams. But when all was said and done, a top-of-the-ninth inning single by 26-year-old Dodgers first baseman Cody Bellinger to drive in 36-year-old Dodgers third baseman Justin Turner from second base sent the Dodgers into the 2021 National League Championship Series and sent the Giants home.

The game most certainly wasn’t without controversy, ending on a check swing that was called strike three by first base umpire Gabe Morales. That being said, Kapler told reporters after the game that even though the call was certainly questionable and a disappointing way to end the game and his team’s season, it was not the reason why they lost the game.

“Super tough. I mean, obviously, you don’t want a game to end that way,” Kapler said postgame. “I know these guys work really hard to make the right call, so it’s super challenging on our end. Obviously, it’s going to be frustrating to have a game end like that – a pretty high-quality hitter at the plate (Giants first baseman Wilmer Flores) that can climb back in that (0-2) count – there’s no guarantee of success at the end of the at-bat. It’s just a tough way to end it.

“There’s no need, especially right now; there’s no need to be angry about that. I just think it’s a disappointing way to end,” Kapler continued. “There are other reasons why we didn’t win today’s baseball game, so that was just the last call of the game, and… yeah, that’s enough.”

But it is what it is, as they say, and the Dodgers are headed to Truist Park in Atlanta to take on the Braves in Game-1 of the 2021 National League Championship Series on Saturday evening at 5:07 pm PT.

…because it’s not how you start but how you finish.

Play Ball!

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