It won’t be long now.
Ice Cube won the night before the first pitch. Blue-cloaked fans shook the Ravine until the last pitch. And through it all, Aaron Judge kept swinging, and missing, and missing, and missing, and manufacturing enough humiliation to lead to a single conclusion.
It won’t be long now.
The New York Yankees are not in the same class as the Dodgers, and this expectedly taut World Series between two baseball Goliaths feels more like the starting five against the junior varsity.
It will be over soon.
The Dodgers’ 4-2 victory Saturday in Game 2 gave them a two-games-to-none lead and set them up to clinch their eighth World Series title in the Bronx before the end of the week.
This space correctly provided a similar prediction during the National League Championship Series with the New York Mets, and this time the sense is even stronger.
The feeling is strong enough, in fact, to account for any injury to Shohei Ohtani, who hurt his left shoulder sliding into second base on an unsuccessful steal attempt in the seventh inning.
After the tag, Ohtani lay for a long minute on the dirt around the base, clearly in pain, waiting for Dodger officials to help him to his feet and off the field.
It didn’t look pretty. But the facts are that the Dodgers can beat the Yankees without him, as he is one for eight in the series with one extra-base hit and no RBIs.
The feeling is also strong enough to account for a late Yankees rally Saturday, as they scored a run off reliever Blake Treinen in the ninth and loaded the bases with one out, but Treinen struck out Anthony Volpe and Alex Vesia retired pinch-hitter Jose Trevino on a first-pitch flyout to end the game.
The rally started, incidentally, after Judge followed a Juan Soto single with, you guessed it, a strikeout.
The Yankees are not as good as the Mets. They are not as good as the San Diego Padres. They are not as good as a half-dozen other National League teams.
Their best player Judge is a bust with seven strikeouts, including three whiffs Saturday with runners on base. The bottom five hitters in their batting order are inconsistent. The Dodgers have already worn down the two best Yankees starting pitchers, and their bullpen is a confusing mess.
They fumbled and stumbled and set the Dodgers up for Freeman’s grand slam heroics in Game 1, then, until the ninth inning, they simply failed to show up for Saturday’s Game 2, doubled in hits and outpitched and outplayed again.
The middle three games of this series are Monday through Wednesday at Yankee Stadium.
Friday parade anyone?
Both teams entered Saturday wondering if there would be any lingering effects from Freeman’s historic heroics barely 24 hours earlier.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said his team was fine.
“We celebrated the heck out of last night, as I thought we should have, but today it’s a new day, and guys are back to work,” he said. “I do think there’s some kind of momentum, excitement that will carry over to tonight’s game, but as far as just sitting back on last night’s game, that’s over.”
Yankees manager Aaron Boone also said his team was fine.
“Morale’s great, we’re ready to roll,” Boone said. “Our group all year, we talked about a lot, has been outstanding at bouncing back from tough moments or a tough game or a tough way to end a game. I would expect that for us today. Win, lose, or draw, these guys will turn the page and be ready to get after the ball today.”
Roberts was right. Boone was wrong.
The Dodgers owned the night from the moment Ice Cube delayed the first pitch for six minutes by staging a mini-concert while walking in from center field.
Cube ended his stirring solo march by performing his hit, “It Was A Good Day” before shouting, “It’s Time For Dodger Baseball!”
Turns out, it was a good day, and it was indeed time for Dodger baseball.
Tommy Edman led off the second inning against outclassed starter Carlos Rodón by punishing a 2-and-0 pitch into the left-field corner stands for his second home run and 13th RBI of this amazing postseason.
The Yankees countered in the third when Soto lifted a Yoshinobu Yamamoto fastball into the Yankee bullpen in right field for a tying homer.
But the Yankees’ elation only lasted moments, ending in the bottom of the third when Mookie Betts singled and Teoscar Hernández and Freeman followed with similar blasts over the right-field fence. It was the Dodgers’ first back-to-back World Series homers since Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager pulled off the feat in 1981.
It was all Yamamoto needed, as he allowed one hit and one run in 6 ⅓ innings, his second straight strong start, forming a formidable one-two starting punch with Jack Flaherty just in time.
By then, the fans were unleashing a full-throated, “Yankees suck…Yankees suck.”
They’re not completely wrong.