On the first night of the National League Championship Series, in a close game in a big ballpark, a team that hadn’t yet lost a postseason game pitched relentlessly in the strike zone, turned so many at-bats into the sort of silent blows that won’t leak blood until later, then won when those wrought late and decisive swings, born of patience, persistence and not a small amount of dancing.
The Los Angeles Dodgers may have been surprised when it wasn’t them.
“It was only a matter of time,” Atlanta Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman said.