June 28-29: A critical 2-game series. If we split, both teams are OK with that. A sweep would be great for Dodgers, but hurtful if we were swept. First time since 1962 (playoff) both teams had such high winning pct.
Game 1- Wow! Dodgers play solo jacks against Giants to win 3-2, despite getting outhit 10-5. Yes, Dodgers only got 2 singles besides the 3 homers, but held on for a nail biter of a win. AB with RISP: Dodgers 0-1, Giants 0-8! Bauer pitched his usual: only gave up 2 solos (careless belt high pitches), while being tough as nails with traffic — no runs. Treinen gave us a start, letting 1st 2 hitters on in the 8th. But Blake toughed it out. Jansen cleaned it up in the 9th for the big save, highlighted by his 3 slider K of a hot Posey.
Key play came in the 9th: leadoff single by Giants was overrun by Belli, causing the runner to try for 2. Belli’s throw beat the runner by plenty, but Taylor at 2B blew the tag (body stab instead of swipe), only to redeem both Belli and himself by staying with the tag when the runner came off the bag.
Game 2– For the short sweep! I was there in person, along with a mostly maskless crowd of 52,000+. Very fun game with a hold your breath 9th, as Dodgers and Kenley hold on for a 3-1 win, following last night’s 3-2 nailbiter. Max Muncy came through with a traditional home run on his bobble head night — I called it. A real pitcher’s duel between league’s top hurlers Buehler and Gausman. Each team had only 3 hits.
Buehler was great — allowed only 2 hits over 6 shutout innings. Well, should have been a shutout, but for a booted grounder by Lux in the 7th, which appeared to wear on Walker, as we all knew it was his last inning. Gavin is a bit unsteady on marginal balls. Then as we figured, that error cost a run, as Dodger killer Dugger lined a double on a full count, so runner at 1B was going. Kenley struggled to command his cutter. He hit the 1st batter and walked the 2nd. Looked grim. Then Jansen found it. Pop up. Pop up. K. Giants can kiss our asterisk as we sweep.
Rant: exiting the stadium was excruciating. First they closed off the usual stairs to the parking lot and forced us to bottleneck onto a rail-less, dimly lit stairway. Then there were no traffic monitors in the parking lot (K), where there built up a huge logjam of merging cars. Took us a half hour just to get out of lot K, then another 15 minutes to get onto the 110 freeway. Good traffic management should have made that only a 15 minute effort.