MLB's Strange But True 2025: Wildest games of the year, including 3 postseason classics
SOURCE:The Athletic|BY:Jayson Stark
What happens when a sport gives us 15 games a day, pretty much every day for six months? Some of those games can get downright wacky!
You know what happens when a sport gives us 15 games a day, pretty much every day for six months? Some of those games can get downright wacky!
So of course_,_ the Cubs played a game in which they gave up 10 runs in one inning and still won. … And naturally, another team hit a leadoff home run and then lost by 19 runs. … And why would it confuse anybody that the winning pitcher in the first big-league game ever played in Tennessee spent his entire day in a state not known as “Tennessee”?
Not to mention … there was an All-Star Game in which the box score lied about pretty much everything that mattered … And there was a game in Colorado in which the losing team led 9-0 in the first inning. … And it makes total sense that the team that won Game 7 of the World Series played baseball from 8 p.m. until midnight ET without leading for a single pitch.
That’s just how we roll in this sport. So sit back and behold … The Strange But True Games of 2025.
The 5 Strangest But Truest Games of the Year
From no-hitter to no way!
What the heck happened: Sept. 6 in Baltimore … Orioles 4, Dodgers 3 … history made … minds blown.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was one out from a no-hitter. The Dodgers led 3-0. Then … Orioles magic. (Jess Rapfogel / Getty Images)
I’ll start this opus by throwing out three things I love about baseball: Its history and memories … good old no-hitter drama in the ninth … and just when you think one incredible thing is about to happen, a totally different incredible thing happens.
It isn’t often you get all three of those in one night. But welcome to Camden Yards!
History and memories — It was the 30th anniversary of the night Cal Ripken Jr. broke Lou Gehrig’s legendary iron man record. What could possibly be more memorable than that? Ha. By the end of this game, it was hard to remember the big pregame Cal-a-palooza had even happened.
No-hitter drama in the ninth — For 8 2/3 innings, this was the Yoshinobu Yamamoto Game. But that changed!
Some no-hit bids feel fluky. Not this one. This was 100 percent sheer domination. The Dodgers’ ace was slicing up the Orioles like ingredients in his postgame stir fry. Ten strikeouts. One batted ball all night that had a hit probability over 40 percent. Nothing even close to a hit. So he was one out from no-hit history and a 3-0 win. Then this wild thing happened.
NO-HITTER NO MORE
Jackson Holliday homers with two outs in the 9th to end Yoshinobu Yamamoto's no-hitter 🤯 pic.twitter.com/P0UPJYYYjV
What. A. Moment. A shocking Jackson Holliday homer busted up the no-no. And hard as that was to process, this was about to get even more nuts, if only because …
The Strange But True part hadn’t happened yet! Here’s a quick synopsis of everything that went down with two outs in the ninth: Holliday homer (Dodgers 3, Orioles 1) … pitching change. (Hello, Blake Treinen.) … Jeremiah Jackson double … Gunnar Henderson hit-by-pitch (tying run on base now!) … wild pitch (tying run in scoring position now!) … Ryan Mountcastle walk … Colton Cowser bases-loaded walk (3-2!) … pitching change. (Hello, Tanner Scott.) … Emmanuel Rivera single up the middle. One run will score. Two runs will score. … Orioles 4, Dodgers 3! You’re kidding, right?
How impossible was this? Think about this. For 8 2/3 innings, the Orioles got no hits. And then … they got three hits … off three different pitchers … without ever making another out?
C’mon. Totally impossible.
I asked the great Katie Sharp to help us determine just how impossible it was. She looked through every game in the Baseball Reference play-by-play annals back to 1911. Want to guess how many teams had been no-hit through 8 2/3 innings and then gotten three hits off three different pitchers in that ninth inning? Yup. That would be none.
Oh, and one more thing — Let’s ignore the whole no-hitter part of this. What were the odds of the Orioles winning this game when they were down by three, with nobody on and two outs in the ninth? Oh, man.
Since 1969, this was the 1,533rd time the Dodgers had played a nine-inning game in which they led by three runs or more, with two outs and nobody on in the ninth. Their record in those first 1,532 games? 1,531-1. And they’d won 1,234 of them in a row. But then, somehow or other, they got walked off by an Orioles team that hadn’t won a single game via walk-off all season until the Dodgers came to town? Un-be-lievable.
Dancing with the All-Stars
What the heck happened: July 15 in Atlanta … National League All-Stars 7, American League All-Stars 6 … and the part we’ll remember most evaded box-score captivity!
Kyle Schwarber’s swing-off heroics lifted the NL to victory, and Schwarber to All-Star MVP honors — despite him going hitless in the actual game. (Kevin C. Cox / Getty Images)
What if you went to an All-Star Game and a penalty-kick home-run shootout broke out? It happened on this wild night in Georgia.
Thanks to a new rule that decides these games with something called a “home-run swing-off” instead of a phenomenon we used to know as “extra innings,” this game also turned into a Strange But True all-timer. And why is that? Because …
The box scores will try to convince us that the NL won this game 7-6. There’s just one slight problem: That seventh run never crossed the plate. How even? Because the team that wins those shootouts gets credit for an extra run it never actually scored. Of course.
The hitless-wonder MVP of this game was Kyle Schwarber. The box scores will claim he racked up zero homers — and zero hits — in this game. Oh, really? The whole world saw him fire off three gargantuan home runs in three swings in that mini-Derby. So there you go. What might have been the three most memorable swings of his whole career didn’t even “count”!
The National Leaguers led 6-0 in this game, with only nine outs to go. They then gave back all six runs. And that didn’t just get them into an overtime home run hack-off. It got them into the record books. How many other teams in All-Star history have blown a six-run lead, whether they ended up winning or losing? Once again, when reading this column, you’ll never go wrong guessing “zero.”
The game-tying hit was so perfect. It came via a Steven Kwan squibber that came off the bat with a minus-68 degree launch angle, had an exit velocity of 53.9 mph and traveled all of 3 feet on the fly. It was the AL’s softest-hit ball of the entire game. And the irony of a 3-foot, 53.9-mph dribbler setting up a game-deciding home run swing-off pretty much sums up the beauty of baseball.
Thanks to Kwan’s slow-mo infield single, we got a Strange But True classic to write about — a game in which the guy who threw the last pitch was a coach, the hitter who took the last swing wasn’t even wearing a cap and the MVP was a fellow who went hitless (in the actual game). Awesome. Only in … baseball!
Full speed(way) ahead
What the heck happened: Aug. 2 (and 3), at the Bristol (Tenn.) Motor Speedway … Braves 4, Reds 2 … with the Strange But True part provided by the miracle of time travel (baseball style).
The Braves’ Eli White starred in the MLB Speedway Classic on Aug. 3, or was it Aug. 2? (Jamie Squire / Getty Images)
It took 150 seasons of professional baseball for the major leagues to show up in Tennessee. So no wonder, once the Reds and Braves arrived, the Tennessee weather gods didn’t want to let them leave.
This game began on a Saturday night, got suspended in the bottom of the first inning by 1.8 billion raindrops, then played a bunch of hilarious suspended-animation tricks after it resumed Sunday.
History will always tell us … that the just-traded Miguel Andujar’s first game with the Reds was a “home” game played on Saturday, Aug. 2 … even though he never set foot in the batter’s box that day and never spent one second in a town known as Cincinnati.
History will also try to convince Hurston Waldrep … that the Braves rookie’s first career win came in an Aug. 2 game in Tennessee even though he spent every minute that day in Georgia (as a member of the Gwinnett Stripers Triple-A team) before he was summoned for an emergency crack-of-dawn commute, to pitch the resumption of that game on what we could have sworn was Aug. 3.
Then there was Eli White … whose only two-homer game of the last four seasons came at a racetrack, not a ballpark — in a game in which both long balls sure looked as if they left his bat on Sunday … which won’t stop every box score in our land from reporting they mysteriously came down Saturday.
And baseball’s brand new Tennessee Waltz … will always be literally waltzing on very strange air … because everything I just described happened on Sunday, Aug. 3 … but the historians will still try to convince us that Major League Baseball has only been played on one day in AL/NL history … and you know which day that was?
Not Aug. 3!
One for the books at Wrigley
What the heck happened: April 18 at the Friendly Confines … Cubs 13, Diamondbacks 11 … in what I was able to officially document was one of the nuttiest games in Wrigley history.
Seiya Suzuki celebrates during a wild one at Wrigley Field in which the Cubs and D-Backs combined to score 21 runs in an inning and a half. (Geoff Stellfox / Getty Images)
Maybe you’ve heard of this ballpark named Wrigley Field. It’s been around a while … by which we mean since the Woodrow Wilson administration.
If you count the postseason (and we recommend that), those Chicago Cubs have played more than 8,500 baseball games at Wrigley. Which feels like a lot.
So when we tell you that a game happened there this year that Cubs historian Ed Hartig told us will go down as the third-craziest game in Wrigley history, you should drop what you’re doing and jolt to attention.
OK, what was so crazy about it? Well, the Cubs gave up 10 runs in one inning in this game … and they won. Ready for the Strange But True highlights? Here goes.
The 10-run inning — The Cubs hadn’t allowed 10-plus runs in an inning since Aug. 13, 2021. That was 552 games earlier. … The Diamondbacks had scored 10-plus in an inning once in their previous 1,053 games. … Then they erupted for 10 in the eighth, to take the lead in this one, and they lost. Which seems kinda rare — possibly because they’re only the third team to lose a game like that in the last 92 seasons!
Speaking of that eighth inning … the D-Backs scored 10 times and didn’t even make it through that inning with the lead. Would you believe only one other team in the modern era has ever scored 10-plus in an inning to take the lead — and then gave back that lead in that same inning? The other was Dick Hoblitzell’s 1912 Reds, who did it against the Cubs.
And that’s how the highest-scoring inning in Wrigley history happened — Thanks to the Cubs’ six-run bottom of the eighth, the Cubbies and Diamondbacks are now the proud owners of the highest-scoring inning (by two teams) in the history of Wrigley Field. Except that’s still not all, because …
These teams scored 21 runs in an inning and a half! Since the Cubs had also scored five times in the bottom of the seventh, that meant these teams had just put up three touchdowns (plus three extra points) in three consecutive half-innings. That can happen, apparently, when the hitters go 20-for-29 (.690), with five homers, in that inning and a half. But guess what? That wasn’t even the Strangest But Truest part, because …
In those three half-innings, these two teams combined for … a cycle, a home-run cycle (slam, three-run, two-run, solo), six total homers, two grand slams and at least five runs in three half-innings in a row. According to our friends from STATS Perform, there had never been a game in history where all of those things happened … and then the Cubs and Diamondbacks did all that in an inning and a half.
How can you not love … Baseball!
Don’t walk this way
What the heck happened: April 8 in Jupiter, Fla. … Dunedin Blue Jays 19, Jupiter Hammerheads 5 … in a Florida State League classic in which strike-throwing has never been more optional.
I never want to leave the minor leagues out of these Strange But True Games of the Year roundups … because stuff happens! And we love that stuff in this column. So let’s take a little trip to lovely Jupiter, where the pitching staff of those Low-A Jupiter Hammerheads just could not find the strike zone. And 22 walks later, we had …
The box-score line of the millennium – 22 runs … on a mere nine hits … thanks to those 22 walks … and three wild pitches … and three hit batters … plus two pitch-timer violations … and a bonus error, on a wild throw … by a pitcher. So let’s recap. That’s 26 batters reaching base without a hit — before this staff got 27 outs. That went smoothly.
Jupiter Hammerheads walk a record 22 hitters in a game.
The first six Jupiter pitchers … threw 236 pitches to get 24 outs — and 103 of them were actually strikes! … All six of those guys allowed more walks than hits … and … threw more balls than strikes … and … walked the first hitter they faced. The first five of them also wound up with more walks than outs. That really happened.
The history: So you think 22 walks in a game is a record, huh? Of course it’s a record. It’s the most in a game, in any league, in the history of the minor-league stats portal. It’s even more than the record of any major-league game of any length, in any century.
The perspective: Would you believe there were 56 big-league pitchers who faced at least 250 hitters this year and didn’t walk 22 all season? … Would you believe that Nathan Eovaldi of the Rangers faced 496 hitters this year … and walked only 21 of them? … Would you believe that Christy Mathewson once faced 1,195 hitters in 1913 … and walked only 21 all season?
But the Jupiter Hammerheads managed to walk 22 in one baseball game. Seriously. Baseball. It can be a beautiful game. Just not always!
Ten more games (and series) I can’t believe happened
Catcher Carson Kelly hit for the cycle on an odd Opening Day for the A’s, their first in Sacramento. (Sergio Estrada / Imagn Images)
Opening day in West Sacramento — The 2001-24 A’s played 323 games in Oakland … and never gave up 18 runs in any of them. Then the 2025 A’s headed east … and coughed up 18 runs to the Cubs in the very first game they ever played in Sacramento. So there was that. But also …
In their glorious history in Oakland, the A’s played over 4,000 games in the Coliseum — and you know how many visiting players hit for the cycle? Uh-huh. That would be zero. Want to guess what happened on Opening Day in Sacramento? What else? Cubs catcher Carson Kelly hit for the cycle — because of course he did.
May 4 in Baltimore: Don’t underestimate The Force — You know what we call May 4, don’t you? That would be Star Wars Day, because may the fourth be with you. So what historic thing happened at Camden Yards in this Star Wars Day game between the Royals and Orioles? These two teams tied the all-time record for … what else? … solos … with 10 solo homers.
And as if that wasn’t perfect enough, who hit the record-tying 10th solo? How could it not be a man named … Luke! Not Skywalker, unfortunately. It was Royals catcher Luke Maile. But clearly, the force could not possibly have been more strong with him in that at-bat.
This game also produced my favorite quote of the whole season. When I informed always-entertaining Royals TV analyst Rex Hudler about this record, he was so excited, he told me: “Starkie, you’re gonna win an Emmy for this column.”
June 1 in Arizona: Welcome to District 9 — If you had a ticket for this game, I hope you didn’t spend the first inning in the tacos line — because those Washington Nationals rolled into Phoenix and scored nine runs before they made an out. The Nationals hadn’t scored nine runs in any inning, even when given all three outs to do it, in their previous 6,000 innings. But that wasn’t even the Strange True part. Leave it to my friend and Athletic teammate, Tyler Kepner, to text me with the Strange But True part:
These people haven’t seen an out yet — but they’ve seen nine runs score!
How Strange But True was that? Well, no team had ever scored that many runs, before either team had made an out, in any game we know of, in any century. But then … baseball happened.
April 20 in Baltimore: The 24-2 game — Ever heard of a game in which a team got 25 hits … and 11 walks … and two hit batters? No, you have not! In their 24-2 bludgeoning of the Orioles, the Reds became the first team ever to do that. (Hat tip to loyal reader Eric Orns.) But also …
If you’re subtracting along at home, you know the Reds won a road game by 22 runs. And how Strange But True is that? As Cincinnati TV sports anchor Charlie Clifford reported, they hadn’t even scored 20 runs on the road since a 20-1 game in Philadelphia in 1999, against a Phillies team managed by … some guy named Terry Francona!
The Strange But True comeback collection — So how unlikely were these three games?
• On July 28, the Padres did something that seems impossible. They gave up a grand slam and a separate game-tying homer to the Mets in the ninth inning … and still won (7-6) without even needing extra innings. And who scored the winning run? Ex-Mets utility crooner Jose Iglesias. OMG!
• On July 30, the Yankees won a bizarre game against the Rays in which they … trailed in the eighth inning … and trailed in the ninth inning … and trailed in the 10th inning … and then won in the 11th inning, on a walk-off hit by a guy (Ryan McMahon) who hadn’t even been a Yankee a week earlier.
• And on July 6, the Tigers managed to win a game against the Guardians in which … they got exactly one hit in the first nine innings and … they were still trailing with two outs in the ninth. But they scraped together this unlikely game-tying rally: hit-by-pitch, stolen base, groundball, game-tying wild pitch with Cleveland one strike away. Then they won it with a six-run 10th. And should we mention here that if they’d won one fewer game, they’d have missed the playoffs?
Austin Wells and the Yankees torpedoed the Brewers in the second game of the season. (Mike Stobe / Getty Images)
March 29 in the Bronx: Slam the torpedoes — The Pirates hit 11 home runs in the entire month of July. The Yankees hit nine in three hours in this game, in their second game of the season. …
Oh, and also, they kicked off this 20-9 wipeout with three home runs on the first three pitches, against their old friend Nestor Cortes. So if your 11-year-old begged you to buy him a torpedo bat in 2025, feel free to blame Nestor!
Sept. 19 in Kansas City: The 20-1 game — How this game started: With a George Springer leadoff homer to kick off the top of the first for Toronto. Why that was not an omen: Because the Royals then scored the next 20 runs — handing those Jays the most lopsided loss ever by a team that thought hitting a leadoff homer was a beautiful way to start the day.
But that wasn’t even the Strange But True part. That part came when Blue Jays backup catcher Tyler Heineman took the mound … and became the first position player ever to serve up 13 hits and 10 runs, on a mere 33 pitches. According to my friend Paul Casella of MLB.com, Heineman was the 292nd player to give up 13 hits (or more) in the pitch-count era (1988-present) … but none of those other 291 did it in fewer than 61 pitches.
May 30-June 1: Sweepless in Seattle — You can watch a million baseball games and never again see what the Mariners did in this three-game series against Minnesota. They blew a lead in the ninth inning of all three games … and still won the series. Does that seem hard? It should. Only one other team in the modern era (Jerry Spradlin’s 2000 Royals) has ever pulled it off in any series. But …
The Strangest But Truest game of them all was actually the one the Mariners didn’t win, all because … they held a three-run lead … with two outs in the ninth … and a pitcher on the mound (Andrés Muñoz) with a 0.00 ERA. Whereupon … they somehow lost this game by six runs (allowing three in the ninth and six in the 10th). Should I make you guess how many other teams have ever done that? Once again, “none” would be the ideal response.
The Rockies celebrate after a walk-off win over the Pirates in which they overcame a nine-run, first-inning deficit. (Justin Edmonds / Getty Images)
Aug. 1-3: The Pirates are gonna Pirate — Was there a team in baseball more upside-down than the 2025 Pirates? Let’s go with no on that. And this nutty three-game series at Coors Field proves that whole theory.
Game 1 — the Pirates score nine runs in the top of the first (that seems good) … and lose (17-16).
Game 2 — the Pirates then get a three-homer game from their sweet-swinging first baseman, Liover Peguero (that also seems good) … and lose again (8-5).
Game 3 — the Pirates give up back-to-back-back homers (that seems bad) … but win (of course).
Aug. 4-6: Standing on Rocky ground — You might have thought life would calm down in Colorado once the Pirates left town. Ha. Little did the Rockies know that would be their most normal series of that homestand. They spent their next three days tussling with the Blue Jays, and that went well … except for the part where the Blue Jays just barely outscored them in that series, by a margin of 45-6. But that wasn’t even the Strange But True part. Check this out.
• Did you know that 14 of the 30 teams in MLB never got 21 hits in any game all season? And the Blue Jays averaged 21 hits a game in that series.
• Did you know that nine of the 30 teams forgot to score 15 runs in any game all season? And the Blue Jays averaged 15 runs a game in that series. Perhaps you think lots of teams have done that at Coors Field. In reality, however, no team had ever done that at Coors.
• The Blue Jays won the first of those games, 15-1. It wasn’t even their biggest blowout of the series. They won the final game, 20-1. You don’t see that much! According to STATS Perform, the only other team in the last seven decades to win two games by 14 runs or more in the same series was Doug Glanville’s 1999 Phillies, who walloped Ben Davis’ ’99 Padres, 18-2 and 15-1, on Aug. 24-25.
But the last AL team to do that? That was Slammin’ Sammy White’s 1953 Red Sox, who beat up on Ray Boone’s ’53 Tigers, 17-1 and 23-3, at Fenway Park that June.
• And one final thing: The Blue Jays would wind up this series with a slight edge in homers (13-1) and an incomprehensible advantage in extra-base hits, by which I mean 32 to four!
So this is where I predictably ask if you have a wild guess for how many teams have ever smoked that many homers and extra-base hits in one series, while allowing that few. Just one, naturally … the 2025 Blue Jays. Who, as it turned out, had even bigger things ahead …
Three Strange But True postseason classics
Was this the greatest postseason of all time? If you argue it was, I won’t say you’re wrong. So many spectacular games. So many Strange But True moments that made us gush: Did that just happen? I could have written an entire column like this, just about October alone.
But with apologies to Trey Yesavage, Tarik Skubal, Garrett Crochet, ALCS Game 7, Game 5 of that Tigers-Mariners ALDS and a bunch of unbelievable Cubs-Brewers NLDS games, I’m going to tell you about three classics I was lucky enough to see with my own eyeballs.
The Ohtani Game
What the heck happened: Oct. 17 at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers finished off an NLCS sweep of Milwaukee, but you probably won’t remember any of that, because … this was The Ohtani Game.
Shohei Ohtani hit three homers and hurled 10 strikeouts in a postseason performance for the ages. (Sean M. Haffey / Getty Images)
In our lifetimes, we run across just a handful of humans, in all walks of life, who look at stuff they are told is impossible and say: What does that even mean? Then there is Shohei Ohtani, redefining the very limits of impossibility.
That’s how I try to explain him to people who don’t follow sports. And that’s what I’ll always remember about this goosebumpy evening at Dodger Stadium. This was The Ohtani Game — the single greatest game any human has ever had on a baseball field … except that I’m not sure we can even describe him with that word, “human,” anymore.
• The starting pitcher for the Dodgers on this night hit three home runs in one postseason game. Elsewhere in our universe, only two other pitchers — Bob Gibson and Dave McNally — have ever even hit two postseason home runs in their whole career.
• Those three Ohtani homers traveled a projected 1,342 feet — and it’s hard to know if that projection is accurate, since one of them left the stadium and might still be hopping toward downtown Pasadena for all we know.
• Meanwhile, in his alternate life as an unhittable slinger of baseballs, Ohtani spent six-plus innings working his magic on the mound — and spun a 10-strikeout two-hitter, while mixing in two smokeballs tracked at 100.3 mph and 100.2 mph, respectively, for our baseball-watching amusement.
• So try to fathom this: We got to see a postseason game in which the starting pitcher hit more home runs (three) than he allowed hits (two). I still can’t believe I typed those words.
• That guy also had kind of a cool first inning. Struck out three hitters in a row as a pitcher. Then got to hit and led off the bottom of the first with a homer. If you’re thinking that might be one more thing no pitcher had ever done in any postseason inning, you’re getting the hang of this.
• Let’s do some quick name-dropping. Did you know that Willie Mays never hit two home runs (let alone three) in a postseason game? You know who else never did? How ’bout Henry Aaron, Mark McGwire, Mike Schmidt or Ken Griffey Jr.
• Bob Feller never struck out 10 hitters (or more) in a postseason game. The long list of others who never did includes Juan Marichal, Jack Morris and Christy Mathewson.
• But a superhero named Ohtani did both on the same night.
• So this is stuff that would have been breathtaking on any night of any season. But imagine doing all this in the game that sends your team to the World Series. Incredible.
• Finally, let’s mention this again, because I always feel obliged to make this announcement: He’s one person, and he lives on the same planet we live on.
So feel free to toss out the greatest hitting performances in October history. Tell us all about Reggie Jackson or Kirk Gibson or even David Freese. We have just one question: How many hitters did they strike out on those nights?
Or argue for your favorite postseason pitching exhibition of all time. What do you think? Don Larsen? Roy Halladay? Bob Gibson? Good ones. Another question: How many home runs did they hit in their spare time in those games?
The allure of sports is that every time we watch, human beings might do something we never imagined any human could do. But then along comes that creature from the mysterious planet Ohtanus, a man who continuously makes us wonder: What can’t he do?
Let’s play 18
What the heck happened: Oct. 27 at Dodger Stadium … Game 3 of the World Series … Dodgers 6, Blue Jays 5 … in 18 surreal innings … are we sure it’s over yet?
Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer ended a marathon Game 3. (Luke Hales / Getty Images)
What. A. Game. I was there, and sometimes I feel like I dreamed it. It went on for more than six and a half hours. It ended at almost 3 in the morning Toronto time. And suffice it to say, a lot of stuff happened. Such as …
• 19 pitchers … throwing 609 pitches, the most in any postseason game in history … to a parade of batters that stretched 153 hitters long.
• We saw 31 hits … and 19 walks … and 29 strikeouts … not to mention, exactly one stolen base — by noted base burglar Freddie Freeman!
• But maybe the strangest total of them all was this one: 43. Which set a record in a category I just made up, Runs Not Scored. So what’s that? Between those 37 runners left on base and six more who got thrown out on the bases, that’s 43 men who at least reached base — but never made it to home plate. How bizarre is that?
• Thank goodness for Mr. Extra Innings, Freddie Freeman. His 18th-inning walk-off homer finally ended this thing. And it came one year and two days after his extra-inning walk-off grand slam that finished off Game 1 of the 2024 World Series. No other player in the history of the World Series has hit two walk-off homers, period — any time, any place, any inning — at any point in his career. But amazingly, this guy has now swatted extra-inning walk-offs in two World Series in a row.
• Hey, I haven’t mentioned that Ohtani guy in a few paragraphs. Let’s rectify that. All he did was reach base nine times in one game. In his first four at-bats, he got four extra-base hits. In his next five trips, he walked five times in a row, four of them intentionally. And yep, here we go again. Nobody else has ever had that game, because of course they haven’t. Not in the postseason. Not in the regular season. Probably not even in the Intergalactic League on Planet Ohtanus.
• Also stuffed in here was the final appearance of Clayton Kershaw’s spectacular career. In relief. All because Kershaw’s manager, Dave Roberts, waved for him to work out of a fun little bases-loaded jam in the 13th inning. It was the first time Kershaw had ever thrown a pitch in extra innings. That includes Little League, he said. Just thought you’d want to know.
There was so much more. But you get the idea. So many plot twists. So many numbers. Then Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski helpfully hit us with his own personal favorite number.
“How about 6 to 5,” he said, laughing. “As in 6 to 5. Dodgers win. That’s all that matters.”
The magnificent Seventh
What the heck happened: Nov. 1 at the Rogers Centre in Toronto … Dodgers 5, Blue Jays 4 … in a World Series Game 7 in which the winning team never led until the 11th (and final) inning.
Will Smith waltzes around the bases after his go-ahead homer in the 11th inning of Game 7. (Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images)
It was the greatest World Series Game 7 of them all, the ultimate crescendo for a World Series that will reverberate through history forever. For more than four hours, I watched this game, mesmerized by the seemingly endless procession of special moments. Here’s just some of what I’ll remember:
Miguel Rojas — Of all the men you might have picked to hit a game-tying, life-changing home run with one out in the ninth inning of a World Series Game 7, where would Rojas have ranked? Twentieth? Fiftieth? He hadn’t gotten a hit in a month. He’d hit one home run since July 19. And the only homer he hit all year against a right-handed pitcher came against a position player. But the homer Rojas launched off Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman added him to this esteemed list — of players who have hit a game-tying World Series home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7:
Miguel Rojas – 2025 Game 7 That’s it!
Will Smith — Here’s another startling list — of everyone who has hit a home run in extra innings in a World Series Game 7:
Will Smith – 2025 Game 7 That’s all, folks
The Dodgers hadn’t led for one pitch of this game until Smith hit this 11th-inning stunner off Shane Bieber — at 12:17 a.m. ET. And it had Strange But True Feats of the Year column written all over it.
How many previous home runs had the Dodgers’ sweet-swinging catcher ever hit in the 11th inning (or later)? Right you are. That would be none. Meanwhile, over at Baseball Reference, they calculate a metric known as Championship Win Probability Added, which measures how much a play changes a team’s chances of winning the World Series. And where does this one rank? How about No. 1 among all World Series homers ever hit in the ninth inning or later. Sorry about that, Bill Mazeroski.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto — This man was already a legend on one side of the Pacific. He now has both sides covered. It was dazzling enough that Yamamoto started Game 6 of this World Series, the game that saved the Dodgers’ season, throwing 96 pitches over six innings. Who knew he’d have another 34 pitches in him the next day, in Game 7? It’s awe-inspiring enough that he pitched at all on zero days’ rest. But here’s the Strange But True part: He got more outs in Game 7 (eight) than any other Dodgers pitcher!
The Dodgers’ billion-dollar rotation — OK, so it’s true the Dodgers’ starting rotation gets paid slightly more than, say, the Pirates’ rotation. But on this historic night, you can’t say this team didn’t get what it paid for. The Dodgers rolled out four starting pitchers during this World Series. Then, in Game 7, all four of them pitched in the same game. And if you’re thinking you don’t see that much, maybe it’s because before this game, it last happened 80 years ago.
And also the Blue Jays’ rotation — Can’t leave them out, because the Blue Jays used three of their starting pitchers in this game, too. So yes, that means that these two teams combined to use seven pitchers in Game 7 who had started games in this World Series. Does that seem slightly unusual? Possibly because it last happened as recently as 101 years ago, in a game in which the final pitch was thrown by Walter Johnson.
Bo Bichette’s three-run homer off Shohei Ohtani had Rogers Centre rocking early in Game 7. (Vaughn Ridley / Getty Images)
Bo Bichette — We still don’t know if this was the last game Bichette will ever play for the Blue Jays. But if it was, he gave all of Canada a powerful memory for the ages — with an eardrum-shaking three-run homer off Ohtani in the third inning. It sure did look, for a couple of hours, as if it would go down as the swing that won this World Series. But even if that’s not how this turned out, we can still ask: How astounding was it? Thanks for asking. Ohtani hadn’t given up a home run with a runner on base all season. Bichette hadn’t hit a go-ahead home run with a runner on base in his home ballpark all season. And then, well, that happened.
The plays at the plate — If you were scripting this movie, how could you not toss in this wild twist: Both teams threw out the go-ahead run at the plate — in back-to-back half-innings: Isiah Kiner-Falefa in the bottom of the ninth, Mookie Betts in the top of the 10th.
So think of how slim the difference between winning and losing any game can be. But when it happens in a Game 7, it’s the difference between not just winning one game but also winning a World Series.
Dodgers president and CEO Stan Kasten joined our Starkville podcast a few days later and said there were 20 plays like that on this night, where he was sure his team wasn’t winning this game or this Series. He wasn’t wrong, even if he miraculously got a parade out of it.
Just writing about this game again gives me chills, and you know why? Because merely reliving these moments always makes me think: How awesome a sport is …
