LOS ANGELES — After a 15-year wait, the Yankees returned to the World Series with a classic.
And with the kind of emotional roller coaster and dizzying devastation that can only be delivered in October.
Playing in the Fall Classic for the first time since 2009, the Yankees squandered one-run leads in the eighth and 10th and let Game 1 slip through their fingers with one Freddie Freeman swing.
The Yankees were stunned by a walk-off grand slam that Freeman drilled off Nestor Cortes in a 6-3, Game 1 gut-punch of a loss to start a World Series of heavyweights.
The Yankees surged ahead in the 10th on the back of a Jazz Chisholm Jr. single, two steals and an RBI groundout from Anthony Volpe, but any exhale was followed by a slap to the face.
In the bottom of the inning, Jake Cousins walked Gavin Lux with one out before Tommy Edman’s ground ball was knocked down by a diving Oswaldo Cabrera, putting two on. In came Cortes, fresh off a flexor strain, who did his job against Shohei Ohtani with Alex Verdugo’s help, the left fielder crashing into the foul wall and tumbling over it for a remarkable grab.
But that only set the stage for the ending: Freeman sending Cortes’ first pitch into the Los Angeles night.
This all-timer included: a Gerrit Cole-Jack Flaherty old-fashioned pitchers’ duel; Juan Soto defensive deficiencies leading to the first Dodgers run; a Giancarlo Stanton two-run moonshot that seemed to be all the Yankees scoring that would be needed, until it wasn’t; an Ohtani demolished double leading to the tying run; a Gleyber Torres deep drive that turned one fan into Jeffrey Maier, reaching out and gloving a ball that was ruled a double; Aaron Judge getting his chance and letting it go before the 10th-inning uppercut.
Yes, the most-hyped Fall Classic in recent memory delivered in drama and delivered in competitiveness: The two starry teams that seemed to be about evenly matched sure looked about evenly matched.
In such tight contests, small mistakes are magnified, and the Yankees made those small mistakes that led to a pair of runs.
Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver combined to allow the tying run in the eighth with some help from sloppy defense. Against Kahnle, Ohtani crushed a double off the right-field wall that Soto handled and hurled to second base. The ball deflected off Torres’ glove and bounced into no-man’s land in the infield, allowing Ohtani to take third.
The extra 90 feet mattered when Weaver entered and allowed a sacrifice fly to Mookie Betts.
The Yankees came maybe a foot shy of retaking the lead in the top of the ninth when Torres smacked a deep fly ball to left-center. It had a chance and ended up in the glove of a fan, who clearly had reached into the field of play for the souvenir. Torres was only awarded second base, and Soto was intentionally walked to bring up Judge. But Judge, who finished 1-for-5 with three strikeouts, popped up in what has been a poor October.
The Yankees failed to break through for five innings against Flaherty, who was given a one-run lead in part because of some poor play from the Yankees’ defense. But as has been the case so often this month, a Stanton swing provided hope.
The DH, down 0-2 against Flaherty, watched a knuckle curve dip but not dive — a pitch that was below the strike zone but at least in the same area code. If Flaherty had intended to bury the offering, Stanton buried it in a different way entirely.
Stanton bent his front left leg to jump in front of the pitch and golfed it, turning his bat into a 9-iron that sent a 412-foot missile to the moon. As so often is the case with this hitter, there was no doubt: Stanton admired his work from the batter’s box for several seconds before beginning his slow trot around the bases for his sixth homer in this postseason and fourth straight game with a dinger.
For a long while, it seemed as if that would be the only swing needed.
Cole was more brilliant than dominant through six one-run innings in which he allowed four hits, walked none and struck out four. He survived early hard contact and had surprises for the Dodgers, including a sinker that Ohtani fouled off — a pitch that Cole threw just 12 times all season.
The Dodgers’ run arrived against a rolling Cole, who had allowed just one hit through the first four innings. With one out in the fifth, Kiké Hernandez sent an 0-2 four-seamer on the outside corner down the right-field line. Soto went for the catch rather than the carom, the ball just out of reach and Soto running past it. The overrun allowed Hernandez to wind up at third with a one-out triple.
Will Smith then lifted a fly ball down the right-field line that was not hit particularly far. Soto ran hard and caught it on the run before hurling a two-hop throw home that arrived too late to catch Hernandez for the game’s first run.
