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Outside The Confines: A historic California showdown

Plus: everyone needs a new manager now.

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Division Series - Los Angeles Dodgers v San Francisco Giants - Game Five Photo by Thearon W. Henderson/Getty Images

It was a do-or-die outing last night between two California-based teams with a storied rivalry between them. Representing Southern California, the defending World Series champions, the Los Angeles Dodgers; repping the North, the San Francisco Giants. Both teams won over 100 games in the regular season, and could each arguably be considered the best of the best in 2021 baseball.

With the series tied 2-2 going into the Thursday night game, and knowing the winner would be facing the Braves in the NLCS, a lot was on the line. One Cali team would be going into the offseason, while the other would be continuing on in hopes of collecting the Commissioner’s trophy.

At the end of it (and it was a late night for anyone watching in the Central or Eastern time zone), it was the Dodgers who were the winners, ready to go onto the next step, which begins with NLCS Game 1 on Sunday. Of course, the game couldn’t have ended without a little drama (which I’m sure Josh will share a million think-pieces about in Monday’s links), as the game ended with a Max Scherzer save and a blown check-swing call. Just a brutal conclusion to an otherwise perfectly matched outing.

Before all the end-of-game drama, though, I think my favorite comment about the game came from none other than Vin Scully prior to the game’s start.

In other news, as we get into links, it’s been a bad week to be a coach or manager on a Wild Card team...

And tomorrow will be a better day than today, Buster. Make it so.