SPORT

Britain’s Cameron Norrie described his upset of Carlos Alcaraz as “the biggest win of my career” as he reached the Paris Masters last 16 with a gritty comeback against the world number one.

Norrie, who was beaten in straight sets by the Spaniard in this year’s Wimbledon quarter-finals, won 4-6 6-3 6-4 in the second round of the ATP Masters 1,000 event in the French capital.

“This win is so big for me,” said Norrie, who missed the Olympic Games in Paris and the US Open last year because of a forearm injury.

“I had lost the first round of the qualifiers here last year. Coming back from my injury, I’ve been trying to enjoy my tennis in the second half of the year and I was able to do that.

“To get the biggest win of my career, my first win over a world number one, and probably the most confident player in the world right now, I am pleased with the way I did it.”

Alcaraz won the first set before Norrie responded strongly in the second by breaking early and maintaining his momentum to set up the decider.

The world number 31 then played an incredible backhand pass to break Alcaraz in the final set and saved two break points on his way to victory.

“I actually went for a walk this morning with my coach and we talked through serving for the match and what I needed to tell myself,” said Norrie, who beat Sebastian Baez in straight sets in Monday’s first round.

“I was so, so tight serving for the match yesterday against Baez.

“I told myself I deserved to be in this moment, I want to be here, and I felt quite relaxed.

“It was a nice walk, a very important walk.”

The Briton will next face the winner of the second-round match between wildcards – and cousins – Valentin Vacherot and Arthur Rinderknech.

Alcaraz, who registered 54 unforced errors on Tuesday, was returning from an ankle injury and playing his first match on the tour since beating Taylor Fritz in the Japan Open final at the end of September.

He now risks losing his number one ranking if rival Jannik Sinner, who will face Belgium’s Zizou Bergs in the second, goes on to win the Paris tournament.

“I’m really disappointed about my level,” Alcaraz said after the defeat.

“I had all the ideas clear, all the goals clear but even in the first set which I won, I felt I could do a lot more than I actually did.

“I have to give credit to Cam. He played really well, a solid match, and I think that was the key.”

Dodgers fans Aiden Mashaka and his dad, Akida Mashaka.

(Juliana Yamada / Los Angeles Times)

How long have you been a Dodgers fan?

Akida: What are you talking about? Kirk Gibson! I’m Tommy Lasorda, baby!

How much did you pay for your ticket?

Akida: $900. We bought our tickets from a third party. I’ve been asking my brother-in-law how much I owe him, but he’s such an amazing human being. He’s like “Don’t worry. I got this!”

Was it worth it?

Akida: Of course it’s worth it. We’re seeing the Dodgers World Series. The flight costs more than $900. If you have it, it’s worth it. If you don’t have it, it’s not worth it — you can watch it on TV. If I was still in school, I would be watching on TV. But I am a 53-year-old man, after many years of life, so I can spend $900 to watch the Dodgers.

Aiden: This is maybe my second or third game that I’ve been to for the Dodgers. Being at the World Series, like the grand finale, I feel like it’s a great time to be here. I’m really proud of my dad, my auntie and my uncle for bringing me here. I want to thank them.

Akida: Can we get a crying emoji?

Speaking to BBC Sport’s Kal Sajad, WBO interim heavyweight champion Fabio Wardley says he would like to face undisputed heavyweight champion Oleksandr Usyk next, following his victory against Joseph Parker.

READ MORE: What next for heavyweight division after Wardley win?

NEW YORK — When Lindsey Vonn retired from Alpine skiing in 2019, she walked away from the sport as one of the most successful skiers in history. Six years later she’s coming back, with her sights set on competing in a fifth Winter Olympics in February in Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy.

But regardless of how that comeback ends, Vonn isn’t worried about it detracting from what she’s already accomplished.

“This is different because I had nothing to prove,” said Vonn, 41, who climbed a World Cup podium for the first time since 2019 when she finished second at the super-G season finals in Sun Valley, Idaho, last March.

“I don’t think anyone remembers Michael Jordan’s comeback. I don’t think that’s part of his legacy at all,” she continued. “I’ve already succeeded. I’ve already won. I was on the podium. I have the record for the oldest medalist in World Cup by seven years [she set the previous record in 2019]. I feel like this journey has been incredible.”

American Lindsey Vonn poses in 2019 with medals she has won throughout her career in the finish area at the alpine ski world championships in Are, Sweden.

(Marco Trovati / Associated Press)

Vonn has three Olympic medals, but she won her only gold 15 years ago. She’s won eight World Championship medals, but just one since 2017; her last gold came in 2009. But the comeback isn’t so much about rekindling that past as it is about shoring up the present.

“I closed my career, and I definitely would like to close that chapter in maybe a better way than I did in 2019,” said Vonn, who was speaking Tuesday at the U.S. Olympic Committee’s Media Summit in Manhattan. “I feel like I am happy, free. I’m doing it because I love it. I’m not doing to prove anything to anyone.”

Vonn missed the 2014 Winter Games with a right knee injury, an injury that led to her retirement in 2019. But after partial knee-replacement surgery last year, she decided she wasn’t done with skiing yet.

“After the replacement, I knew things were really different,” she said. “My body felt so good, and I just kind of kept pushing myself further and further to see what I was capable of. Skiing and racing seemed like the logical next step.”

American Lindsey Vonn skis during a women’s super-G run at the World Cup finals on March 23 in Sun Valley, Idaho.

(Robert F. Bukaty / Associated Press)

She’s a different skiier than she was when first started competing internationally two decades ago, she said.

“I have a lot more perspective now, having been away from the sport for six years,” she said. “That just allows me to compete in a different way and I think that gives me an advantage actually.

“Downhill skiing has a lot to do with with accumulated knowledge. And I’ve obviously accumulated a lot of knowledge, because I’ve raced for a very long time.”

Vonn, whose comeback landed her on the cover of this week’s Time magazine, said she’s in the best shape of her career. But she still must earn enough points on this winter’s World Cup circuit to qualify for the Olympics.

She said she probably wouldn’t have considered racing at a top level again if next February’s Games weren’t schedule for Cortina, where’s won a record 12 career World Cup races. She also recorded her first of 138 World Cup podiums in Cortina in 2004.

“My goal has always been Cortina again. It’s such a special place for me,” she said.

American Lindsey Vonn speeds down the course during an alpine ski women’s World Cup downhill race in Kvitfjell, Norway, on Feb. 28.

(Gabriele Facciotti / Associated Press)

“I didn’t want to set that as a goal, because I didn’t know if I would even be able to compete, let alone qualify or finish the season. Once I trained more and I got in better shape, I said to myself that this is an attainable goal. I can do this.”

And if she can’t, that won’t detract from the fact that she tried. Or from what she’s already accomplished.

“I’m at peace with where I am in my life,” she said. “I don’t need to be ski racing, but I definitely love to ski race and have nothing to prove. So I don’t feel like I have a lot of pressure, even though my dad says it’s the most pressure I’ve ever had in my whole life.”

Sydney Roosters prop Lindsay Collins is promoted to the starting line-up in the only personnel change to the team that started at Wembley, with Patrick Carrigan moving into the loose forward role vacated by Yeo.

Lindsay Smith, Yeo’s Penrith Panthers club-mate, steps up to the bench, with Jacob Preston named among the reserves.

“Harry and all of the senior players for that matter stepped up after Isaah’s unfortunate injury last week,” said former Kangaroo half-back Walters.

“While we’d love to have Isaah out there, he’ll still be contributing in many other ways around the group this week. He’s a natural leader, and so too is Harry so we’re in great hands this week.

“I’m really pleased with the way we’ve started the series, but we’re into a new week now and our focus is on preparing well and being at our very best this Saturday.”

Brisbane Broncos superstar Reece Walsh will again play at full-back, having scored two tries and won the man-of-the-match award on his international debut at Wembley.

Saturday’s second Test, and the third at AMT Headingley on 8 November, both kick off at 14:30 GMT and are live on BBC One.

Australia: Reece Walsh, Mark Nawaqanitawase, Kotoni Staggs, Gehamat Shibasaki, Josh Addo-Carr, Cameron Munster, Nathan Cleary, Lindsay Collins, Harry Grant (captain), Tino Fa’asuamaleaui, Angus Crichton, Hudson Young, Patrick Carrigan.

Interchanges: Tom Dearden, Lindsay Smith, Reuben Cotter, Keaon Koloamatangi.

Reserves: Bradman Best, Jacob Preston, Mitchell Moses.

HIGH SCHOOL FLAG FOOTBALL

SOUTHERN SECTION PLAYOFFS

MONDAY’S RESULTS

Quarterfinals

DIVISION 1

JSerra 41, Santa Margarita 0

Dos Pueblos 12, Edison 6

Huntington Beach 20, Camarillo 6

Orange Lutheran 41, San Marcos 18

TUESDAY’S SCHEDULE

(Games at 5 p.m. unless noted)

Quarterfinals

DIVISION 2

Newbury Park at Bishop Amat

Ventura at Corona del Mar, 6 p.m.

Downey at Westlake

El Toro at Upland

DIVISION 3

Sunny Hills at La Serna

Glendora at Long Beach Poly

Mission Viejo at El Modena

La Habra at Eastvale Roosevelt

DIVISION 4

Canyon Springs at West Ranch

Riverside King at Great Oak

Riverside Poly at Temecula Valley

Royal at Compton

DIVISION 5

Moreno Valley at Rancho Alamitos

Norte Vista at Castaic

Don Lugo at Anaheim

Vista Murrieta at Vasquez

DIVISION 6

Leuzinger at Cerritos

Loara at Adelanto

Alemany at Estancia

Palm Desert at Hillcrest

Note: Semifinals (all divisions) Nov. 1; Finals (all divisions) Nov. 7-8 at Fred Kelly Stadium.

Watch as James Anderson, England’s all-time leading Test wicket-taker, receives a knighthood from the Princess Royal at Windsor Castle.

The 43-year-old pace bowler took 704 wickets in 188 Tests during an international career spanning 22 years.

READ MORE: England legend Anderson receives knighthood

Hi and welcome to another edition of Dodgers Dugout. My name is Houston Mitchell. That was an incredible game.

Game 3 thoughts:

—Brad Paisley sang the U.S. national anthem. JP Saxe sang the Canadian national anthem. Apparently Bruce Springsteen and Paul Shaffer were unavailable.

—Hideo Nomo threw out the first pitch. If Lance Rautzhan was still alive, I’m sure it would have been him.

First inning

—Tyler Glasnow has to limit walks. Runners can steal on him and things could get out of hand in a hurry.

—I really could have lived without seeing highlights of George Springer in the 2017 World Series.

—Eight pitches to get out of the top of the first. That’s great.

—Leadoff double for Shohei Ohtani, which is a good sign. If he starts hitting again…..

—Now if only Freddie Freeman could get going.

Second inning

—Dodgers got a break there. A verrrrry slooooow strike call and Bo Bichette thought it was ball four and got picked off first. You have to wait for the call. Of course, we’d all be a lot more irate if it happened to the Dodgers.

—Two hits and a walk, and no runs scored.

—This is why you leave Teoscar Hernández alone. Yes, he looks terrible with four strikeouts in one game, but the next game he homers in his first at-bat.

Third inning

—Mookie Betts has become one of the best fielding shortstops in baseball. It’s so amazing to watch. To move to shortstop later in your career and excel is virtually unheard of.

—It may be time to give Alex Call a shot in the lineup in place of Andy Pages.

—Ohtani is back. He doesn’t get cheated on his home runs.

—Middle infielders need to learn to keep the tag on the runner in case his foot bounces off the bag. A few outs seem to be missed that way. Freeman’s foot bounced off the bag on his steal and he would have been out if Bichette maintained the tag.

—Dino Ebel gambles a lot at third base. There’s no way Freeman was going to score on a hard hit ball to Addison Barger, who has one of the best arms in the game. Keep him at third, and run up Max Scherzer‘s pitch count. This could be important later.

Fourth inning

—Tommy Edman‘s error was the first error of the series for either team.

—And it proved costly.

—You can’t give good teams extra outs, especially in the postseason.

—And then in the bottom half, the Dodgers go down quietly. This all stemmed from Freeman being thrown out at home. Ebel never should have sent him.

Fifth inning

—It seemed to be a struggle all night for Glasnow. He has erratic control, and that’s deadly against a team like Toronto. Now we go to the porous Dodger bullpen. Can they hold Toronto? If so, the Dodgers can come back. If not, this game could get ugly quickly.

—Anthony Banda is first man up. And he did fine to end the inning.

—I love the ad with Ken Griffey Jr. playing the organ. I mean, it no Limu Emu (and Doug) but it’s very good.

—Bringing in a left-hander to face Ohtani. Can he respond?

—He does. And that’s why he’s the best player in baseball.

—Freeman comes through too. Blue Jays manager John Schneider brought in Mason Fluharty to get Ohtani and Freeman, hoping he could also get Mookie Betts. Instead, he gets Betts, but can’t retire Ohtani or Freeman. Sometimes you can push all the right buttons and it doesn’t work.

—I wonder if Blue Jays fans are yelling at Schneider right now.

—I’m just glad Schneider was able to find work again after “Smallville” was canceled.

—Wait, I’m being told that’s a different John Schneider. No wonder Tom Welling isn’t one of his coaches.

Sixth inning

—Justin Wrobleski in to pitch now. Another left-hander. Why not stick with Banda? Playing three games in three days may have something to do with it.

—Maybe they can count on Wrobleski now too.

—Inning ends on another nice play by Betts.

—I also like the Bateman, not Batman, commercials. I’ve liked Jason Bateman ever since one of his first roles in the sitcom “It’s Your Move.”

—Great play by Vladimir Guerrero Jr. at first base throwing Teoscar out at third. But some bad baserunning. No need to take that chance with two out. That’s twice the Dodgers have run themselves out of an inning. What would have happened in those inning otherwise? We’ll never know.

Seventh inning

—George Springer hurt himself on a swing. Don’t like Springer, but I don’t want anyone to be injured. People cheering when he was taken off should be embarrassed.

—Hey, Blake Treinen came in and let the Blue Jays get ahead. Who would have guessed.

—I guess Dave Roberts is never going to give up on Treinen. I know they don’t have a lot of right-handed options, buy what about Will Klein. I mean, we KNOW what Treinen is going to do at this point. Maybe we can find another budding star. And if he can’t do it, you get him out quickly just like you did Treinen.

—This Ohtani guy is pretty good.

—My wife: “Why is he always up with the bases empty. Drop him down in the lineup.”

—Here’s a great thing about Ohtani. People told him “You can’t hit and pitch, you have to pick one.” And he refused to listen. Not to get over saccharin here, but you can apply that to your life, and it’s a great lesson for kids. If you have a dream, don’t let people tell you the many reason you can’t do it. You never know unless you try,

Most home runs in one postseason:

2020 Randy Arozarena, 10
2025 Shohei Ohtani, 8
2023 Adolis Garcia, 8
2020 Corey Seager, 8
2011 Nelson Cruz, 8
2004 Carlos Beltrán, 8
2002 Barry Bonds, 8

Eighth inning

—Jack Dreyer, last seen when Don Mattingly was the manager, now pitching.

—And just like that, Dreyer gives up two hits and is done. We’ll see him again in 10 years.

—It’s nice, and sad, to see the Dodgers wearing a No. 51 on their caps to show support for Alex Vesia.

—Roki Sasaki always looks scared. He’s not, he just has that look.

—A bobble by Max Muncy stops a possible double play. That could be important.

—Sasaki gets out of it. The Dodgers are now out of reliable relievers. They better score in the bottom of the eighth.

—That Amazon commercial where the teenage daughter walks in on her dad exercising in shorts that don’t fit right is a little creepy.

—Samuel L. Jackson is great in everything.

—Chris Bassitt pitching for the Blue Jays.

—The Dodgers go down meekly.

—The heart of the Blue Jays lineup bats in the ninth. Big inning. If the Dodgers get out of it, I think they will win.

Ninth inning

—Sasaki gets Guerrero, then pitches to Isiah Kiner-Falefa like he’s Babe Ruth and walks him.

—Great, great play by Tommy Edman, redeeming his earlier error.

—Great at-bat by Andy Pages with a poor ending.

—Intentionally walking Ohtani with the bases empty. Wow.

—And that’s why you hold the tag. And that’s why analytics hates stolen bases.

—We go to the tenth. The two best teams in baseball, battling it out in extra innings. This is fun, folks.

Tenth inning

—Emmet Sheehan in the game. He has been terrible this postseason. Can he told things around.

—More bad baserunning, this time by the Blue Jays. Davis Schneider had no chance to score on that, and Guerrero was on deck.

—Sheehan got hit hard. Does he come back out in the 11th if there is an 11th?

—Dodgers strand runners on first and second. We go to the 11th. And I can’t find my asthma inhaler.

Eleventh inning

—What a great game.

—Sheehan looked like the old Emmet Sheehan there.

—Braydon Fisher now pitching for the Blue Jays. The Dodgers traded Fisher to the Blue Jays on June 12, 2024 for the immortal Cavan Biggio, who is now with the Angels. Biggio played in 30 games for the Dodgers, hitting .192 and getting himself a World Series ring.

—Kiké Hernández has been very quiet this World Series.

—They walk Ohtani again with the bases loaded. This is against the spirit of the game. They should make a new rule: Walk a batter with the bases empty and he automatically gets placed on second.

—Ohtani has reached base every at bat. You have to wonder if this will be a problem tomorrow when he pitches.

—The Dodgers have wasted a lot of scoring opportunities.

—Where is my asthma inhaler?

Twelfth inning

—Sheehan is in there again. Clayton Kershaw is warming up. Are the baseball gods conspiring to get Kershaw into one more World Series game?

—The Dodgers walk the No. 9 hitter. You don’t see that often. Will they regret it? Giménez hit worse that Schneider during the season.

—And here comes Kershaw. Bases loaded, two out. Twelfth inning. No pressure at all.

—The baseball gods have set this up for Kershaw to get one more World Series win. Now the Dodgers need to score in the bottom half.

—Ellen Kershaw‘s reaction had more emotion than most two-hour movies.

—If Kershaw never pitches again, that was a great moment to go out on.

—Will Smith tried to win it for Kershaw with a couple of home run swings.

—Another left-hander comes in, Eric Lauer, who was a starter until Shane Bieber (the Game 4 starter) came off the IL.

—And the Dodgers go down quietly.

—Seriously, I think the dog took my asthma inhaler.

Thirteenth inning

—Edgardo Henriquez, who has not retired a batter this postseason and has an ERA of infinity, is now pitching.

—The Dodger Stadium crowd is very quiet and sounds tired. Must be thinking about that hour wait in the parking lot while trying to go home.

—Leadoff double is just what the Dodgers needed.

—And look at Miguel Rojas. Hasn’t played all series and lays down a perfect bunt.

—Now Alex Call, who rarely plays. Can he be the hero?

—Man on third, one out. You have to score here.

—And of course they are going to walk Ohtani.

—And they walk Betts intentionally too. Wow. Pitching to Freeman with the bases loaded.

—And the Dodgers fail to cash in. Freeman is not having a good series.

—I think maybe my grandson hid my inhaler.

Fourteenth inning

—Rojas and Call stay in the game. Henriquez back on the mound. Will Klein is the only reliever left.

—Henriquez has looked good, but how long can he pitch?

—That foul ball by Giménez hit both of his legs. Baseball players must have tons of bruises at the end of the season. And it’s amazing that catchers can even walk.

—Someone on the Dodgers just needs to hit a home run and end this.

—And Will Smith came close.

—You know what Fox should do? Go around before the game and find some normal, average people at the game. Ask them their name and where they are from. Then, instead of showing the celebrities, “Justin Bieber is here. Sean Hayes is here,” say “Henry Blake from Lancaster is here with his wife Lorraine.” “Sherman Potter is here from Carson with his wife Mildred.”

—And Muncy came close before walking.

—Dieter Ruehle‘s fingers must be cramping by now.

—Tommy Edman has not been Tommy Tanks so far this postseason.

—And we go to the fifteenth. I believe a UFO flew down and teleported my inhaler away.

Fifteenth inning

—Will Klein now pitching for the Dodgers, who are now out of relievers. The Blue Jays are out of position players.

—The terrible Dodgers bullpen has been incredible tonight. 10.1 innings, 10 hits, four walks, eight strikeouts, one run. Now I’ve probably jinxed them, so they better score now.

—If Call reaches first, would they walk Ohtani intentionally?

—We won’t find out. He grounded to second.

—And they walked Ohtani again. He has reached base all eight of his plate appearances.

—Betts and Freeman need to cash this in.

—They do not. We go to the 16th. The record for longest World Series game is 18 by the Dodgers and Red Sox in 2018.

—We go to the 16th. I’ve given up on finding my asthma inhaler. I’ll just go ahead and pass out.

Sixteenth inning

—A lot of people are going to call out sick to work tomorrow.

—This has reminded me why I don’t obsess over every Dodger win or loss during the season. I get paid to watch and write about it. Truly a blessed life.

—Klein looks like a guy who should be higher on the Dave Roberts trust tree.

—According to the Fox telecast, the Dodgers will bring in a position player after Klein pitches the next inning. That would be very sad to see.

—Sixteen innings, and Hyeseong Kim still can’t get in a game.

—Dodgers are going down very quietly every inning.

Seventeenth inning

—You can’t say enough about this performance by Klein. Three innings, one hit, four strikeouts.

—If it’s true the Dodgers are bringing in a position player to pitch the next inning, then they really need to score now.

—Yoshinobu Yamamoto has volunteered to pitch the next inning. Will they need him?

—Brendon Little now pitching for the Blue Jays. He is their last reliever.

—Call singles. Will they walk Ohtani?

—They basically walked him. Didn’t give him anything to hit. Pitched around him.

—Again, the Dodgers can’t cash in. Who pitches the 18th?

—I need to shave again.

Eighteenth inning

—Klein’s arm must be about to fall off. His fastball is a couple miles per hour slower this inning. If the Dodgers win it all, he certainly earned his World Series ring.

—Kiner-Falefa was out at first.

—You’d think with all the power on these teams, someone would have hit one out. Must be a marine layer at the game.

—Klein’s career high in pitches is 36. He made 72 tonight.

—Max Muncy bats third this inning. He won the last, and previously the only 18-inning game with a home run in the bottom half of … Game 3 … against Boston in 2018.

—But we don’t need to wait for him. Freeman comes up big once again. He has cemented his Hall of Fame status the last two seasons.

—What an incredible game. Incredible. With the best ending, unless you are a Toronto fan. Two great teams. It seemed every player had a moment. Two bad bullpens were dominant.

—They get to do it again in a few hours.

—For those keeping track of this (and I appreciate the emails from those who are), Hannah and Mason were not in their assigned spots for the game, but came home in the 14th inning, and then the Dodgers won.

—My prediction remains, Dodgers in five.

—More importantly, we wish Alex Vesia and his wife the best as they go through a trying time.

In case you missed it

Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer lifts Dodgers to 18-inning win in World Series Game 3

What are your superstitions and lucky items to help the Dodgers win the World Series?

Mookie Betts on winning the 2025 Roberto Clemente Award

Shaikin: What are the motives behind Frank McCourt’s Dodger Stadium gondola plan?

Hernández: Don Mattingly reveals why his Dodgers managerial career ended a decade ago

Dodgers keep Andy Pages in Game 3 starting lineup; Shohei Ohtani laughs off Toronto chants

And finally

Freddie Freeman walks it off for the Dodgers, again. Watch and listen here.

Until next time…

Have a comment or something you’d like to see in a future Dodgers newsletter? Email me at [email protected]. To get this newsletter in your inbox, click here.

Aston Martin committed a procedural breach of Formula 1’s cost-cap regulations through a late submission of their documentation for the 2024 season.

The offence happened because the person at the independent company used by Aston Martin who was required to sign the submission was unwell at the time of the deadline on 31 March 2025.

The accounts were finished at the time, and the team did not exceed the cost cap.

Aston Martin have received no punishment from the FIA, but have been required to meet the costs incurred by F1’s governing body in preparing the team’s “accepted breach agreement”.

An FIA statement read: “Although Aston Martin Racing has been found to be in procedural breach, it has not exceeded the cost-cap level, and the procedural breach was of a very minor nature, originated by unpredictable circumstances outside the control of the F1 team.”

It added: “Aston Martin did not gain or seek to gain any advantage from the commission of the procedural breach at issue.”

Aston Martin submitted its draft documentation before the deadline, just not the finalised signed papers.

All nine other teams were found to be in compliance with the cost cap, as were all five engine manufacturers.

The 2024 cost-cap regulations defined a maximum spend per team of $135m (£106.375m).

A number of costs are excluded from the cap, including the salaries of drivers and the three top executives, and marketing spending.

LAS VEGAS — The fifth in an occasional series of profiles on Southern California athletes who have flourished in their post-playing careers.

Mike Davis spent 10 seasons in the major leagues, where he played for Billy Martin and next to Rickey Henderson. He topped 20 home runs twice and stole more than 20 bases three times.

He was, by all measures, an exceptional player.

Yet in Los Angeles he’s remembered — when he’s remembered at all — for just one plate appearance.

Dodger Mike Davis, center, is congratulated by teammate Mickey Hatcher, right, and Rick Dempsey following his fourth inning two-run home run in Game 5 of the World Series on Oct. 20, 1988.

(Eric Risberg/AP)

“One thing in 10 years,” Davis sighs, more in acceptance than disappointment. “That’s boiling your career down.”

That trip to the plate ended in a two-out walk. Yet without that walk, Kirk Gibson doesn’t hobble out of the dugout to hit one of the most memorable home runs in Dodger history. Without that walk, the Dodgers don’t win Game 1 of the 1988 World Series — and maybe they don’t win the World Series at all.

And without that walk Vin Scully never utters one of his memorable calls: “In a year that has been so improbable, the impossible has happened!”

“A lot of things had to go right for us,” Davis said. “And it turns out that it was so historic, that’s all they’ve talked about for the last 30, 35, years.”

For Davis, 66, that was half a lifetime ago. Since then he’s made and lost more than one small fortune, got divorced, cycled through a number of careers, reconnected with his father and seen his deep relationship with God challenged by a politician.

“It’s happened that way,” Davis said over a late breakfast of French toast and bacon at a diner not far from the Las Vegas strip.

“I’ve made mistakes in my life,” he added quietly. “I’ve made mistakes, yeah.”

Before he became a Dodger, he and Oakland teammate Dwayne Murphy each agreed to loan a budding hip-hop musician and former A’s batboy named Stanley Burrell $20,000 to produce his debut album. Burrell would release that album under his stage name, MC Hammer, and go on to win three Grammys and sell more than 50 million records worldwide. But the singer failed to honor his agreement with Davis and Murphy, forcing them to sue.

That wasn’t the only dispute Davis would have with Burrell and his team over money, nor the only bump on the road from World Series stardom to the rest of his life.

He owned a condominium complex for a while before selling at a loss when he had trouble collecting rents. Then he and Murphy opened a modest nine-store chain of clothing outlets that also closed at a loss.

“That was a nightmare,” Davis said.

He coached at a high school in San Ramon, Calif., where Davis managed the baseball team and Murphy the football team. Davis was then a minor league hitting instructor for four teams and two organizations, tried online sales, currency trading and even sold insurance — first life insurance, then burial insurance.

“It was sad because you would prey on people that lost somebody, and you’d come in and try, with the guilt trip, to get them to to make sure their kids weren’t paying for their burial,” he said. “I felt like the Grim Reaper.”

Nothing worked. And soon Davis’ marriage was crumbling as well.

Former Dodgers outfielder Mike Davis throws a ball during batting practice for the Nevada Sports Academy 16U traveling baseball team on Sept. 24 at Faith Lutheran Middle School & High School in Las Vegas.

(David Becker/David Becker)

But if he’s made mistakes he’s also made amends, eventually finding peace and purpose in Sin City, first by supporting his father in his final days and then by returning to the start of baseball’s circle of life to mentor the players taking their first awkward steps on the road that led him to riches, then ruin.

“The kids absolutely love him,” said Justen Grenier, who has coached alongside Davis for seven years. “And he just loves the kids. He loves giving back. I think it just goes back to who he is.”

One plate appearance may be all most people remember him for, but Davis refuses to let that define a life and a career that has hardly been a walk in the park.

“He was down and out until he went to Vegas to help his dad. And he’s probably as happy as I’ve seen him in the last 10, 15 years,” said Murphy, a close friend since he and Davis played together for the first time in 1980. “Things just turned around for him.

“And every time I went down to Vegas and talked to him, he never really said why.”

Davis knew he was going to do something memorable in his first and only World Series. He was in prayer, he said, when God told him he would hit a home run. And if heaven tells someone in the Davis family something good is about to happen, it’s probably best to listen.

When young Mike was still in grade school, his grandmother lifted him onto her lap, gave him a fielder’s glove and told him she’d gotten word from on high that he’d be a big-league baseball player someday. And, she added, you’re going to play for her hometown Oakland A’s.

Ten years later, he was selected in the third round of the amateur draft by the Oakland A’s.

Then, midway into Davis’ rookie season, grandma Lena told him he was going to start that night’s game, something he had done just three times in three months.

“She was into prayer all the time. She spent a lot of time talking to Jesus,” Davis said. “And my answer was ‘I know you know Jesus, but you don’t know Billy Martin.’”

But that night, 10 minutes before the first pitch, another player was pulled from the lineup with back spasms and Martin, the A’s irascible manager, wrote Davis’ name in his place. Six innings later, Davis hit his first major league homer — just as his grandma had predicted in the note she left in Davis’ pants pocket.

That history of divine intervention did little to persuade his Dodgers teammates when Davis told them of the World Series prophecy he’d received — partly because Martin was a pussycat next to Dodger manager Tommy Lasorda.

And Davis was deep in Lasorda’s doghouse after a career-worse season in which he slashed .196/.260/.270 with two homers and more strikeouts than hits in 108 games. The year before, he had hit .265 with 22 homers and 72 RBIs for Oakland, earning a two-year $1.975-million free-agent contract from the Dodgers, who saw Davis as the missing piece in their outfield.

However, just before spring training the Dodgers added Gibson, who became available when he was declared a free agent by an arbitrator in a collusion case brought against MLB owners. That signing created a logjam in the outfield. And things got worse for Davis when he stepped into a pothole and injured an ankle during a farcical spring training visit to Puerto Rico.

Playing on one leg, Davis hit just .188 in the first month of the season and didn’t get his first home run until late June. But he made the World Series roster just the same and with the Dodgers trailing 4-3 and down to their final out in Game 1, Lasorda was out of options. So he called Davis out of the doghouse and sent him to the plate to hit for shortstop Alfredo Griffin.

“When opportunity showed itself, and I’m coming up in the bottom of the ninth, all I could think about is the word that I received from God,” Davis said. “Oh, here it is.”

Dennis Eckersley’s first pitch was the only one close enough to hit and Davis just missed it, fouling if off. With light-hitting Dave Anderson scheduled to hit next, Eckersley, respecting Davis’ power and unaware Gibson had spent the last two innings in the batting cage getting ready to hit, pitched around his former teammate, throwing four straight balls to put the tying run on base.

Gibson then limped gingerly to the plate. With a torn medial collateral ligament in his right leg and a strained knee and torn hamstring in his left, it was unlikely he’d be able to drive the ball. That meant Davis had to get into scoring position to give his team a chance.

After spending the first couple of pitches timing Eckersley’s move to first, Davis tugged at his uniform pants, signaling third base coach, Joey Amalfitano, that he was ready to go. Amalfitano signaled back the OK and on a 2-2 pitch, Davis stole second without a throw.

Dodger Kirk Gibson raises his arm in celebration as he rounds the bases after hitting a game–winning, two–run home run in the bottom of the ninth inning to beat the Oakland Athletics 5-4 in the first game of the World Series at Dodger Stadium on Oct. 15, 1988.

(AP)

“If I would have got thrown out with Kirk Gibson at the plate, you would have had to bury me at second,” Davis said.

It was a gutsy play that completely changed Gibson’s at-bat. He no longer needed an extra-base hit to tie the game; a blooper to the outfield would be enough.

“I wanted to hit the ball over the shortstop’s head,” Gibson would say later. “I just visualized it, and when you do that, it slows you down. It put me in a good mindset.”

What happened next hasn’t been forgotten nearly four decades later. Eckersley threw the back-door slider Gibson was waiting for and he reached out with an awkward swing to line the full-count pitch into the right-field pavilion for the biggest home run in franchise history.

“A lot of people talk about the home run only,” said Steve Sax, who was in the on-deck circle when Gibson homered. “But the preemptive strike in the whole thing was Mike and the walk, which was huge. He set the whole table for us.”

And while the Gibson’s homer has become the stuff of legend, what’s become forgotten is the home run Davis hit five days later. Given the green light to swing at a 3-0 pitch, he hit a fourth-inning homer that drove in the winning run in Game 5, giving the Dodgers their final championship of the 20^th century and making good on the prophecy he had received in prayer before the World Series started.

For Davis, in a season that had been so improbable, the impossible had happened.

“That’s something that isn’t talked about a lot,” said Mike Scioscia, the Dodgers starting catcher that season. “But it was important.”

Davis played just one more season in the majors before retiring at 32, following unsuccessful league trials with the Yankees, Giants and Expos. The spring training ankle injury with Dodgers and a knee injury sustained when he kicked a door in frustration halfway through his final season in Oakland conspired to bring his once-promising career to a premature close.

What followed still remains a blur.

Few of the jobs he tried made much money and, with the exception of the coaching gigs, none of them brought much happiness or fulfillment. That didn’t come until 2009, when he moved to Las Vegas to take care of his ailing father, John, a former Marine and San Diego police officer who attended high school with baseball Hall of Famer Frank Robinson and played playground basketball in Oakland with basketball Hall of Famer Bill Russell.

“My mother had passed and my father was going through dialysis and had fallen a couple of times. He needed help,” Davis said of his father, who died five years later of renal failure. He was 78.

Former Dodger outfielder Mike Davis coaches young players from the Nevada Sports Academy 16U traveling baseball team on Sept. 24 at Faith Lutheran Middle School & High School in Las Vegas.

(David Becker/David Becker)

And while Davis wouldn’t have admitted it then, he needed help too. He found that when when he reconnected with his dad in his final days.

“During that time we got know each other,” said Davis, who left home to play ball when he was teenager. “It was awesome.”

The dark mustache he wore in his playing days has expanded into a neat salt-and-pepper beard and his body, well, it’s expanded too. Less than a year ago Davis, who played at 190 pounds, had ballooned to more than 300. He’s lost about 50 pounds in the last six months.

The athletic grace Davis had as a player is mostly gone and he moves stiffly when he walks, a souvenir from the knee and ankle injuries that ended his career. Still, after moving from Arizona to Nevada, he tried trading on his baseball resume by joining a burgeoning group of former big leaguers — one which includes four-time batting champion Bill Madlock; former American League MVP Jason Giambi; and José Canseco’s brother, Ozzie, who spent parts of three seasons with Oakland and St. Louis — in coaching kids.

“The coaching really keeps me busy, keeps me doing stuff,” Davis said. “I stopped doing anybody under 12, under 13 years old, in private lessons, because I don’t want to babysit. You can get that from a minor league player, a high school kid.

“I think what I give you is something special.”

Former Dodgers outfielder Mike Davis looks on as players from the Nevada Sports Academy 16U traveling baseball team practice at Faith Lutheran Middle School & High School in Las Vegas.

(David Becker/David Becker)

Many of his players agree.

“Other coaches, they really just care about winning the game. Mike cares about me individually,” said Anthony Syzdek, 15, who has been with Davis more than half his life.

“He’s probably the friendliest coach you’ll ever meet. He knows a lot about baseball. So like any question I have, he’ll answer for me.”

But his teachings don’t stop at baseball. He gives life lessons as well.

“Mike’s always teaching,” said Terra Pashales, who pays nearly $400 a month for her two boys, Jackson and Jameson, to play on Davis’ under-16 travel-ball team. “He talks to them about everything. He talks to them about their manners and everything baseball. He just goes above and beyond.”

When Davis arrived for a recent midweek practice at the west Las Vegas Christian academy his team calls home, the gate to the field is locked. By the time he finds somebody with a key, the sky is already growing dark so Davis and Grenier rush the players through a number of fielding drills, stressing fundamentals, not flash.

About halfway through the two-hour workout a weary Davis, wearing shorts and a gray T-shirt with 6-4-3 — the scoring sequence for a double play — stenciled across the front, takes a seat in a plastic chair near the plate. But the encouragement, delivered in a peppy, upbeat cadence, never stopped.

Dodgers outfielder Mike Davis speaks with player Jackson Pashales, 14, as they walk along the baseline.

(David Becker/David Becker)

“Keep those feet moving! C’mon guys!,” he shouts at one point.

“How are you feeling?” he asks of a player coming off a slight injury. “You moving OK?”

Away from the field Davis, who is decidedly old school, admits it’s getting harder and harder to get young players to play the game the right way. But he hasn’t given up — and not just in Las Vegas.

For the past decade, Davis has also returned to Vero Beach, Fla., the Dodgers’ former spring training base, each summer for the Hank Aaron Invitational, a diversity-focused baseball development experience for as many as 250 high school-age players. There he has coached alongside dozens of other ex-major leaguers, part of what he sees as his responsibility to give back to the game by giving opportunities to Black and Hispanic players.

“A lot of these guys have been told how good they’ve been since they’re been 10 years old,” he said. “I’m saying the same stuff over and over again, so it goes in one ear, out the other. They see major leaguers, they see Derek Jeter doing that jump throw from shortstop and everybody wants to do the jump throw instead of setting their feet and throwing it over there.

“There’s a cool gene that’s out there where everybody’s got to be so cool. I become the bad guy a lot of times because I’m screaming at them to do it the right way.”

Baseball isn’t Davis’ only passion — nor is it the only thing that has recently tested some of his most deeply-held precepts. For Davis, his Christian beliefs have long been the foundation of everything he does and his faith has taken him around the globe to share the Gospel.

Former Dodgers outfielder Mike Davis looks on as he coaches the Nevada Sports Academy 16U traveling youth baseball team.

(David Becker/David Becker)

“One of the things my dad will say is ‘I know the Bible and I know baseball,’” said Davis’ daughter, Niki, who works in the modeling industry in Los Angeles. “Getting back into coaching and doing things that he is passionate about, that he loves and that he knows like the back of his hand, that did kind of help him find something that he feels comfortable and good about again.”

Recently, however, Davis felt forced to choose between his community of faith and faith in his community when the conservative, Pentecostal church he attended lined up behind a politician, Donald Trump, instead of Jesus.

“I heard the pastor say they picked their tribe with who they’re going to follow,” said Davis. who speaks in a slow, quiet voice that gives his words extra weight. “I couldn’t believe it. I got thrown for a loop.”

“The investment that God has made in me as I’ve traveled around the world and watch[ed] him do amazing things in people’s lives; that’s what I programmed myself with,” he continued. “I consider myself a warrior ready to defend the Gospel at the drop of a hat.

“I wasn’t planning on defending it against my fellow Christians.”

So Davis left that congregation, his faith in the Gospel strengthened even as his faith in the church wavered. Because if nothing else, Davis has learned the power of a well-timed walk.

Manager Eddie Howe says it was a “relief” that forward William Osula did not leave Newcastle United on transfer deadline day because he now looks like the “complete package”.

The 22-year-old was close to joining Eintracht Frankfurt last month, only for the move to fall through.

Osula has since gone on to make an impact for Newcastle in the Premier League, Carabao Cup and Champions League, and played a key role in Bruno Guimaraes’ 90th-minute winner against Fulham on Saturday.

Although record signing Nick Woltemade remains first-choice striker, Osula’s contributions have been welcomed by Howe after Yoane Wissa suffered a knee injury while on international duty with DR Congo.

“The next step was for Will to try and play regularly, so that was the aim [with the Frankfurt move], especially with us bringing two strikers in,” Howe said.

I may be revealing a secret cherished by columnists the world over, but I admit that among the columns we relish writing the most fall into the “I told you so” genre.

Case in point: In April last year, in a column about the gambling mess ensnaring Shohei Ohtani’s then-interpreter, I warned that the pro sports leagues’ enthusiastic embrace of betting would inevitably produce a major scandal.

“It might not surface in the next months or even years,” I wrote, “but it will happen.”

The calendar, as it turned out, ticked over at 19 months. Last Thursday, federal prosecutors charged National Basketball Assn. player Terry Rozier and former NBA player and assistant coach Damon Jones with fraud and money laundering in connection with a scheme to fix bets on NBA games. Portland Trail Blazers head coach Chauncey Billups was charged in a separate indictment linking him to a Mafia scheme to fix poker games; Jones was also named in that indictment.

The NBA has placed Billups and Rozier on leave. They’re both due to appear in federal court in Brooklyn over the next few weeks to enter pleas, though both have asserted their innocence.

It may not be easy for the league to wash its hands of this mess. All the professional sports leagues spent years shunning gambling as a threat to their public image of integrity before embracing the siren call of big-time sports betting, bringing gambling companies and their ever-increasing customer base into their tents. But the NBA was ahead of the crowd.

In a 2014 op-ed, NBA Commissioner Adam Silver effectively cried “uncle” in the league’s battle against gambling.

“For more than two decades,” he wrote, “the National Basketball Association has opposed the expansion of legal sports betting, as have the other major professional sports leagues in the United States.” The leagues supported a 1992 federal law prohibiting sports betting except in grandfathered venues, such as Las Vegas.

They took a stern position against players and personnel caught betting on their games and their sports, dating to 1919 and the so-called Black Sox scandal, in which eight members of the Chicago White Sox were accused of throwing the World Series for the benefit of a gambling ring. Major League Baseball hired an austere federal judge, Kenesaw Mountain Landis, as its commissioner and gave him unchecked authority to clean up the game. He banned the eight players from baseball forever.

In recent times, Silver observed in his op-ed, the American appetite for sports betting has only risen. Accordingly, he called for legalizing the practice so it could be “brought out of the underground and into the sunlight where it can be appropriately monitored and regulated.”

(The 1992 law was overturned by the Supreme Court, and legalized sports betting spread coast to coast.)

Given the subsequent developments, one can tag Silver for his childlike innocence in counting on the government to regulate an industry collecting billions of dollars a year from millions of users while operating with a legal imprimatur.

Silver wrote that among his “most important responsibilities as commissioner of the N.B.A. is to protect the integrity of professional basketball and preserve public confidence in the league and our sport.”

When I asked the NBA if Silver has had second thoughts about his 2014 op-ed, the league replied, “We continue to believe that a legal, regulated, and monitored sports betting market is far superior to an illegal one operating underground,” and suggested that a single federal regulator would be preferable to the existing state-by-state patchwork, though the activities alleged in the federal indictments almost surely would be crimes in any state. Silver did say during a broadcast interview Friday that the case gave him “a pit in my stomach.”

The league’s ability to monitor the behavior of its own people is questionable. Consider a March 23, 2024, Charlotte Hornets game against the New Orleans Pelicans. According to the indictment, Rozier let the gambling conspirators know that he would take himself out of the game early, allowing them to profit from bets that his stats would fall short of bookmakers’ expectations.

The NBA, alerted by sports wagering companies to “aberrational behavior” involving Rozier in the game, investigated but later said it could find any “violation of NBA rules.”

The NBA can hardly claim to have been blindsided by the new indictments. Only last year, another federal gambling case erupted involving NBA games.

In that case, prosecutors alleged that a gambler named Ammar Awawdeh forced then-Toronto Raptors player Jontay Porter to take himself out of a game early. That led gamblers who knew of the arrangement to bet that his stats for the game would fall short of expectations; those insiders made more than $100,000 on their bets, the prosecutors charged.

According to text messages filed with the 2024 indictments, Awawdeh acknowledged “forcing” Porter to participate in the scheme to help clear some of his gambling debts.

Awawdeh engaged in plea negotiations in the case, but the outcome couldn’t be determined. Porter pleaded guilty to related federal fraud charges, and is scheduled to be sentenced in December. The NBA has banned Porter for life.

Awawdeh was also named in last week’s indictment over the alleged poker scam.

In recent years, the pro leagues have cozied up to the gambling industry, claiming that their interest is merely “fan engagement” — that is, keeping TV viewers in front of their sets even during blowout games.

Only 11 states bar sports gambling today. They include the customary anti-gambling holdouts Utah and Hawaii, and California, where ballot measures to legalize sports gambling were defeated in 2022. As I mentioned in 2024, the perils of this expansion are manifest.

They’ve created a new underclass of gambling addicts while largely failing to fulfill their advocates’ assurances that state-sponsored and regulated gambling would produce a new, risk-free revenue stream for state and local budgets. The outcomes of some games have come under suspicion even where no evidence of fixing has been found.

The leagues have gone beyond just tolerating gambling; they’ve made partnership and sponsorship deals with the major sports gambling companies. The two leading companies, FanDuel and DraftKings, are official corporate gambling partners of the NBA, National Football League and Major League Baseball.

During broadcasts and steaming of games, it’s common to see in-game statistical projections on-screen — what are the chances of this hitter striking out, or hitting a home run, for instance.

During the seventh inning of Game 2 Saturday, Fox flashed a projection that there was a 36% chance that Yoshinobu Yamamoto would pitch 9+ innings. (He went the distance.)

The only reason to offer such projections is to feed the appetite for in-game proposition, or “prop,” bets. These are fundamentally bookmakers’ estimates. They don’t tell ordinary viewers anything they need to know to enjoy the coming innings, but do give bettors something to chew on before putting money down on the proposition “will Yamamoto pitch a complete game?”

In-game prop bets, as it happens, are like heroin to the vulnerable, offering instant gratification (or dismay). They “may be associated with risky gambling behavior,” according to the National Council on Problem Gaming. Draftkings heavily promotes prop bets on its sportsbook web page.

In a memo issued Monday, the NBA singled out prop bets as trouble spots: “In particular,” the memo says, “proposition bets on individual player performance involve heightened integrity concerns and require additional scrutiny.”

The major gaming companies have rolled out new ways to keep bettors betting. Smartphone apps, for example. In the old days no one could place a legal sports bet without traveling to Las Vegas, a built-in curb on problem gambling. Today, anyone with a smartphone can place a bet, often without certifying their age or financial resources.

“The advent of smartphones in 2007 and the Supreme Court decision in 2018 opened the door to fully frictionless, 24/7 legal gambling,” problem gambling experts Jonathan D. Cohen and Isaac Rose-Berman wrote recently.

I asked FanDuel and DraftKings if they accepted any responsibility for problem gaming in the U.S. DraftKings didn’t reply. A spokesman for FanDuel told me by email that the company “takes problem gambling seriously and continually works to identify at-risk behavior … including when a customer attempts to deposit significantly more than what they typically do,” or “excessive time on site, chasing losses or signals from customer service interactions.” In those cases, the company sometimes imposes deposit limits or timeouts or can exclude the user entirely.

That brings us to the latest indictments. The feds identified seven NBA games in 2023 and 2024, including the 2023 game in which Rozier allegedly tipped confederates to his decision to bench himself.

Among the others were a 2023 Trail Blazers game in which gamblers were tipped that the team would sit its best players so it would lose, thereby acquiring a better position in the upcoming NBA draft; and two Lakers games in which Jones allegedly tipped gamblers that star LeBron James, a friend since they played together on the Cleveland Cavaliers, was hurt and wouldn’t be playing.

“Get a big bet on Milwaukee tonight,” Jones allegedly told a contact before the first game, against the Milwaukee Bucks. James sat it out and the Lakers lost. James isn’t identified by name in the indictment, but its description of his roles helped identify him. James hasn’t made a public comment about the case, but he hasn’t been accused of any wrongdoing.

Can anything stem this tide? The smart bet at this moment is “no.” There’s just too much money riding on the continued expansion of sports betting: DraftKings has more than doubled its revenue since 2022, reaching $4.8 billion last year, and nearly doubling its monthly average users to 3.7 million. FanDuel is owned by a British gambling conglomerate, so its U.S. sports revenue is difficult to parse.

That’s a lot of money to be thrown around promoting more sports gambling, making it harder for governments to regulate and for sports leagues to turn up their noses at the income. Keeping their image for integrity intact in this world of greedy and needy players and voracious gamblers is only going to get harder.

Ex-Premier League striker Jamie Cureton tells Monday Night Club on his desire to still play football aged 50, after scoring his debut goal for Kings Park Rangers meaning he has scored in the top-10 tiers of English football.

READ MORE: Cureton, 50, scores in 10th tier to ‘complete football’

LISTEN: Monday Night Club

Freddie, meet Freddie.

It was excruciating. It was exhausting. It was ecstatic.

It was Fred-die, Fred-die, Fred-die, forever.

Repeating history, rocking the Ravine, winning the unwinnable, Freddie Freeman has done it again for the Dodgers, knocking a baseball for a second consecutive October into probably a second consecutive championship.

In the 18th inning of the longest World Series game in baseball history Monday, nearly seven hours after it started, Freeman smashingly ended it with a leadoff home run against the Toronto Blue Jays to give the Dodgers a 6-5 victory and a two-games-to-one lead.

This time last year he was hitting an extra-inning, walk-off grand slam against the New York Yankees that propelled the Dodgers to the title. At the time, he was being compared to Kirk Gibson and his memorable 1988 World Series homer.

This time, he can only be compared to himself, a guy who was struggling so much in the postseason that both Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts had been intentionally walked in front of him late in the game.

Three times in extra innings, he could have ended the game with a hit. Three times he left runners stranded.

But, finally, Freddie once again became Freddie, driving the ball deep over the center field fence, thrusting his right hand in the air, and watching his teammates dancing and jumping and screaming with a jubilation not previously seen by this workmanlike team this postseason.

“I don’t think you ever come up with the scenario twice,” said Freeman. “To have it happen again, it’s kind of amazing, crazy, and I’m just glad we won.”

Nobody seemed happier than Ohtani, who left the scrum to run down to the bullpen to embrace teammate Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Despite throwing a complete game two days ago, Yamamoto was preparing to pitch in this game because the Dodgers had run out of arms.

It was that kind of night. It was two seventh-inning stretches. It was umpires nearly running out of baseballs. It was Vladimir Guerrero Jr. eating in the dugout.

“It’s one of the greatest World Series games of all time,” said Dodger Manager Dave Roberts while meeting the media after midnight. “Emotional. I’m spent emotionally. We got a ball game later tonight, which is crazy.”

When Ohtani returned toward the dugout he was hugged by water-spraying teammates, and for good reason.

Throughout the night Ohtani once again wrapped Dodger Stadium in his giant arms and shook it down to its ancient roots.

The win was set up after Tommy Edman made a perfect relay throw to the plate to gun down Davis Schneider in the top of the 10th, then Clayton Kershaw dramatically worked out of a base-loaded inherited jam in the 12th.

But before Freeman’s homer, Ohtani owned the night.

He led off the game with a ground-rule double. Then he gave the Dodgers a 2-0 lead with a third-inning homer. Then he closed a 4-2 deficit with a fifth-inning RBI double. Then he tied the game at 5-all with a seventh inning home run.

Then, his aura became even crazier.

Four times in a five-inning stretch from the ninth inning to the 15th, Ohtani was intentionally walked — drawing a fifth walk on four pitches in the 17th. Twice the bases were empty. Once he had to pause at second base to relieve leg cramping. It was nuts.

Imagine a player so dangerous he is given a base four times with a World Series game on the line. One can’t imagine. That’s Ohtani.

“He’s a unicorn,” said Freeman. “There’s no more adjectives you can use to describe him.”

Remember 10 days ago when Ohtani had three home runs and struck out 10? Monday night was nearly as impressive because it was in the World Series, his four extra-base hits tying a record that had last been set in 1906.

And, yeah, he pitches again Tuesday in Game 4, so by the time you comprehend all this, he may have done it again.

“Our starting pitcher got on base nine times tonight,” said Freeman with wonder.

Ohtani was so good, he was better than the Dodgers bad, which included bad baserunning, bad fielding, and a bit of questionable managing.

The Dodgers stranded the winning run on base in the ninth,10th, 11th, and 13th, 14th and 15th inning and 16th…and really should have won it in the 13th.

That’s when Roberts surprisingly batted for Kiké Hernández after a Tommy Edman leadoff double. Miguel Rojas bunted Edman to third, but Alex Call and Freeman couldn’t get him home.

That was only one of numerous potentially game-changing plays on a night when the Dodgers took a 2-0 lead, fell behind 4-2, tied it up at 4-all, fell behind 5-4, then tied it up again in the seventh. Who’d have thought it would remain tied for the next 11 innings?The Dodgers left 18 men on base. They were two-for-14 with runners in scoring position.

Max Muncy went 0-for-7. Mookie Betts went 1-for-8. Freeman was just 2-for-7.

“Weird how the game works sometimes, huh?” said Freeman.

The official time of this one was 6:39, which wasn’t so long that one thought of actor Jason Bateman’s reminder to the crowd during a pregame cheer. He noted that the Dodgers had not clinched a World Series championship at Dodger Stadium since 1963.

Two wins in the next two days and they’ll finally do it again.

After Monday’s doubleheader sweep, it’s hard to believe they won’t.

Teoscar Hernandez, who had struck out in all four of his at-bats in game two, opened the scoring for the Dodgers with a home run in the second inning.

Ohtani doubled the lead with a solo shot of his own in the third, before the Blue Jays’ bats woke up in the top of the fourth inning.

A fielding error by second baseman Tommy Edman allowed the Canadians to put two men on base, Alejandro Kirk lifted his second homer of the series over the centre-field fence for a 3-2 lead, before Andres Gimenez’s sacrifice fly made it 4-2.

Blue Jays starter Max Scherzer became the first man to pitch for four different teams in the World Series, but he departed in the fifth inning and that was the cue for the Dodgers to level the scores.

Ohtani’s third hit of the night scored Enrique Hernandez, before Freeman drove in Ohtani from second base for 4-4.

The pendulum swung back towards Toronto in the seventh when Bo Bichette’s line drive to the right field corner allowed Vladimir Guerrero Jr to score from first base, but Ohtani’s second homer of the night tied the scores again at 5-5, and the game remained deadlocked after that.

Both sides stranded multiple baserunners on several occasions, and neither was able to conjure a run with the bases loaded.

Ohtani was intentionally walked, external four times and was caught stealing second base, while Toronto pinch-runner Davis Schneider was thrown out at home plate in the 10th, and veteran Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw made a cameo appearance from the bullpen in his final series before retirement.

Eventually, with both sides running out of bench players, Freeman lifted reliever Brendon Little over centre field to win it.

The series continues with game four on Tuesday, again at Dodger Stadium, when Ohtani will be the starting pitcher.

Injuries nearly swallowed the Lakers whole Monday night, leaving them short on ballhandlers, key role players and star power.

They were down seven players and they were playing on back-to-back nights to top it off, leaving the task daunting for the Lakers.

Still, the Lakers had to press on against the odds, which they were unable to overcome in falling 122-108 to the Portland Trail Blazers on Monday night at Crypto.com Arena.

Austin Reaves did his best to keep the Lakers in the game, scoring 41 points one night after scoring a career-high 51 at Sacramento. Reaves now has scored 143 points in the first four games this season, tying him with Hall of Famer Elgin Baylor (1962) for the most points in Lakers’ history over that span to start the season.

Rui Hachimura (16 points) and Deandre Ayton (16 points, eight rebounds) tried to help out.

But with guard Luka Doncic (left finger sprain, lower left leg contusion) and LeBron James (right sciatica) out, it was going to be tough for the Lakers. Then with guards Marcus Smart (right quad contusion) and Gabe Vincent (left ankle sprain) down, it meant the Lakers were in deeper trouble without much of their backcourt. Add Maxi Kleber (abdominal muscle strain), Jaxson Hayes (right patellar tendinopathy) and Adou Thiero (left knee surgery recovery) sitting the bench in street clothes, and it was too much for the Lakers to deal with.

The Lakers have two more games this week, at Minnesota on Wednesday night and at Memphis on Friday, meaning L.A. will have played four games this week while not being whole.

Along with Reaves and Ayton, the Lakers started Jarred Vanderbilt, Rui Hachimura and Jake LaRavia.

The Lakers’ bench consisted of Dalton Knecht, Bronny James, Chris Manon and Christian Koloko, the last two of whom are on two-way contracts — leaving them with nine available players.

“I don’t expect anybody to do more than they’re doing,” Lakers coach JJ Redick said. “What we challenged the guys on before the game was playing with an edge. And that’s a habit that I think takes time to form. We saw glimpses of it throughout the preseason. You’re just kind of waiting on it. You hope you get it opening night. And then you finally start seeing it when we’re in Game 2 against Minnesota. And I thought the guys throughout the game yesterday [in Sacramento] just had a terrific competitive edge. That’s what we need. And that’s regardless if we have a full roster or … how many guys are out? Six? Seven? Seven. Seven guys out. Yeah, we gotta do it.”

Taking care of the basketball was one of the problems the Lakers had. Then again that wasn’t a total surprise, considering the Lakers really had just one ballhander in Reaves and he was harassed all night by Portland.

The Lakers turned the ball over 25 times, leading to 28 points for the Trail Blazers.

The Lakers didn’t do it from the three-point line in the first half, missing 11 of their 12 attempts. They finished the game going seven for 27 from the three-point line.

O’Neill managed Celtic from 2000-05, winning three Scottish Premier League titles, three Scottish Cups, and a League Cup. He also took the club to a Uefa Cup final.

However, he has not managed a club since he being sacked by Nottingham Forest in June 2019 – more than six years ago.

Coincidentally, the former Republic of Ireland manager was on TalkSport earlier on Monday taking about the Scottish title race – and his belief that Hearts could become the first non-Old Firm side to win it since 1985.

“Hearts have shown a great determination. Their record is great, at this minute,” O’Neill said. “With Celtic not being as strong, as physically as strong, as maybe you would want them to be. It is possible.

“Celtic can actually lose games now, whereas before, they looked invincible in matches. Rangers are no threat whatsoever. They are so far adrift it’s untrue.

“But this is the moment, this is the time for Hearts. They have gone eight points clear. That is a decent enough lead, really. Their confidence has grown, and it will grow from that victory.”

O’Neill will be joined by Maloney, who had two spells as a player with Celtic and was part of Belgium’s coaching staff for a stint after retiring.

The Scotland international took on his first job with Hibs in 2021 but lasted just four months.

Then he took charge of Wigan Athletic in January 2023 but was dismissed in March of this year, having won 42 of his 115 games in charge.

When Charlie Sheen needed his then-13-year-old daughter taken to a hair appointment because he was too drunk to drive, he turned to his sober friend, Tony Todd.

When Sheen wanted to meet Carlos Estévez because the major league pitcher shared Sheen’s given name, he turned to his connected friend, Tony Todd.

When Sheen was in the throes of a crack addiction, fired from his starring role on “Two and a Half Men” and in need of an unwavering voice of encouragement, he turned to his non-judgmental friend Tony Todd.

“There are so many fake friends in Charlie’s life,” Todd said. “I’ve been there for him since we were little kids. The cool thing is, we’ve never had an argument.”

Thanks to the recent Netflix documentary “aka Charlie Sheen” and publication of “The Book of Sheen” memoir, Todd’s 50-year friendship with the mercurial actor has been revealed to the world. Todd’s social media accounts have since been flooded with praise from viewers far and wide.

“I had to reach out immediately to say you were and remain an angel from heaven.”

“You are the friend we would all like to have man, greetings from Spain!”

“Dear Tony, If you ever visit Istanbul, it would be our honor to host you in our hotel…. You are not only a great actor but also a true friend.”

“You … are a stellar human being [heart emoji].”

Todd and Sheen have been pals since they bonded through baseball, first on Little League fields in Malibu, then on the Santa Monica High School team, then while taking batting practice in Sheen’s posh indoor batting cage, then while putting on power-hitting displays at local high school fields and even Dodger Stadium.

And their friendship spread into their private lives, with Todd serving as best man at the first two of Sheen’s three marriages and serving as a drug-free wingman even when Sheen descended into a chaotic, self-destructive morass of cocaine, alcohol and reckless sex.

“There’s never been a call he hasn’t answered, there’s never been a crisis he didn’t help solve,” Sheen said in a phone interview. “Tony Todd has always been a friend, and a true one.”

The documentary “aka Charlie Sheen” is a first-person tell-all, with the narrative helped along by Sheen’s oldest brother, Ramon, childhood neighbor Sean Penn, “Two and a Half Men” co-star Jon Cryer and executive producer Chuck Lorre, drug dealer Marco Abeyta and ex-wives Denise Richards and Brooke Mueller.

And, of course, Todd. He laughs. He cries. He exudes honesty and empathy.

“He’s just one of my favorite people to have around in any situation,” Sheen said.

All of it certainly has made Todd — not to be confused with the actor of the same name who starred in “Candyman” and died a year ago — fame-adjacent.

Although he has enjoyed a career that includes acting/stuntman roles in both “Black Panther” movies and acting roles in the movie “Little Big League,” the TV show “Anger Management” and more than two dozen national commercials, Todd is best known in Santa Monica as the dude who can’t say no to volunteer fundraisers and sports a vanity license plate that reads “NVR KWT.”

Just this summer he helped raise $10,000 for Santa Monica Little League by hosting an outdoor screening of “Little Big League” and tapping into his vast contact list of pro athletes and A-list entertainers to attract silent-auction items.

And Todd was hailed as a “real hero” by authorities after he gave $700 to a family of five who had been robbed of their rent money in Lancaster in 2018. He was “so moved by the family’s story” that he jumped in his car and drove from Santa Monica to the high desert to hand-deliver the money.

His friendship with Sheen resonates with many, in part because Todd professes never to have taken a drug or a drink. Sheen, of course, was the poster man-child of substance abuse until becoming sober in December 2017, the day he relinquished his car keys to Todd to drive his daughter Sami to a hair salon appointment in Moorpark.

When Sheen was addicted to crack, Todd moved into his friend’s Mulholland Estates house in Beverly Hills. Even then, Sheen wouldn’t smoke the drug in Todd’s presence, and they often would end evenings watching MLB Network or ESPN’s “Sports Center.”

“I didn’t do hard stuff in front of him, just out of respect,” Sheen said.

Todd wept in “aka Charlie Sheen” when he explained why he continued to live with his friend knowing the actor was often smoking crack in the next room.

“I just can’t leave him to die,” he said.

Happier times occurred when they would head to a ball field to hit. Years earlier, after suffering a shoulder injury, Sheen had learned to bat left-handed, taking a hundred or so swings a day off an Iron Mike pitching machine in his indoor batting cage.

While filming a DirecTV commercial at Dodger Stadium in 2007, Sheen stepped into the batter’s box during a lunch break and crushed a pitch over the right-field wall. Todd whooped and hollered, in no small part because he had bet a Dodgers employee that his buddy would go deep.

“I knew it was going to happen because of all the [batting practice] we’d been taking,” Todd said.

Sheen also increased his strength by taking massive doses of testosterone, which he mentions in the documentary and alluded to in a 2015 interview when he said his HIV-positive diagnosis wasn’t the reason for his epic meltdown in 2011 after he was fired from “Two and a Half Men.”

“I wish I could blame it on that, but that was more of a ’roid rage,” said Sheen, who earlier had admitted he took steroids ahead of filming the 1989 hit movie “Major League,” in which he played pitcher Ricky (Wild Thing) Vaughn.

Todd had a video shot of batting sessions at Oak Park and Santa Clarita Hart high schools around 2008. Sheen hit a home run Todd estimated traveled 445 feet at Oak Park and hit a barrage of homers at Hart in the presence of Hall of Fame slugger Eddie Murray and the Hart High team.

Todd followed Sheen’s power display at Hart with a home run of his own. Todd was a talented-enough baseball and football player to earn a double scholarship to USC, although a serious injury his senior year in high school cost him the free ride.

His baseball ability landed him the role of Mickey Scales in “Little Big League” and his astonishing speed delighted Sheen even into their 40s. During one of their batting sessions at Oak Park High, Todd was challenged to a race around the bases by an onlooker.

Sheen told the man to start the race at second base while Todd started at home plate.

“By the time they rounded third, Tony had passed him, and after touching the plate he grabbed a glove and pretended to tag the guy when he reached the plate,” Sheen said, laughing.

Todd served as a baseball coach at Santa Monica High for several years, and in 2013 he lobbied for the school to award Sheen his diploma — the actor had been 1½ credits short 30 years earlier and hadn’t graduated.

Todd reached out to his friend Ross Mark, who handled bookings for “The Tonight Show With Jay Leno,” and they concocted a plan to have Sheen on as a guest and for Leno to surprise him with the diploma.

Todd walked on stage with the diploma and Sheen — who had quickly donned a cap and gown — gave him a hug, his lifelong friend having effectively smoothed over one more rough patch in his life.

The fans were enraged, They now saw him as akin to a martyr who might be carried out on his shield because his directors wouldn’t back his vision to bring success.

The leak was poisonous, of course, and it was meant to hurt Rodgers, which it did. He called for an investigation and for the guilty person to be removed. If there was a probe then we heard no more about it.

At that point it was plain Rodgers was losing the support of the people above him.

The regular gripes about transfers were followed by a desperate beginning to the season. A feeble exit from the Champions League, flat domestic performances, a stench of decay in the air.

Blame was shifted. When Celtic lost to Dundee a few weeks back he said: “You can’t be given the keys to a Honda Civic and drive it like a Ferrari.”

If Rodgers had said that after losing a big Champions League game then it would have been contentious enough, but after a loss to Dundee – with a tiny fraction of Celtic’s resources – it was mortifying. Later, he doubled-down on it.

The fans, increasingly growing weary of excuses, didn’t buy it, but if it was a battle between Rodgers and the Celtic board then, in their eyes, Rodgers was still an emphatic winner.

Nothing was heard from Desmond, as usual, but the story of his business life tells us he doesn’t appreciate his people going rogue. Rodgers comment by Rodgers comment, those Desmond whiskers would have to started to dance.

Monday, in the wake of a loss to Hearts that put Celtic eight points behind Derek McInnes’ team, was the endgame. Desmond opened his laptop. Sudden, unsparing and almost startling in its intensity, he unburdened himself.

Unquestionably, elements of what Rodgers did and said was self-serving. He dropped hints that some players were being signed without his full approval, something that Desmond categorically denies.

He said as recently as Sunday that he was never more determined to fix things as he was right in the here and now, but the trust had obviously gone. In both directions.

A divorce is the wisest action. This was an irretrievable breakdown. Unseemly and embarrassing.

Rodgers made good points, though, and the supporters, though turning on him slightly in the wake of recent performances, were wholly behind him in other areas.

Some will see him now as a victim, a sacrificial lamb, a man who had the bravery to speak up about the problems the club faced and who got driven out because of it. Silenced and humiliated by Desmond.

It’s an interpretation with merit, but they were two parties involved in this break-up.

Through his caustic words, Desmond has made it a vicious separation. We’ll get Rodgers’s riposte in time, but his era is over now. No coming back this time, not even a chance of a proper farewell. A sad, but inevitable conclusion.

The Rams traded for cornerback Roger McCreary, star receiver Puka Nacua is expected to return for Sunday’s game against the New Orleans Saints and receiver Tutu Atwell will spend at least four games on injured reserve.

All of those moves were announced by the Rams or discussed by coach Sean McVay on Monday as the Rams returned from an off week.

With the NFL trade deadline approaching next week, the Rams acquired McCreary, 25, and a conditional 2026 sixth-round pick from the Tennessee Titans in exchange for a conditional 2026 fifth-round pick.

McCreary, a 2022 second-round pick from Auburn, has three career interceptions, including one this season. He is expected to provide depth to a cornerback group that lost Ahkello Witherspoon early in the season because of a broken collarbone. Witherspoon, who has been doing some individual work, was expected to be sidelined 12 weeks.

McVay said veteran Darious Williams also suffered a shoulder injury in the Rams’ Oct. 19 victory over the Jacksonville Jaguars in London.

So McCreary, who is in the final year of his rookie contract, could fortify a position group that includes Cobie Durant and Emmanuel Forbes Jr. Safety Quentin Lake has played as a slot cornerback and hybrid linebacker.

The Rams played against McCreary and the Titans in Week 2.

“We were looking to be able to add some depth,” McVay said, according to a transcript of a videoconference with reporters. “He was a guy that we respected from playing against him earlier this year.”

Nacua sat out against the Jaguars because of a high ankle sprain he suffered during an Oct. 12 victory over the Baltimore Ravens.

Rams wide receiver Puka Nacua catches a pass against the Baltimore Ravens on Oct. 12.

(Terrance Williams / Associated Press)

McVay said he expected that Nacua would practice this week and play against the Saints.

Nacua ranks fourth in NFL with 616 yards receiving.

“We do expect him to be back on Wednesday and expect him to play this week unless there are setbacks,” McVay said.

Atwell, who signed a one-year, $10-million contract before this season, played only 10 snaps against the Jaguars after sitting out against the Ravens because of a hamstring injury. He has four catches for 164 yards, including an 88-yard touchdown.

McVay said offensive tackle Rob Havenstein also is expected to return this week from an ankle injury that has sidelined him for three games.

The Rams are 5-2 heading into their game against the Saints (1-7) at SoFi Stadium.