FootyChatter.com

MLB 2025 World Series Freddie Freeman's walk-off homer against Brendon Little in the 18th inning lifted the Dodgers to a 6-5 win over the Blue Jays in Game 3 of the World Series. Luke Hales / Getty Images LOS ANGELES — These are the games that live on forever. These are the home runs that leave the bat and never come down. These are the memories that don’t ever fade. We had ourselves a World Series game for the ages Monday night at Dodger Stadium. Six hours and 39 minutes of drama and madness. Eighteen innings of classic October baseball stretching deep into the night — especially if you were watching in Toronto, where this game didn’t crash to a halt until nearly 3 in the morning. Advertisement The scoreboard told us that the “final” score of Game 3 of this World Series was Dodgers 6, Blue Jays 5, in those 18 epic innings. But as the zeroes mounted on that scoreboard … through the shadows, through the twilight, through the astonishing march toward midnight at Chavez Ravine, there literally seemed to be no finish line in sight. These are the kinds of games we live for here at the World Series headquarters of the Weird and Wild World column. What do you say we tell you all about it. You know that old adage about how it’s theoretically possible for a baseball game to never end? Even the men playing in this game were starting to wonder if this was That Game. Maybe it would just keep going — for hours, for days, possibly right through Thanksgiving dinner. Shohei Ohtani would get intentionally walked 78 times. Twenty game-winning homers would get swallowed by the marine layer and die on the warning track. Every position player on the field would wind up having to pitch. It would be that game that broke the laws of time, of space and of baseball. What time was it? What day was it? What inning was it? Who could even tell anymore? THE ATHLETIC: “Were you starting to wonder if this game would ever end? ” DODGERS RELIEVER EMMET SHEEHAN: “I mean, you definitely start to wonder. ” But then, at 10 minutes before midnight in the west, 10 minutes before 3 a. m. in the east, it was time for Mr. Walk-off to rescue them all. The baseball roared off Freddie Freeman’s bat, soared through the sky and never stopped flying. It may have disappeared over the center-field fence, but home runs like this one don’t ever really touch the earth. It may have driven in the winning run in this marathon. But it wasn’t just victory. It was history. FREDDIE FREEMAN WALK-OFF HOME RUN IN THE 18TH INNING! #WORLDSERIES pic. twitter. com/w D1xb Rx Db C — MLB (@MLB) October 28, 2025 The World Series arrived on the sporting scene in 1903. No player in all that time had ever hit two walk-off home runs — any time, any place, any inning, or at any point in his career. So obviously, no one had ever hit two extra-inning walk-offs. Advertisement But exactly one year and two days after his poetic 10th-inning walk-off World Series slam in Game 1, 2024, Freeman added an 18th-inning game-ender to his collection. When the planets line up to bring him to the dish in these settings, those planets know what they’re doing. A year ago, Freeman described that slam as the kind of moment he’d dreamed of all his life. But no one dreams of hitting cinematic blasts like these two every year. “To have it happen again a year later, ” he said after the calendar had flipped to Tuesday, “to hit another walk-off, it’s kind of amazing. Crazy. And I’m just glad we won. ” So let’s talk about Freddie Freeman and history. According to our friends from STATS Perform, only one man who ever played in the major leagues has done both of the following two things – in either a regular-season or postseason game: • Hit a walk-off grand slam with his team one out from defeat. • Hit a walk-off home run of any kind in the 18th inning. And yes, that man is Freeman — who has now, somehow or other, done those things in the last two World Series. You want to know how incredible that really is? Freeman has hit just one extra-inning walk-off in his last 900 regular-season games. But he has now hit two of them in his last three World Series games at Dodger Stadium. As we love to say at times like this, who writes these scripts? I could write seven of these Weird and Wild columns just on this one night in the life of Shohei Ohtani. But I’ll do my best to fit him into one overstuffed section of this one. Wish me luck. He reached base nine times in one game!  Here’s how Freeman summed up Ohtani’s incomprehensible evening: “Our starting pitcher tomorrow got on base nine times tonight, ” he said, incredulously. But the even more incredulous part is how that happened. Advertisement • First four at-bats — gets four extra-base hits. • Next five at-bats — walks five times in a row,  four of them intentionally. What the heck. Who else has ever had that game — four extra-base hits and five walks in the same game? Nobody 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, where Shohei came from. Nobody had ever even reached base seven times in a postseason game. So Ohtani had that record wrapped up with five innings to go. And even in the regular season, only three players have ever reached base nine times, via a hit, walk or hit-by-pitch, in a game of any length — none of them in the last 80 years. Stan Hack — reached nine times in an 18-inning game on Aug. 9, 1942. Johnny Burnett — did this by getting nine hits in an 18-inning game, on July 10, 1932. Max Carey — also needed 18 innings to reach nine times, back on July 7, 1922. But maybe this will put this feat in even better perspective. Andy Pages is the Dodgers’ No. 9 hitter, so he bats in front of Ohtani in every inning except the first. He has only reached base six times in the entire postseason — in 58 plate appearances. And Shohei was on base nine times in one game.  Unreal. He got four extra-base hits in one World Series game!  And who else has ever done that? Right you are. Nobody. He’s now up to seven extra-base hits in his last two home games! You don’t need me to remind you of what happened the last time Ohtani played at Dodger Stadium, right? In the Greatest Game Ever Played by any Human, part of his show was the three home runs he pounded in his three official at-bats. So how mind-blowing is it to fire off seven extra-base hits in two postseason games in the same park? Maybe this will help. It’s a very partial list of Hall of Famers — and the number of postseason extra-base hits they got in their entire careers. Advertisement Ted Williams — no postseason extra-base hits

Joe Mauer — one postseason extra-base hit

Andre Dawson — two postseason extra-base hits

Rogers Hornsby — three postseason extra-base hits

Honus Wagner — four postseason extra-base hits

Ty Cobb — five postseason extra-base hits

Jeff Bagwell — six postseason extra-base hits

Willie Mays — seven postseason extra-base hits But the Greatest Shoh on Earth?  Extra-base hits in seven at-bats in a row in his home park.  Come on. Really? So that also makes it back-to-back postseason home games with at least three extra-base hits! How ridiculous is that? Only four other left-handed hitters have ever had two postseason games anywhere, in any order, over their entire career, of at least three extra-base hits. You’ve heard of them. We’re talking about three Hall of Famers — George Brett, Duke Snider and some dude named Babe Ruth — plus Astros masher Yordan Alvarez. But none of those guys did it twice in the same postseason! Five walks in one World Series game?  Once again, we ask: Who else has ever done that? Once again, we answer: Nobody has ever done that. What about Barry Bonds, you ask? Nope. Never even walked four times in a World Series game. Four intentional walks in one World Series game?  In so many ways, this game was so cool, so classic, so emblematic of everything that makes baseball great. But in this way, not so much. After Ohtani ripped off those four straight extra-base rockets to kick off his evening, Blue Jays manager John Schneider enrolled in the Royal Academy of Anyone Else on the Dodgers’ Whole Frigging Roster Can Beat Me But Not That Guy. So the next four times Ohtani arrived at the plate, he was greeted by Those Four Fingers — and down to first base he jogged. That happened in the ninth, 11th, 13th and 15th innings. And in answer to your questions, of course it made Ohtani the first man ever to have four intentional walks in the same World Series game. But … Three of those were intentional walks with no one on base!  You have no idea how much time I spent looking into this one. Advertisement INTENTIONAL WALKS WITH NO ONE ON, 9th INNING OR LATER, POSTSEASON HISTORY:   Ohtani in Game 3 — three times Everyone else in history — two times! * (*Barry Bonds in the 2003 NLDS, Alex Rodriguez in the 2009 ALCS)

(Source: Baseball Reference / Stathead) But also … WORLD SERIES INTENTIONAL WALKS WITH NO ONE ON IN ANY INNING:   Ohtani in Game 3 — three times Everyone else in history — once! * (*Albert Pujols in 2011)

(Source: Sarah Langs, MLB. com) So you know who wasn’t that pleased with all those intentional walks? The 52, 000 people at Dodger Stadium who had paid to watch Ohtani hit — and also were hoping to resume their regularly scheduled lives sometime before November. You know who else wasn’t that pleased? Ohtani’s Dodgers teammates. In fact, reliever Blake Treinen even had a helpful suggestion for commissioner Rob Manfred. “I can’t wait for the new rule next year that (the commissioner) puts out there, ” Treinen said, “that says you can’t walk guys (intentionally) in extra innings. Or like, you can only walk somebody once, because people turn on the (TV) to watch Shohei hit right there. ” Another Shohei/Babe note! Here’s yet another unreal Ohtani feat. He now has three multi-homer games in this postseason — the three-homer game and now a pair of two-homer games … but no one-homer games.  And who else has done that in a single postseason? Repeat after me: Nobody. Of course. In fact, only one man has ever had more postseason multi-homer games in his career than Ohtani has just this year. That man is, yep, Babe Ruth, with four of them. And finally … this guy hasn’t made an out at Dodger Stadium in almost two weeks.  Brewers reliever Jared Koenig struck out Ohtani on Oct. 12, in Game 3 of the NLCS. Since then, he has come to the plate 13 times and gone … Homer

Walk

Homer

Homer

Double

Homer

Double

Homer

Intentional walk

Intentional walk

Intentional walk

Intentional walk

Walk Crazy! Advertisement Before we move on, the intentional-walk train ran so far off the tracks in this game that … The Dodgers intentionally walked the Blue Jays’ No. 9 hitter, Andrés Giménez, in the 12th inning. And you don’t see that much. According to the Elias Sports Bureau, it was the first intentional walk handed out to a No. 9 hitter in a World Series in almost 30 years — since Cleveland intentionally walked the Marlins’ Jim Eisenreich in the 11th inning of Game 7 of the 1997 World Series. Two batters later, Edgar Renteria whacked the walk-off single that ended that World Series … and broke a million hearts in Ohio. But back to this game. There was also this: After a 13th-inning intentional walk of Ohtani in this game, Schneider then intentionally walked Mookie Betts, too, to fill up the bases and get to … The only man in history who has hit a walk-off World Series home run with the bases loaded … namely, Freeman. “The crazy one, ” Treinen said, “was walking Shohei and then walking Mookie to get to Freddie. I’m like, ‘You know that guy’s a professional hitter, right? ’” Of all the stuff you thought you might see in this World Series, where would this rank: Clayton Kershaw trotting in from the bullpen to perform a little October crisis management with the bases loaded? That really happened? My mostly illegible scorecard says it did. So let’s go with it. It was the 13th inning, Bases jammed. Two outs. The game on the line. And in came … Kershaw? It was the first time he’d ever thrown a big-league pitch in extra innings. And he said he couldn’t ever remember doing that — anywhere — at any point in his life. Minors. School. Little League. Anywhere. TA: “Do you ever remember coming into a game with the bases loaded? ” KERSHAW: “I don’t think so. But that’s what happens any time a game gets that long. … First time for everything. ” Advertisement TA: “What was it like to sit out there all those hours waiting for that game to come to you? ” KERSHAW: “I was warming up for like four innings. But hey, that’s bullpen life. I’m learning. ” It took him eight pitches to induce Nathan Lukes to tap out to Freeman to squirm out of that mess. But hey, he’s learning! In the late innings of this game, the Blue Jays’ lineup had a definite March 9 in Dunedin flavor to it, possibly because … they’d used four pinch runners in one game . ..  which meant extra innings unfolded with many of their big bats out of the lineup. Isiah Kiner-Falefa ran for Bo Bichette in the seventh inning. Myles Straw ran for Addison Barger in the eighth. Davis Schneider ran for Ty France in the 10th.  And Tyler Heineman ran for Alejandro Kirk in the 12th.  None of them scored a run, by the way. But that’s not even the Weird and Wild part. The Weird and Wild part is this: How often do you see a team roll out four pinch runners in a postseason game? I spun that question through Baseball Reference’s indispensable Game Finder. And that answer is … Never! Yes, the Blue Jays became the first team in postseason history to use four pinch runners in any game. Not sure how that dramatic development got lost in the shuffle, but boy, did it ever. A lot can happen when a game zips along for 18 innings. Such as … 19 pitchers … throwing 609 pitches … to the 153 hitters who showed up at home plate … and here’s a quick detour for some history. Last postseason game to feature 609 pitches — um, never! The previous record was 563, in the last 18-inning World Series game at Dodger Stadium, in 2018. Last regular-season game to feature that many pitches — that one happened 10 years ago, in a Red Sox-Yankees game at Yankee Stadium on April 10, 2015. Those two teams combined to deliver 628 pitches that day, in 19 innings. Final score: 6-5! Advertisement Now back to our program … We saw 31 hits … and 19 walks … and 29 strikeouts … not to mention, exactly one stolen base — by noted sprint champ Freddie Freeman!  And yes, this means Freeman somehow has stolen more bases over the last two postseasons (two) than Ohtani (one). I’m not making that up, folks. But now here come the Weirdest, Wildest totals of them all: • 37 runners left on base • Six more runners thrown out on the bases Think about what that means. Or you can allow the Weird and Wild column to translate for you. It means this game was an all-timer in one of our favorite categories: Runs Not Scored. Take those 37 men left on base, add in those six outs on the bases, and you’ve got 43 Runs Not Scored in one wild baseball game. That seemed like a lot. So I asked STATS to dig into this for me. Are you ready for what they found? How many games in postseason history have featured 43 Runs Not Scored? Exactly one: Game 3 of the 2025 World Series. Before that, the record was “only” 36 — set by the Braves and Mets in Game 5 of their 1999 NLCS (15 innings) and matched by the White Sox and Astros in Game 3 of the 2005 World Series (14 innings). So after Monday’s game, I felt a burning need to share this revelation with somebody, anybody. The lucky recipient of this knowledge turned out to be Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski. He listened intently, then decided to share a couple of momentous numbers of his own. “How about 6 to 5, ” he said, laughing. “As in 6 to 5. Dodgers win. That’s all that matters. ” And for the exhausted men in that clubhouse who had just spent the last six hours and 39 minutes emptying their tanks in this classic, he could not have been more correct. What. A. Game. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Jayson Stark is the 2019 winner of the BBWAA Career Excellence Award for which he was honored at the Baseball Hall of Fame. Jayson has covered baseball for more than 30 years. He spent 17 of those years at ESPN and ESPN. com, and, since 2018, has chronicled baseball at The Athletic and MLB Network. He is the author of three books on baseball, has won an Emmy for his work on "Baseball Tonight, " has been inducted into the Philadelphia Sports Hall of Fame and is a two-time winner of the Pennsylvania Sportswriter of the Year award. In 2017, Topps issued an actual Jayson Stark baseball card. Follow Jayson on Twitter @jaysonst