The Dodgers are on the verge of their second World Series championship in five years. They could be on the verge of their third title in eight years but (insert trash can banging sound here).
The 2017 Houston Astros will forever live in infamy. Just ask Clayton Kershaw.
You might say the Astros’ championship rings are tainted. The Dodgers’ left fielder owns one of them.
Teoscar Hernández played one game for the 2017 Astros. He got called up from the minor leagues one day, got hurt the same day, and later returned to the minors. Three months later, the Astros traded him for pitcher Francisco Liriano.
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In Hernández’s home in the Dominican Republic, he proudly keeps his Astros championship ring. He said Jose Altuve pushed for the Astros to award him a ring.
On Tuesday, Hernández gets the chance for which he has waited, about which he has dreamed, for seven years now: to play for a championship team in the championship series, to enjoy that dogpile, to earn a ring in recognition of a World Series in which he participated.
“That,” he said Monday, “would be huge.”
On Monday, a night in which the Dodgers showed off their defensive prowess in moving within one game of a sweep of the New York Yankees, Hernández delivered the play of the game.
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In the fourth inning, with the Dodgers leading, 3-0, Hernández threw out Giancarlo Stanton, who was trying to score from second base on a two-out single.
“As a player, you anticipate those kinds of plays,” Hernández said. “I got the perfect line drive, one hop, and I could make a good throw.”
If Stanton had scored, the Yankees would have brought the potential tying run to the plate. From that point on, they never did.
“That play was huge for us,” Kiké Hernández said. “If that run scores, that team gets a lot of life. That stadium gets a lot of life. It was very important for us. Zero runs at that…