The reality show known as the National League Division Series between the Padres and Dodgers has had a little bit of everything stirred in.
Accusations. Salty language. Snide comments. So-called villains.
Then on Tuesday during Game 3 at Petco Park, they added something else: baseball.
You remember that, right? The thing between the baselines? The bats and balls, not the barking?
The Padres beat the Dodgers in a rollicking 6-5 win that featured an avalanche of runs early, polished baseball late and none of the nonsense trying to hijack things along the way.
Granted, in the middle of the building drama and theater, an interesting shift in the deep-rooted sense of things had developed. The Dodgers admitted they’re hunting for the fight and fire of a franchise they routinely stared down their nose.
And if they couldn’t find it organically, the smallest crack in a doorway might be as good a time as any to try and kick that door off its hinges.
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts talked about matching the intensity of a team that for so long had been irrelevant to them.
Curious timing, then, that a ball thrown by Manny Machado that bounced harmlessly into their dugout during Game 2, dissected like the Zapruder film and assigned bad intentions, barely merited a dugout peep in the moment beyond Teoscar Hernández.
Enter Roberts, who in one breath said he didn’t notice the contract hit, but fanned the flames with some very intentional pot-stirring about Machado.
Then Game 3 came along, with the compelling play this spot on the calendar demands, amid the noise that revealed this whole Padres-Dodgers thing occupies a different headspace now.
Remarkably, in fact.
When have the Dodgers ever yearned for, expressly needed, something the former afterthoughts down Interstate 5 were bringing to the ballpark?
How is Shohei Ohtani not enough?
How are three MVPs at the top of the lineup not enough?
This mole-hill-sized mountain gave off a whiff of panic, at the least.
“I’m not nor will I ever disparage another player on another team, especially anybody I’ve managed in the past nor will I do it to a collective team,” said Padres manager Mike Shildt on Tuesday, making a very intentional point of his own. “That’s not how I want to operate.
“… I don’t have to defend this team. This team does not need my defense nor do our players need to defend themselves.”
When asked if he had a response to Shildt’s comments before Game 3, Roberts decided not to step in it a day later: “I don’t.”
Did the reality-TV salvo spark the Dodgers?
Perhaps. Maybe it awakened some of the emotional punch Roberts hoped to shake from its slumber. Maybe it evened the energy and unearthed a hard-to-pinpoint intangible that can be the difference maker when the best square off in October.
The Dodgers showed toughness between the ears after a bus crash of an inning in the second, when the Padres batted around with a combination of savvy baserunning and pinch of power.
Immediately answering a six-spot haymaker with a grand slam by Hernández in the next at-bat repainted a landslide into a nail-biter in an instant.
A series that seemed on the verge of being defined by verbal combat grabbed the wheel and brought baseball firmly back into focus.
Once the ruckus settled down — the pregame kind, along with the scoring-burst kind — the teams decided to author must-watch sport.
It wasn’t about the back-and-forth bickering when reliever Tanner Scott wiped out Ohtani in a one-run game in the eighth. It wasn’t about he-said, they-said when Robert Suarez coaxed Hernández into a pop-up to close the inning.
It wasn’t about the boos that rained down on Roberts pregame, leaving all to wonder which team had been sparked after all, when Suarez climbed up the ladder after a 90-mph changeup to hammer 99 and strike out Max Muncy in the ninth.
It wasn’t about the fringes when Suarez punched out Gavin Lux to end it and push the Dodgers to the brink of elimination as Petco Park roared.
Now, the baseball matters mightily.
The National League’s No. 1 seed, no matter the pitching M*A*S*H unit and Freeman’s tortured ankle, finds itself on the ropes as the country inches closer to the front of its seat.
Come back, show the intensity and fight Roberts spelled out, and the Dodgers will fully have earned a rally for the ages.
Tumble again, though, as they did in this park to this team in 2022 after winning the opener both times, and the howling in Los Angeles will be audible in Chula Vista.
Baseball’s back. Lucky us.
