The Dodgers and Red Sox played one of the most intense baseball games of all time

LOS ANGELES — Game 3 of the 2018 World Series was the longest postseason game in baseball history, and it was almost the longest game in baseball history. It was longer than Games 1 and 2 combined, and it was longer than the entire 1939 World Series. There are so many threads to follow, so many what-ifs, so many fissures and crevices to get lost in. But here’s what I keep coming back to: Both teams combined to throw 561 pitches.

We don’t know if that’s a record because pitch counts are a very recent development. It’s probably a record, but more than that, think about each pitch as an isolated event. A pitcher holding a ball, looking in, getting a sign, mentally figuring out how to best execute the pitch, coming set, coming to the plate, and then actually executing that pitch while hoping for a favorable result, which may or may not have happened. This happened 561 times.

Within those 561 pitches, there were entire narrative arcs. It was possible to binge-watch Seasons 1 and 2 of Nathan Eovaldi, Demigod, but only after you finished Seasons 1 and 2 of Walker Buehler Comes Into His Own. There were goats and GOATs, heroes and villains, screw-ups and bigger screw-ups, and a whole mess of great baseball. At one point, the Dodgers’ plan was to use two pitchers and finish the game within three hours, and everyone in the stands was very much into it.

Instead, Kenley Jansen was just the second pitcher out of nine Dodgers pitchers, and it’s easy to forget that he appeared in the game at all, even though he threw some of the most important pitches of the entire night.

Within those 561 pitches, there were ideas that made sense at the time but don’t make sense now. Some samples from my notes, which are mostly indecipherable at this point

There are about 40 more notes, each making less and less sense than the last. At some point, those all seemed like important enough threads to follow.

Martinez did grind out a walk in the 10th inning, and that could have been the difference. In the bottom of ... one of the innings, the Red Sox decided to pitch to Manny Machado with a base open, and it could have made Alex Cora look extraordinarily silly. Xander Bogaerts getting 10 pitches out of Walker Buehler in the first inning is indirectly why Buehler wasn’t pitching in the eighth inning, which means that even though Bogaerts went 0-for-8 in the game, he was also indirectly responsible for Kenley Jansen blowing a save.

There were so many incredible, unlikely aspects to this game that can’t even crack a top-20 list. David Price appeared in this game, even though he was also the starter in Game 2. Christian Vazquez played first base for the first time in the major leagues, and his first-ever chance was a nasty chopper that got him on his heels. One of the hardest-hit balls in extra innings came from Clayton Kershaw, who was pinch-hitting because of course he was.

But none of that was especially noteworthy in the context of the larger game. Any one of those notes could have been The Story, but they all became A Footnote instead.

The threads that actually combined to make The Story were a fragmented and disjointed mess. Consider the players who did matter, like ...

Eduardo Nuñez, who deserves a rock opera based on this game alone. Even though he didn’t enter the game until the 10th inning, Nuñez was everywhere — in the stands, three feet under the mound, hobbling down first, wheezing into second, always under the watchful eye of the training staff. Dodgers fans booed him because they thought he was being malingering and dramatic, but they don’t understand that Nuñez is made out of graham crackers and expired coupons, and it’s a miracle that he can feed himself, much less play baseball at a high level. And yet he was everywhere, doing things to help his team win.

Ian Kinsler, whose baserunning was a fraternity hazing stunt, just an absolute mess from the moment he got into the game. He nearly got picked off first, languidly strolled into third base on a different play as the whole world screamed at him, and then eventually became a sacrificial lamb on an ultra-shallow fly ball. Beyond all that, there was the minor matter of him screwing up the throw that snatched defeat from the jaws of victory. It was Kinsler’s throw that allowed the Dodgers to tie the game.

I could have written 1,500 words on Kinsler alone, as he was the biggest reason the Red Sox lost the game. But forge on we must. He gets a blurb. They all get blurbs.

Yasmani Grandal absolutely could have been the story, as he was at one point lollipopping his throws back to the mound, forcing both Walker Buehler and Kenley Jansen to chase errant throws all over the place. The Red Sox’ plan was to run wild on Grandal, except they couldn’t get any runners at all.

When Grandal was finally out of the game, it happened to be timed perfectly with the moment that a catcher needed to hang onto the ball with his life. The dropsy-doodle catcher in the middle of some all-encompassing yips was replaced with Austin Barnes, who somehow hung on as Kinsler’s leg tore through his tag. It was serendipitous as hell.

Cody Bellinger was the reason for that tag in the first place, as he was the proud owner of a strong throw that reset the game and kept the Dodgers alive.

Nathan Eovaldi took the loss, but he still built the biggest cult following of anyone who appeared in the game. He ground his way through 97 pitches, even though he was supposed to be the Game 4 starter. He deserved better. Even if the Red Sox end up losing this World Series, fans will still line up for decades to hear tales of What Eovaldi Did. The two-time Tommy John survivor didn’t care about a future where his shoulder and elbow felt like they were filled with gars and snapping turtles.

I’m not sure if any pitcher has ever deserved a loss less.

Walker Buehler apparently started this game? Wild. And he was brilliant, of course, the biggest story of the game until all the other stories erupted from underneath the Earth’s crust. All the Red Sox wanted to do was take advantage of Grandal’s shakiness, but they couldn’t even force the issue.

Again, the starting pitcher who thoroughly dominated for seven shutout innings is something of a footnote, here. He left the game when there were still 11 innings to play, after all.

Max Muncy just missed a game-winning home run in the 15th inning, slicing it foul by inches, and he was finally the one who solved Eovaldi in the 18th. It says a lot that it takes a while to get around to the guy who hit the walk-off home run, and it almost feels like an afterthought. Ah, yes, the man who freed us from our time prison. I believe his name was Matt.

And while those were the main characters, there were all sorts of NPCs and side quests that could have affected the outcome, too. At one point in Game 3, approximately 36 years ago, Brian Dozier screwed up a chance to end the game on a meatball down the middle, popping it up instead. There were blown calls and fine plays, any of which could have decided the game and turned into the story. This was a game of divergent paths, of different permutations and what-ifs, with tributaries and creeks flowing off the main river, but all eventually leading to Muncy ending it in the bottom of the blernteenth.

As all of this was going on, nobody could forget just how important the damned game was for the Dodgers. There have been 36 times in baseball history in which a team took a 3-0 lead in a best-of-7 series. There has been a Game 5 in just nine of those series. There has been a Game 6 just three times. There has been a Game 7 just once.

The last time there was even a fifth game in the World Series after a team went up 3-0 was 1937. Since then, there have been 15 sweeps after a team gets a 3-0 advantage in the World Series.

There has never been a Game 6 in the World Series after a team has gone up 3-0, much less a Game 7.

This was the urgency everyone felt throughout Game 3. The Red Sox winning wasn’t going to be the actual end of the series, it was just going to be the de facto end of the series. For whatever reason, teams usually can’t even muster up a fifth game once they get down 0-3, and everyone in the stands and dugout felt it.

And that’s the story of the longest postseason game in baseball history. It feels like there are a hundred things that I missed.

Rick Porcello started the game, you know.

Free Halloween costume idea: Print out every single box score on Baseball-Reference, tape the pages to your body, get wet, and roll around in granulated coffee until somebody calls the cops. Congratulations, you’re Game 3 of the 2018 World Series. Add a short skirt and become Sexy Game 3 of the 2018 World Series. It was all just that dumb.

The Dodgers are still in a rough spot. They’ll need to win at least one game at Fenway, and unless they sweep the Dodger Stadium-portion of the series, they’ll need to win two games.

But teams can come back from a 2-1 deficit in the World Series. They do it all the time. This was the urgency on the minds of both teams, the reason why Eovaldi was willing to keep going out there until his arm detached. The Dodgers are right back in the World Series.

It took 561 pitches to get there. Records were shattered along the way. It was the longest game in World Series history, and it felt like it.

It was also one of the best baseball games any of us will ever see, and that goes for the players on the field, too. For the second year in a row, the Dodgers were involved in one of the most legendary World Series games ever, except this time they won. There were about a hundred different ways for it all to come crashing down on either team, but the Dodgers emerged from the rubble.

The Dodgers aren’t dead yet, even though they tried to kill us all first.