Blue Jays come within two outs of first World Series title in 32 years, but end 2025 season with crushing loss

Saturday night's Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 loss to the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 7 of the World Series is, from the standpoint of the defeated, of course painful. It's one loss when one win would've given you the belt and the title. That's sports agony. In this instance, though, it's worse than that because in order to arrive at the season-ending loss, the Blue Jays had to defy all manner of odds and surrender to all kinds of absurd circumstances. This merits chronicling even if doing so smacks of a certain inhumanity. 

The Jays, you see, were at one point two outs from winning the third World Series in franchise history, two outs from ending their 32-year title drought. Instead, closer Jeff Hoffman with one out in the top of the ninth threw a slider that was a bit too loopy, and Miguel Rojas did this to it: 

That turned a 4-3 Blue Jays lead into a 4-4 tie. Just before Rojas came to the plate, the Jays had a 91.3% chance of winning Game 7 and thus the World Series. The homer off Hoffman dipped that figure into the mid-50s. However, it would rise again in the bottom of the ninth. 

We know how the story ends -- in defeat for Toronto -- but the particulars when recounted make it seem like that can't possibly be the case. In that home half of the ninth, Bo Bichette smacked a one-out single, and he and his still-ailing knee were lifted for pinch-runner Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Addison Barger then worked a nine-pitch walk against Blake Snell to push the winning run into scoring position. Alejandro Kirk was then struck by a pitch for the second straight night to load the bases. At that point, the Jays had reconstructed their chances of winning it all back to 83.2%. 

After the bases were filled, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts subbed in Andy Pages for Tommy Edman in center, likely to get Pages' superior throwing arm in the game. When play resumed, Daulton Varsho bounced one to Rojas, who heaved it home just in time to force out IKF at the plate. The play was reviewed -- did Will Smith get his foot back on the plate in time? -- but upheld. 

What probably lodges that sequence even deeper in the craw of Toronto fans is that IKF may have rendered it all moot if he'd just taken a better lead off of third base. 

The Jays still had the bases loaded, though, and Ernie Clement drove one to left-center that would've been a home run in a couple of MLB parks and carried with it an expected batting average of .380. Unfortunately for Clement and the Jays, Pages was on the trail of that 366-foot drive: 

It's not an exaggeration to say Clement was probably a hairsbreadth from never paying for a drink in Toronto again. Instead, the game went to extras, where the Jays would give up a go-ahead homer to Will Smith in the 11th and then strand the tying run on third base. 

Compounding the acute miseries of Game 7 is that in Game 6 the Blue Jays endured a similarly painful ninth inning in their Game 6 loss. That involved a ball lodged between wall and warning track that cost Toronto the tying run followed soon after by this game-ending sequence: 

If there's a fitting ancestor to the Pages catch in Game 7, it's that. Had the Jays won Game 7, that all would of course be forgotten. Had the Jays gotten drummed in Game 7, how Game 6 ended would've been keenly felt for years to come. Instead, the cruelty of Game 7's ninth inning is why Game 6's ninth inning will forever lurk behind the potted palm. It's forgetting about the abscessed tooth because your torso caught on fire. 

So instead of hoisting the trophy and using champagne as refreshment and weaponry, the Jays permitted the Dodgers to author the third-largest comeback in a Game 7 and to become just the ninth team ever to win Games 6 and 7 of the World Series on the road. The Jays themselves became just the seventh team ever to lose a postseason when leading in the ninth of the potential clinching game. The other 102 teams in that position won. 

From the Toronto standpoint, this one hurts and will continue to hurt for a long time. Baseball, you'll nod knowingly, is wonderful when it isn't busy being cruel.