Los Dodgers esperan repetir la derrota nuevamente.

It’s the third inning and Dodgers fans are waiting. Why, exactly, is not clear at this exact moment; Teoscar Hernández just hit a home run to center field, bringing a five-run deficit to one with a full swing. The male announcer declares it a “completely new game” before Hernández has even left the batter’s box. Yet it is not, really, because the Dodgers are still one run behind a team they historically had every reason to look down on, precisely up to the same moment in a Division Series showdown two years ago. They are getting used to the delay, every October the gap between the regular season and the postseason hits them like the worst hangover in the world. They have already lost, if not the series yet, at least this particular game. But for now, there are still 20 outs to make. And Dodgers fans are waiting.

Lately there has been a lot of this, although the precise method of breakdown is amorphous. The Dodgers could win Game 1 of the series, as happened in the 2022 National League Division Series and also in this one. That is also a waiting game: winning is fleeting and losing is permanent, and Los Angeles is instilling in its inhabitants Protestant customs. An advantage is just a deficit that has not yet been offered, a victory simply a rest stop on the way to a more significant and shameful defeat. These guys could give Juliet lessons on how to lose a won game. If this sounds less like fandom and more like the effects of mild anxiety disorder, I have bad news for you about following a sports team.

In San Diego, it is still the third inning. Although the mode of operation of Dodgers fans colonizing opponents’ stadiums and silencing the local fans has largely been forgotten in recent years. Still, there is a lot of blue among the yellows and browns at Petco Park. The loyal fans of Los Angeles have waited. They waited during a six-run explosion in the second inning, initiated by Manny Machado making the type of move that Goliaths always say only David could make smoothly: in this case, a scythe-like path towards second base that allowed him to make contact with Freddie Freeman’s throw. In a game full of frustrating waits, perhaps the most unbearable could have been the wait once Freeman picked up this grounder, throwing cautiously from his knees, for Machado to complete this path and be rewarded.

The six runs that followed flowed like the water of the San Gabriel River, at least. Dodgers fans had waited two postseasons to witness the end of Mookie Betts’ 22-0 streak in the postseason, and in Game 2 they had endured (overall, it must be said, poorly) Jurickson Profar’s taunts as he personally extended that streak. That came to an end in the second at-bat of the game, a solo home run from the former AL MVP gave Los Angeles a lead that seemed to last only eight minutes before burying the team’s hopes. Even that moment of triumph did not feel like one; Profar, leaping over the wall exactly the same way he had to rob Betts the night before, once again crashed to the ground without conclusion, and Betts actually veered off his route to the dugout before the umpires could confirm his achievement. Once the margin was five, it seemed like it was going to be a long wait, similar to the 10-2 drubbing in Game 2 that was close until the end but never, ever felt like it.

And so it was exactly. Sure, after that home run by Hernández, no Dodger came up to bat for the rest of the game without the potential to tie the score. But there was not a drop of tension about that happening at any point. Los Angeles had to wait 21 more at-bats (or plate appearances, if you will; there were no walks here) to confirm that unwavering certainty, but that means little: we spend our lives waiting for things we know will come, age, death, and sickness; first the body, then the mind, if one is lucky.

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