Friday night’s World Series game will be talked about for the rest of baseball history. Not only was it the longest game in World Series history time-wise (seven hours and 20 minutes), it was the longest World Series game innings-wise as well (18). We’re talking in the 114-year history of Major League Baseball’s premier event here.

It would be ridiculous to even try to re-cap the entire game, all 561 combined total pitches of it. But there were some things, several, in fact, that simply cannot go unmentioned.

Obviously, the single most important is that the Dodgers won the game by a final score of 3-2, and the simple fact is that nothing else really matters. It was absolutely positively a ‘must-win’ game for the Dodgers, who entered play on Friday down two games to none in the best-of-seven series, and the cold hard fact is that no team – zero, zip, zilch, nada – has ever come back to win a World Series from an 0-3 deficit. Never.

The first significant thing about Game-3 was Dodgers right-hander Walker Buehler, who pitched what was unquestionably the best game of his brief two-year MLB career. All the 24-year-old Lexington, Kentucky native and Dodgers first-round draft pick in 2015 out of Vanderbilt University did was shut out the best team in all of baseball for seven innings, while allowing only two hits, striking out seven, and walking none. Among his strike out victims was Red Sox slugger J.D. Martinez, who was presented with the American League’s Hank Aaron Award just prior to the game by Aaron himself. Buehler struck out Martinez twice on the night.

The soon-to-be best pitcher in the game strikes out the current best hitter in the game … looking.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

And then there’s Dodgers right fielder Joc Pederson, who broke a scoreless tie in the bottom of the third inning with a 380-foot solo home run to right field. It was Pederson’s second home run of the postseason.

“She is gone!” as the great Vin Scully used to say.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

“Joc has really matured over the last three years, and he looks over the baseball very well,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, some seven hours later. “And when he can stay in the strike zone, he’s very dangerous. And you look at his career in the postseason, he’s had a lot of big homers, against some very good pitching, obviously. He doesn’t let the moment get too big for him. And that hit to get us going was big.”

It would be negligent not to mention the outstanding performances by both bullpens, most notably Dodgers right-hander Kenta Maeda, who struck out five in his two innings of relief, and Red Sox right-hander (and former Dodger) Nathan Eovaldi, who pitched six innings of relief, allowing one run on three hits, while walking one and striking out five. The 28-year-old Houston, Texas native and Dodgers 11th-round draft pick in 2008 out of Alvin High School in Alvin, Texas, was initially scheduled to start Game-4 of the Series on Saturday, but was brought into action by Red Sox manager Alex Cora in the bottom of the 10th inning.

Unfortunately for Eovaldi, it was he who gave up what proved to be the biggest hit of the night … and the most historic.

With no outs in the bottom of the 18th inning and on a 3-2 count, Eovaldi served up a 90.1-MPH cut fastball (that didn’t cut) to Dodgers (then) second baseman Max Muncy, who went with the pitch for a 394-foot opposite-field home run into the Left Field Pavilion, sending the sold out Dodger Stadium crowd of 53, 114 into an absolute frenzy.

We ALL know what happened next.
(Photo credit – Ron Cervenka)

“Getting a chance to hit a walk-off home run, obviously there’s not many words I can use to describe that,” said Muncy of his dramatic home run. “The feeling was just pure joy and incredible excitement. That’s about all I can think of, because it’s hard to describe how good a feeling it is.”

But there’s no rest for the weary. The two teams square off again for Game-4 of the 2018 World Series on Saturday afternoon, with first pitch scheduled for 5:09 p.m. PT.

Play Ball!