Even though it (presumably) wasn’t intentional, Tampa Bay Rays left-hander Richard Lovelady hitting Dodgers designated hitter Shohei Ohtani on his left forearm with a 91.8-MPH sinker to lead off the bottom of the eighth inning on a 2-1 count with the scored tied at 1-1 was not a good idea. It did, however, cause the sold out Dodger Stadium crowd of 52,464 to immediately fall silent. Fortunately, as the Dodgers DH, Ohtani did not have to play defense in the top of the ninth.

Sure, it took the bat out of the hands of the .294-hitting Oshu, Japan native with his National League-leading 41 home runs, but it also brought .299-hitting Mookie Betts with his 38 home runs to the plate.

Make that 39.

Betts sent Lovelady’s first pitch, an 88-MPH slider, 387 feet into the Left Field Pavilion of Dodger Stadium for a two-run home run, to give the NL West first place Dodgers a 3-1 lead and final score over the AL East fourth place Tampa Bay Rays.

“I don’t know, I’m just here to win, here to do what I can to help Shohei carry us to the finish line,” a smiling Betts told SportsNet LA’s Kirsten Watson postgame about his recent consistency and success at the plate. “I was just ready to swing. I mean, I know they’ve been attacking me with strikes the whole series, so I just try to get a good swing off.”

Asked about Ohtani, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts told reporters postgame that he is fine.

“Ohtani’s OK. I think they took some scans and I heard they were negative, so he’s fine, yeah,” Roberts answered.

“It’s really scary, you always hold your breath,” Roberts added, when asked what his first thoughts were when he saw Ohtani get hit. “We experienced that with Mookie a few months ago, and then obviously with Shohei, a ball coming in and, you know, fortunately it hit him on the forearm, but when you start talking about little bones in the hands and things like and, you know, four to six weeks of that this time in the year, man, that’s a scary one, yeah.”

Phew!

Play ball!

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