Dodgers still the evil American mercenaries

TORONTO — Fans lined up before the recreation, ready patiently for the likelihood to take a selfie with trophies that commemorated the back-to-back World Series championships.

Dodger Stadium just isn’t the only place you are able to do this. The trophies had been from 1992 and 1993, and they honored the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Dodgers matched that back-to-back feat over the past two years, including a basic Game 7 victory in Toronto in last yr’s World Series, and returned right here Monday to a noise pit packed with followers primed to boo, and to urge their crew to actual vengeance on the evil mercenaries from America.

On this night time, the mercenaries prevailed, in a pummeling so relentless and a silencing so speedy that a three-peat appeared all but inevitable: Dodgers 14, Blue Jays 2.

“These fans, sadly, didn’t want to see us come to town,” Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing said, “and rightfully so, after what we did tonight.”

Those followers did need to see the Dodgers, but they didn’t need to see this. On a night time the Dodgers fielded a lineup without Mookie Betts and Will Smith, the crew hit 5 home runs — two by Rushing — and scored in every inning but the second and ninth. Of the six Toronto pitchers, the only one to maintain the Dodgers scoreless was catcher Tyler Heineman.

To the Dodgers, properly, it was another day on the job, if a bit louder than ordinary at the start. They had a recreation to win on the long highway toward October and, as they often do, they received.

In Toronto, however, pitcher Kevin Gausman said, “It feels like we’re getting ready for Game 8.” The followers mercilessly booed Shohei Ohtani, who turned down $700 million from the Blue Jays to take $700 million from the Dodgers, and outfielder Kyle Tucker, who turned down $350 million (over 10 years) from the Blue Jays to take $240 million (over 4 years) from the Dodgers.

They even booed Justin Wrobleski, the Dodgers’ beginning pitcher, and Miguel Rojas, normally an infielder but on Monday the Dodgers’ closing pitcher. Wrobleski, who received his seventh major league recreation Monday, said he anticipated the boos.

“It was fun,” he said. “They care about baseball here. It’s a fun environment. If people weren’t a little upset and a little, I’d say, passionate about what happened last year in the World Series, maybe they’re not real fans.”

The boos might have been a signal of respect, or of a long reminiscence: about the ninth most-memorable half of Game 7 was Wrobleski hitting Toronto infielder Andrés Gimenez, then shouting language so profane Wrobleski later said he apologized to his mom for utilizing it. You can’t be a no one if you will get the benches to clear in Game 7.

“They wouldn’t boo me,” Wrobleski said, “if they didn’t know who I was.”

Dodgers pitcher Justin Wrobleski delivers during the first inning against the Blue Jays on Monday.

(Mark Blinch / Getty Images)

The Dodgers led 4-1, then 5-1, then 6-1, then 9-1, and that was before the sixth inning was executed.

“When you score a lot of runs, you’re going to take the crowd out of it,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said.

“I think the media and everyone else was more hyped up. It’s a new team, new year. We’ve got different guys on our team too. But we obviously understand it’s a World Series matchup.”

The Blue Jays had been different: infielder Bo Bichette is in New York, catcher Alejandro Kirk is on the injured checklist, infielder-outfielder Addison Barger is harm, and Toronto is borrowing a web page from the Dodgers’ playbook with a rotation full of hurting pitchers: Shane Bieber, José Berrios, Cody Ponce and phenom Trey Yesavage all are on the injured checklist, and Max Scherzer left after two innings Monday because of tendinitis in his throwing arm.

The Dodgers are 8-2. The only defending World Series champion to get off to a better 10-game start in the last 100 years: last yr’s Dodgers, at 9-1.

Last yr labored out just nice. This is April, and no one is going through elimination any time soon. That explains how Roberts rated his anxiety stage on Monday.

“It was probably a 10 in October and probably a one tonight,” he said.

Monday’s recreation supplied yet another instance of how the crew that supposedly is ruining baseball is fattening the wallets of the league’s other 29 groups. The Dodgers have led the league in highway attendance in each of Ohtani’s two earlier seasons and nearly actually will do so again this season — and a truthful quantity of those ticket consumers are Dodgers followers following their crew right here, there and all over the place.

In a 10-minute pregame stroll around the main concourse, I noticed a lot of followers in Dodgers jerseys: not only with the names of Ohtani, Betts and Freeman but with the names of Rojas, Kiké Hernández and Roki Sasaki.

As soon as the third inning, a “Let’s Go Dodgers” chant echoed through the stadium.

The Blue Jays are off to a 4-6 start, including collection losses to the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox. The Jays needs to be good again, and soon. In the meantime, they’re offering 77-cent sizzling canines Tuesday.

For all the Dodgers followers right here, that’s fairly the journey: a rout that silenced a hostile crowd at some point, sizzling canines valued at 55 cents in U.S. currency the next. The fruits of victory, as Tommy Lasorda may need said, not often are so low-cost and filling.