"I Love LA" New York Yankees vs Los Angeles Dodgers
Los Angeles-- It was a classic matchup between two of professional baseball's most iconic franchises. You have the New York Yankees with their traditional road gray, and then you have the Los Angeles Dodgers with their wedding gown white. It was a travesty that neither team was allowed to wear their usual attire. Instead, they were forced to wear some of the most asinine uniforms we have ever seen.
That wasn't the only controversy.
The Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees 2-1 in front of a sold-out crowd of 53,803 at Chavez Ravine, but they were aided by a phantom timeout that cost the Yankees a chance to win.
But as they say, that's baseball.
Kenley Jansen earned the save but once again was extremely shaky and gave quite a few fans heart attacks. If Los Angeles wants to win the World Series, they will need Kenley Jansen to dominate his opponents like we were so accustomed to seeing in the past.
It was a sizzling afternoon by the time of the first pitch. Not a single cloud in sight, with cerulean blue skies above. It was an October-like atmosphere, even though it's a "meaningless" August game.
The Dodgers scored first with Justin Turner hitting a two-run home run in the 3rd off future Hall Of Famer CC Sabathia, to make it 2-0. Aaron Judge quickly followed with a solo home run of his own to cut the lead to 2-1 in the 4th off rookie Tony Gonsolin.
But Gonsolin shut down the robust Yankees lineup, going five innings, striking out two and allowing two hits.
Can't ask for anything else from a rookie.
Joe Kelly relieved Gonsolin in the 6th and induced an easy 1-2-3 inning with a strikeout. Since May 28th, Kelly has owned a 1.42 ERA after completely stinking up the joint for the first two months.
After Kelly struggled to get the final out in the 7th inning, Pedro Baez relieved him and got the perfect groundball to end the threat. He struck out the side in the 8th to bridge the gap to Kenley Jansen.
With the heart of the Yankees order coming up, it was going to be a difficult task for Jansen. Didi Gregorius led off the inning against his fellow countrymen from Curacao.
The night before Didi had a big game against the Dodgers, crushing two home runs, including a grand slam. It would only be fitting if Didi tied the game with a homer. But instead, for some odd reason, he tried to lay two bunts down the third-base line, mind you with two strikes. He failed miserably, and the first out was made on a strikeout.
Gleyber Torres hit an opposite-field single, then Gardner followed with a single off Matt Beaty's glove, and the bases were loaded after Justin Turner tried going to second on a routine ground ball before Brett Gardner beat it out.
Jesus Christ, here we go again with Jansen losing another game.
But after hearing all of the noise about how Jansen is declining, he shut the naysayers up for the time being. He struck out Mike Tauchman and Gary Sanchez back-to-back to maintain a Dodgers victory.
Now Dodgers fans can act like they just won the World Series.
Los Angeles owns an 86-45 record after the win.
The decisive rubber match is tomorrow evening with Clayton Kershaw versus Domingo German at 7:00 EST.