The Toronto Blue Jays were made to wait longer than most teams to return to the World Series but made up for lost time with an 11-4 rout of the defending champion Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday in game one of the best-of-seven championship.
Much of the talk in the build-up to the opening pitch was about how the Dodgers, a superteam that includes Japanese two-way standout Shohei Ohtani, were clear favourites to be MLB's first repeat champion in 25 years.
But the Blue Jays, who snapped the eighth-longest active streak in MLB between World Series games played, cared little for that narrative and showed they are up for the task as they left the Dodgers wondering what went wrong.
For the Blue Jays, who broke open the game with a nine-run sixth inning that included the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, it was about as perfect a start as any team could hope for.
"That's kind of how we roll," said Blue Jays manager John Schneider. "Those were some pretty terrific at-bats from everyone up and down the order."
The Dodgers struck first as Max Muncy and Enrique Hernandez hit singles to cash in a leadoff walk that put Los Angeles up 1-0 in the second inning. They doubled their lead in the third when an opposite-field single by Will Smith scored Mookie Betts.
The Blue Jays responded in the fourth where Alejandro Kirk hit a leadoff single before Daulton Varsho sent the very next pitch over the center-field wall for a two-run homer that tied the game.
Toronto opened the floodgates in the sixth with three runs before Addison Barger sent the sellout crowd of 44,353 into delirium with a four-run blast to center-field. Alejandro Kirk then added a two-run blast to put Toronto ahead 11-2.
"I was just trying to put the ball in play, get a run home, hopefully," said Barger. "That was kind of my only goal and it ended up working out better than that."
Ohtani, who is expected to make his World Series pitching debut in game four on Tuesday in Los Angeles, swatted his sixth homerun of the post season in the seventh to cut into Toronto's lead but it was too little, too late.
