The home run music started blaring through the Dodger Stadium speakers. Mookie Betts began rounding the bases and pointing toward the bullpen.
Just like the previous night, it appeared the Dodgers had erased an early deficit on the back of one of their superstar players.
Only then, however, did the 54,119 people at Chavez Ravine realize that Jurickson Profar had made a spectacular, tone-setting play instead.
If Shohei Ohtani’s score-tying homer in Game 1 of the National League Division Series on Saturday night energized the Dodgers in a comeback victory, then Profar’s first-inning robbery of Betts in Game 2 did the exact opposite — frustrating the Dodgers, and what later became an unruly crowd, in an emotionally charged 10-2 San Diego Padres win that evened the NLDS at one game a piece.
“We knew going into this series there would be a lot of emotions,” manager Dave Roberts said. “They just played a better baseball game than we did tonight.”
Indeed, in what became a heated bout that included several jawing matches between the teams and a 10-minute delay in the seventh inning after fans threw objects toward Padres players on the field, Profar swung the early momentum with his home run robbery in the bottom of the first.
Initially, it appeared Betts had ended an 0 for 19 slump in the postseason with a deep fly ball to the short fence in left. Profar tracked the drive to the warning track, and leaned into a crowd of opposing fans and outstretched arms to try and catch it. However, it seemed at first that the left-fielder came up empty, bunny-hopping from the barrier as Betts began his home run trot.
Turned out, Profar was just taunting the Dodger fans he’d snatched the ball away from, revealing a few seconds later it was securely in his mitt.
“He caught it,” Betts said tersely. “He made a nice play.”
“Kept the momentum on our side,” Padres manager Mike Shildt added. “And we just took it from there.”
Already trailing 1-0 at that point on Fernando Tatis Jr.’s home run in the top of the first, the Dodgers watched their deficit quickly grow in the second, when ex-Dodgers outfielder David Peralta took starting pitcher Jack Flaherty deep for a two-run shot to center that made it 3-0.
The Dodgers loaded the bases with no outs in the bottom of the inning, but mustered only one run after Gavin Lux hit a sacrifice fly and Will Smith was doubled off at first base on a sharp lineout from teammate Tommy Edman.
The Dodgers wouldn’t score again until the ninth inning, by which point the Padres lead had grown to nine runs.
“[Profar’s catch] was a momentum-changer,” Roberts said. “But the Tommy Edman ball that ended up being a double-play ball, I thought that was more deflating.”
The Dodgers were dealt another blow in the sixth inning, when first baseman Freddie Freeman left the game with what the team described as “discomfort” in his already sprained right ankle.
Roberts didn’t have an update on Freeman’s status postgame, saying only that “I got word in the middle of the game that his ankle was really bothering him.”
Freeman’s chances of playing in Game 3 are unclear, with the team waiting to see how he feels during Monday’s off-day workout first.
“It’s not ideal,” Roberts said. “But I think this is what we’ll have to be dealing with for the duration [of the playoffs].”
Meanwhile, Profar’s first-inning antics with the fans served as a precursor to the emotional fireworks that came later in the game.
There was a fourth-inning interaction between Tatis and the entirety of the right-field pavilion, with the Padres star responding to boos from the bleachers with a smile and a dance after robbing a line drive from Freeman with a leaping catch.
Then, things took a more ominous turn before the bottom of the seventh.
As the Padres took the field after the seventh-inning stretch, Profar appeared to point out one fan down the left field line to an umpire and stadium security official. When Profar started to wave goodbye to the spectator, hundreds of other Dodger fans in the area quickly turned hostile.
Twice, balls were launched from the crowd in Profar’s direction. Then, more debris was showered near Tatis over in right field, causing a nearly 10-minute delay as more security officials encircled the diamond.
Roberts said he didn’t see the “specifics” of the incident, but declared, “that’s something that should never happen.”
Tatis’ reaction to the sequence?
“Dodger fans, they were just not happy,” he said.
In the sixth inning, tempers also briefly flared between the teams themselves.
Profar jawed with Smith at home plate after Tatis was hit by a pitch from Flaherty the pitch prior. Moments later, Flaherty concluded his 5 ⅓ inning, four-run start by striking out Manny Machado and shouting expletives in his direction, a back and forth that continued the next half-inning with Machado at third base and Flaherty in the dugout.
“I was fired up after getting Manny out,” Flaherty said. “It’s a big spot in the playoffs.”
All of it, however, did little to change the outcome of the game.
The Padres pulled away with a flurry of late home runs against the Dodgers bullpen (San Diego hit six on the night, the most the Dodgers have ever yielded in a playoff game).
The Dodgers, meanwhile, never got anything going against Padres starter Yu Darvish, who gave up only three hits and two walks in a seven-inning, one-run gem.
Instead of capitalizing on their Game 1 win, the Dodgers let the Padres get right back in the series. And now, as the setting shifts to San Diego, they’ll have to grapple with the emotional shockwaves of Sunday’s game, as well.
“What I got out of it was a bunch of dudes that showed up in front of a big, hostile crowd with stuff being thrown at them and said, ‘We’re going to talk with our play,’” Shildt said of his Padres squad. “We’re not going to back down … and we’re going to take care of business.”
