ATLANTA — For at least the 30th time in the past 10 years, Dave Roberts addressed a crowd of hulking, goggled men eager to douse one another in booze.
As the Dodgers manager lavished deserved praise on his victorious ballclub, the 54-year-old gripped a gold-tipped bottle of bubbly in his left hand. Meanwhile, another 750 milliliters of joy rested snugly in the back pocket of his baseball pants. The Dodgers players weren’t the only ones ready to party.
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But first, Roberts had some words of affirmation.
“There’s no more talented team than the Los Angeles Dodgers,” the three-time World Series-winning skipper boasted. “It’s the best organization in sports, top to bottom. We’re smarter, we’re better, and we’re tougher.”
“And we’re dinosaurs!” outfielder Teoscar Hernández, 33, interjected.
The room erupted in laughter, drowning out Roberts. Hernández’s self-deprecating quip was a reference to a comment made earlier this season by newly minted San Diego Padres owner José E. Feliciano, who proclaimed, “The owner of the Dodgers owns a lot of dinosaurs.” And while the Dodgers’ chairman and top dog, Mark Walter, does indeed own a large number of prehistoric animal fossils, Feliciano’s remark was interpreted as a slight toward Los Angeles’ aging core of position players.
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Hernández, Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Will Smith, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy, Tommy Edman and Kiké Hernández are all over 30. Freeman is 37. Muncy is 36. Betts turned 34 on Wednesday. Gray hairs, both real and proverbial, are starting to sprout.
“We’re old! We’re f***ing old, yes,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas, 37 and nursing a back injury, belted over the revelrous din.
Old, yes, but still damn good.
The Dodgers dinosaurs dispatched the Atlanta Braves 4-1 on Wednesday in an NLDS Game 4 that felt much more one-sided than that. Granted, the contest hung in the balance for much of the night, as starters Tyler Glasnow and Tyler Mahle traded zeroes after each team scored a sloppy run in the first inning. The score remained knotted at one as Glasnow and Mahle exited the stage, thrusting the bullpens into the spotlight.
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Los Angeles’ held. Atlanta’s did not.
Game 2 hero Didier Fuentes entered for Mahle in the seventh with one on and one out. He coaxed Max Muncy into a groundout but promptly issued free passes to the next two Dodgers: Josue De Paula, a 21-year-old with 42 career regular-season plate appearances, and Kyle Tucker, the highest-paid man in MLB history. That brought Atlanta skipper Walt Weiss out of the dugout and flame-throwing reliever Robert Suarez into the game. Up to the dish stepped Los Angeles outfielder Andy Pages, a most fascinating character in the Dodgers extended universe.
Pages, 25, is not old. Had he been born in the U.S. and not Cuba, he might still be on his parents’ health insurance. Last autumn, Pages delivered one of the all-time putrid postseason statistical performances, going 4-for-51 with one measly RBI. That earned him a benching for Games 5, 6 and 7 of the World Series, though he more than made up for his lackluster bat with a season-saving snag in that dramatic Game 7.
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This season, Pages leveled up as a hitter, earning a spot as the National League’s starting center fielder in the All-Star Game. But a late-summer injury derailed his rhythm as October approached. He began this NLDS 0-for-7 with four strikeouts. It looked concerningly familiar. Roberts, though, didn’t lose confidence.
“I’m gonna continue to give Andy leash,” the skipper said before Game 3. “I believe in him. I feel that for us to win the World Series this year, we’re gonna need him to be an active part of our team.”
In Game 3, Pages collected two knocks and scored a run. In Game 4, he provided the definitive blow.
With the bases juiced and the count full, Pages roped a 100-mph Suarez heater back up the middle for a two-run, backbreaking single. Teoscar Hernández and pinch runner Edman scurried home. Muncy added a solo shot in the ninth. The Dodgers’ bullpen did the rest. Los Angeles, once more, ended an October evening soaked in alcohol and smelling of cigars.
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“When you’re spraying champagne and beer on everybody, there’s nothing cooler than this, man,” Muncy said amidst the bacchanal. “You work seven, eight months to get to this point. You gotta take advantage of this. This is why you play baseball.”
But not all the Dodgers played good baseball this week, including some of the most important ones, the older ones.
Ohtani went 2-for-13 and did not record an extra-base hit. He looks discombobulated, far from the world-beater we’ve come to expect. Roberts batted him fifth in Game 3, for goodness’ sake. Betts was 3-for-14 with all singles. Catcher Will Smith (1-for-16) looked the worst of the lot. It was far from a reassuring offensive showing. L.A. scored just 3.5 runs per game. The lineup’s .264 collective OBP in this NLDS was the lowest mark posted by a 21st-century Dodgers team in a victorious playoff series.
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Their relatively comprehensive series victory, then, is a testament to an otherworldly pitching staff. It turns out that a rotation of Tarik Skubal, Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow can win you some low-scoring ballgames. The bullpen, thought to be this club’s Achilles’ heel, also stepped up to surrender just four earned across 14 2/3 innings of work, including 4 1/3 scoreless to close out Game 4. That’s how a club overcomes a .203 team batting average — by holding its opponents to a .145/.259/.242 slash line.
“The Dodgers have something to do with that,” Braves manager Walt Weiss said after the game about his team’s offensive struggles. “They’re going for their third straight world championship for a reason. Their arms just keep coming at you.”
And next week, they’ll keep on coming in the NLCS. An enticing match against either a souped-up Brewers team or a rolling San Diego Padres team awaits, beginning with Game 1 on Sunday.
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But that impending showdown was most certainly not front of mind for the Dodgers after their victory Wednesday. Imitation champagne flowed freely. No reporter, player or staff member was safe from a chilly Budweiser shower. Rojas, the elder statesman of this aging empire, bad back and all, bounced around the room with a bright green, $150 bottle of tequila in his hand. He chanted along to the TikTok viral house remix bumping from the locker room speakers.
“Get money, stay pretty, handle your business, enjoy life, stay sexy and don’t give a f***.”
Quite the mantra for a group of dinosaurs.
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