Two baseballs flew down toward the San Diego Padres’ Jurickson Profar from the left-field corner stands, the gutless moves of two cowards.
The water bottles flew down toward the Padres’ Fernando Tatis Jr. from the right-field corner stands, the gutless moves of many cowards.
More than a game was lost Sunday night when the Padres equaled the National League Division Series at one game apiece with a 10-2 victory over the Dodgers.
An already tattered image was further damaged. An historically bad reputation was further stained. Anyone out there walking around town wearing a Dodger jersey today should be embarrassed.
On a national stage, a few bad actors among the largest Dodger Stadium crowd of the season only furthered the inaccurate and harmful narrative that Chavez Ravine is a place stocked with punks.
In a startling display for a game of this magnitude, a pack of sorry spectators caused the game to be stopped for nearly 10 minutes before the bottom of the seventh inning while a ball and bottles rained down on the field.
The Dodger fans had once again let the taunting, preening Padres get under their skin.
“It’s a show, it’s ‘MLB The Show,’ right?” Tatis said in an interview on Fox afterward. “We gave them a show out there and it looked like they got a little bit upset because the team went up. I mean, this is the playoffs, this is the environment that we’re built for.”
To make matters worse, the Dodgers also let the Padres get under their skin, wilting under a barrage of Padres aggressiveness on a night when the visitors danced all over Dodger Stadium with six home runs, a stolen home run, and all sorts of celebrations to accompany it all.
The Padres were tacky, but that was no excuse for Dodgers fans to be idiots.
The Padres were on the attack, but that was no excuse for the Dodgers to retreat behind spotty pitching from Jack Flaherty and impatient hitting against aging Padres starter Yu Darvish.
“It was ugly,” said Roberts. “It was ugly.”
The best-of-five series now moves to San Diego’s Petco Park, where, thanks to Sunday’s disturbance, the rowdy Padre fans will now be poised to retaliate. They don’t like the Dodgers down there. Now they’re going to like them a lot less.
The Dodgers will not only be clunking down the 5 Freeway on the flattened tires of lousy starting pitching, but they could also be without Freddie Freeman, whose badly sprained ankle led him to leave Sunday’s game in the sixth inning.
Winning two out of three against a surging Padres team that suddenly has home-field advantage was already going to be a tough chore. What happened Sunday is going to make it tougher.
“There’s a lot of emotions, but the best part is we control those emotions,” said Tatis, who hit two home runs. “If we take care of business the way we did today, if we keep showing up like this, man, there’s no limit for us.”
After the security stoppage in the seventh inning, Manny Machado led the Padres in what appeared to be an emotional impromptu team meeting in their dugout. They were holding a 4-1 lead at the time. In the final three innings they outscored the Dodgers 6-1.
Tatis said Machado preached, “Just stay focused, stay focused. The only way they’re going to beat us is if we lose control of ourselves, if we get beat by our emotions.”
When recounting Game 2, it’s important not to cast Padres as unblemished heroes. In fact, they started it all.
In the first inning, Profar lunged into the left-field corner stands to steal a home run from Mookie Betts, then taunted the fans from whom he had grabbed the ball by facing the stands and dancing in their faces.
In the fourth inning, it got worse after Tatis made a lunging catch of a Freeman drive in right field. He then proceeded to sarcastically lead the profane chants of fans in the right-field pavilion.
The bad blood reached a boiling point in the sixth inning when Flaherty hit Tatis in the side, leading to a stare from the tempestuous right fielder and words from Profar.
Moments later, with Tatis and Profar on first and second, Machado struck out, after which Flaherty appeared to shout expletives at Machado while instructing him to sit down, a taunt that led to heated shouts from both dugouts.
Flaherty was removed from the game after the strikeout, but that didn’t quell the jawing, as Flaherty stood on the fringes of the dugout and continued to verbally spar with Machado throughout the bottom of the sixth.
To make matters worse, after Flaherty left the game, that pitch in Tatis’ side continued to haunt the Dodgers, as he scored against reliever Anthony Banda on a single by Jackson Merrill, giving the Padres a 4-1 lead they never lost. Flaherty wound up giving up four runs in 5⅓ innings, not exactly the sort of shutdown performance they expected when they brought him home at the trade deadline but, on a night of much craziness, Roberts preferred to look at the bright side.
“Overall I thought he did a good job keeping us in there,” said Roberts.
One inning later, after the seventh-inning stretch, the chaos broke loose as both Profar and Tatis were surrounded by security guards while public address announcer Todd Leitz pleaded for order.
The rest of the game was completed without incident.
But, in a series in which Roberts urged his team to throw the first punch, the Padres have punched back, and this duel is just getting started.
