The redemption tour began just as the Dodgers imagined it.
With a momentous home-run swing from Shohei Ohtani.
One inning into their postseason opener Saturday night, the Dodgers were having nightmare flashbacks to this time last year, facing yet another early deficit after yet another poor performance from their Game 1 starting pitcher.
The 53,028 towel-waving fans at Dodger Stadium had been silenced. In the visiting dugout, the San Diego Padres were riding a sudden jolt of momentum.
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But then, in the kind of sequence that has eluded the Dodgers during their postseason failures of recent years, Ohtani came to the plate and, in his first career playoff game, immediately wiped the slate clean.
“We didn’t expect anything less than that,” outfielder Teoscar Hernández said. “He’s the guy that is gonna guide us through all of this.”
Indeed, in the Dodgers’ 7-5 win in the opening game of this year’s National League Division Series, Ohtani’s three-run homer in the second inning did more than erase the club’s early three-run deficit.
It restored belief in the Dodgers’ dugout. It re-energized the sellout crowd going delirious around them.
And, entering Game 2 of the best-of-five series on Sunday night back at Chavez Ravine, it exorcised some old October demons the Dodgers were starting to feel creep back in.
“He injected an absolute lightning bolt into the stadium,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “From then on it was, ‘All right, we’ve got this. This is not the same as years past.’”
Reversing the failures of past postseasons, of course, is the defining theme of this year’s Dodgers postseason, who entered Saturday night aiming to make amends for their recent playoff history.
Two years ago, an upset NLDS elimination at the hands of these same Padres renewed questions about the Dodgers’ inability to translate regular-season dominance into playoff success.
When they were swept by the Arizona Diamondbacks last season, those frustrations were only heightened.
“That kind of sour taste that you have when you make an early exit from the postseason, our guys are tired of it,”