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The Dodgers’ offseason began at 8:07 Thursday night. Heavily favored to win a third straight World Series, they were swept into winter by the Milwaukee Brewers.

The final score doesn’t really matter, but for the record it was 6-4 Brewers. It wasn’t really that close.

The Dodgers led in every game of the National League Championship Series. They didn’t win any of them. No team has ever done that while getting swept in a best-of-seven series. So while the Dodgers didn’t three-peat, they made history just the same.

“They were relentless with everything that they did,” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy said of the Brewers. “They just strung together good at-bat after good at-bat. That’s usually what we do.

“We didn’t do it this series and they did.”

The Dodgers’ starting rotation, the most expensive in history, gave up 16 hits and 13 runs in 18 innings for a 6.50 earned-run average. The bullpen was nearly as bad, posting a 4.50 ERA in 16 innings.

The Brewers’ relievers, on the other hand, were spectacular. Milwaukee manager Pat Murphy went to his bullpen 14 times and just twice did a reliever give up a run. All four victories against the Dodgers and all seven Brewers wins this postseason have gone to a reliever, with the bullpen posting a 1.33 ERA in 40⅔ innings.

“Pitcher after pitcher came in and executed,” Muncy said. “When one of their pitchers faltered, the next guy came in and picked up the slack.”

And each time the Dodgers took a lead, the Brewers waited no more than two innings to cut into the deficit. Milwaukee trailed 4-0 after two innings Thursday. By the top of the fifth, the score was tied. An inning later, the Brewers went ahead to stay, becoming the first team with six comeback wins in their first eight postseason games.

“They respond,” Murphy said of his players. “We’ve talked about it all year long. You have a bad week, you have a bad game, you have a bad at-bat, you bounce back.”

“I love the Dodgers. I love their players. They’ve got legendary players,” he continued. “But we came in with a group that would not be denied. They were hungry, very hungry.”

The two-time defending champion Dodgers, meanwhile, appeared to be full. They hit with runners in scoring position as often as they hit into double plays, going four for 27 and stranding 24.

“We had our opportunities. We just didn’t get the job done,” first baseman Freddie Freeman said. “We won two [titles]. We came up short on the third.

Milwaukee’s Garrett Mitchell, right, celebrates with Cooper Pratt after hitting the go-ahead home run in the sixth inning of a 6-4 win over the Dodgers in Game 4 of the NLCS on Thursday night.

(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)

“There’s a lot of hurt at the end of the season. Sometimes you just get beat. That’s just kind of how it goes. You have to give credit to the Brewers. They played really good baseball.”

A year ago the Dodgers swept the Brewers in the NLCS. This fall the results were reversed.

“The sadness is we just didn’t accomplish our goal,” Muncy said. “The goal every year is to be the last team standing. This year we had a chance to do something historic, and we didn’t accomplish it. And every single time you’re not the last team standing, it’s heartbreak and it’s failure and it’s not what you’re looking for.”

The Dodgers’ clubhouse was closed for more than 35 minutes after the game, partly to process that heartbreak but also to give manager Dave Roberts and veteran infielder Miguel Rojas, who announced his retirement, a chance to address the team. When the doors finally opened, nearly every player was sitting in front of his locker, most still in uniform, waiting to explain what seemed to be inexplicable.

How did the greatest team money can buy wind up so flat when the stakes were so high?

“We’ve been grinding all season long,” said right-hander Tyler Glasnow, who retired the first 10 Brewers in order, but lasted just one more inning. “No one slacked off at all. Everyone just came in and worked hard. They just played a lot better than us. They were hitting on everything. It wasn’t our year.”

“Not every time it’s gonna be us,” left fielder Teoscar Hernández added through a forced smile. “It’s not fair for us to be doing the same thing over and over every year. Teams are going to learn from their losses the same way we’re gonna learn from this one.

“So hopefully we come back next year stronger.”

Speaking of next year, no one would.

Half the players on the Dodgers 26-man NLCS roster are on expiring contracts. The core of the team — Mookie Betts, Freeman, Muncy, Kiké Hernández and Teoscar Hernández along with pitchers Blake Snell and Glasnow — are 33 or older. The Dodgers could look very different when spring training starts — if spring training starts — in February.

“There’ll come a time when we think about next year,” Muncy said. “But that’s not right at this moment.”

The Dodgers have an extra-long winter to get through first.

NEW YORK — The Russian oligarch who helped bankroll Donald Trump Jr.’s wedding celebration says the president’s eldest son has paid back the money.

“Yes, he did,” Umar Kremlev told an International Boxing Association press conference in Istanbul on Tuesday. “He did repay the money I spent on the present.” Still, he said he felt the repayment was unnecessary.

“Frankly speaking, I do not understand why he decided to do so,” he went on. “There are all kinds of events organized by all kinds of people. It is as if I invite you to come and visit my country house. Would you expect me to issue an invoice to them afterward?” Speaking through an interpreter, he said that would be “ridiculous.”

ProPublica, a nonprofit investigative website, reported last month that Kremlev, who has close ties to Russian President Vladimir Putin, “footed the bill for hundreds of thousands of dollars of wedding expenses” when Trump Jr. married socialite Bettina Anderson in the Bahamas in May. That included paying to rent one of two private islands where the three-day party was held.

In a subsequent post on her Instagram page signed by the couple, Bettina Trump wrote that they had been married “surrounded ONLY by our family,” but that Kremlev, head of the boxing association, was a “dear friend” who “very generously hosted two incredible nights of celebrations for us AFTER our wedding.”

President Trump, who did not attend the nuptials, previously defended the arrangement but told reporters that the money would be paid back.

“It’s totally allowed,” he said. “But, as I understand it, he paid them back.”

“That’s very common,” he added, “I’ve given wedding parties to numerous people.”

Kremlev, who was recently honored with the Order of Friendship by Putin, also played down the significance, saying the celebration was “a shared event” and “people blew it out of proportion.”

“I mean, why can’t we be friends? We are just friends,” he went on. “We are simply friends and what unites us is love for sports.”

The focus on Kremlev comes as Russia remains at war with Ukraine following its invasion in 2022 and as Trump has failed to broker a promised peace deal between the nations.

Trump Jr. has previously been scrutinized over his ties to Russia. During the 2016 campaign, his meeting with a Russian attorney in Trump Tower to discuss potentially incriminating information about his father’s then-Democratic opponent was a critical element of investigations into whether the Trump campaign coordinated with Russia to meddle in the election to help Trump win.

Colvin writes for the Associated Press.

LEGENDARY R&B singer Freddie Jackson has died at 70 as family and friends mourn the icon’s passing online.

The singer, known for his hit song Rock Me Tonight (For Old Times Sake), passed away on Monday, just days after his milestone birthday.

Freddie’s family announced the sad news on his Instagram on Tuesday.

“It is with profound sadness and heavy hearts that we share the passing of our beloved Freddie Jackson, who went home to rest last night,” the post read alongside a photo of the iconic vocalist.

“Freddie was more than a legendary voice. He was a kind, generous soul who loved his fans, his family, his friends, and his music with everything he had.

“For decades he gave us the songs that became the soundtrack to our love stories, our celebrations, and our most treasured memories. That gift will live on forever,” the caption continued.

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“To everyone who ever sang along, danced, or felt something when Freddie took the stage: thank you. You were family to him, and he carried your love with him always.

“Please keep his family, friends, and loved ones in your prayers during this difficult time. Details regarding arrangements and how to honor his legacy will be shared in the coming days.”

The family concluded the post, writing, “Rest in peace, Freddie. Your legacy and your voice will live on forever.”

They did not reveal the artist’s cause of death.

Fans shared their grief and condolences to Freddie’s loved ones in the comments.

“Another Legend Gone…Another Legacy left behind. This sucks! Grateful for the gift he shared with an unforgiving world,” professional wrestler Elijah Burke (Da Pope), wrote.

“Oh man Freddie one of. The true greats!!!! I had the pleasure of working on a song duet with him and Natalie Cole! Superb!” singer Narada Michael Walden added.

“Three days after his birthday. Rest well and Thank you for all the wonderful songs throughout the years here with us on earth,” a fan said.

“Awww man. Such a cool brother. So talented too ! One of the Greats,” chimed in a fourth.

“Heartbreaking news!!! Rest in Paradise Freddie,” a fifth echoed.

Freddie’s music career took off in the 1980s, with his chart-topping hits, You Are My Lady, Have You Ever Loved Somebody, and Jam Tonight.

The New York native kept performing until his death, singing his old hits and songs from his newest album, My First Love, released in May 2023.

He hit the stage in June for a performance at a winery in Philadelphia and was among the headliners at an 80s Night Concert in Fort Worth, Texas, in April, per his recent Instagram posts.

In one of Freddie’s latest posts, he thanked fans “for all the love” on his birthday and shared a photo of himself in a white suit.

Hallmark films have mastered the art of escalating low-stakes situations into high-stakes emotional emergency plotlines. They have made a lucrative business out of absurdities.

The town’s ice sculpture competition is in danger of being canceled forever. How can the Christmas celebration in Colorado go forward without a nice spruce? The only way to really save the bakery is to have a life-size gingerbread house competition.

It’s a proven formula that leans into the ridiculousness of mundane situations but earns its audience every holiday season. Whether it’s watching the movies for comfort or to turn a viewing party into a drinking game, millions of people tune in to laugh or cry watching them.

The Hallmark situations can be predictable, comfortable and wholesome, which can come off as absurd for a film plotline. Their sincerity and humor come from the cast’s commitment to the mundane, said Ron Oliver, writer and director of many Hallmark films.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

“Funny is only funny if you don’t think it’s funny,” he said. “We know that’s ridiculous. But at the same time, if the actor commits to it, it makes it seem real, then the audience gets it.”

He likes to think they’re laughing along with the idiosyncratic elements of the movies, and as long as it is creating a communal atmosphere, Oliver is all for it.

“If there’s anything we need these days, it’s a sense that people belong somewhere,” he added.

The formula isn’t what makes a movie a Hallmark movie. The structure has existed since God wore shorts, said Oliver. The channel’s achievement has been its ability to turn the structure into a recognizable brand through its stories.

When filmmaker John Wilson was in between jobs after finishing his HBO show “How To With John Wilson” during the writers’ strike, he attended a seminar on how to write and sell a Hallmark film.

After seeing what makes the Hallmark brand recognizable, Wilson decided to adapt the style into his own genre of making a documentary about concrete titled “The History of Concrete,” hoping the structure would help him finance the film.

John Wilson in “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

“But it’s very loose and almost impossible to even identify at points,” he said.

Instead of mocking the genre, Wilson subverts the Hallmark elements into his style of documenting, which finds the filmmaker recording trivial life moments — a person sitting on a pole, for example, or someone ruining a perfectly good jar of peanut butter by dipping their fingers into it — alongside his contextualizing narration.

“I both embrace but betray certain rules,” he said.

The seminar told him to avoid mentioning Christianity in the context of Christmas, so he pivoted to a Buddhist community with an annual tradition of running around a school in New York. The formula prefers to stay away from trauma. Instead, he made the death of one of his subject’s fiancées one of the main plotlines of the film.

“The actual Hallmark of it all fits in a way because that’s the kind of living proof that this rhythmic cyclical way of storytelling is actually soothing and attractive to people over long periods of time, to be able to return to this thing that they can trust and understand,” he added.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

In Wilson’s film, the entrance point is concrete, but what begins to unravel is a romance story involving a boy who has a movie idea, needs money to make a movie and tries everything he can to sell it — a signature love trope for most Hallmark movies.

Throughout the film, Wilson goes from pitch meeting to pitch meeting trying to finance his art. In the process, Wilson meets other eccentric characters that share his passion of filmmaking but have their own interests, like clearing gum from a sidewalk, immortalizing a person’s tattoo after they’re dead, and music.

“I’m just finding different ways to court this industry that doesn’t seem ready for this relationship,” Wilson said. “I’m trying to find some consensual way into it, but I eventually just need to perform the romantic gesture of doing what feels right and what comes naturally to me.”

The love story is the kind of theme that sometimes it’s OK to lean into, even though he’s constantly battling whether he should explore it in his films, Wilson added.

A scene from “The History of Concrete.”

(Magnolia Pictures)

Oliver believes that battle is a product of the cynicism that exists in society. Pledging love and respecting someone or a relationship can make people feel so uncomfortable that leaning into these tropes of life can feel humorous, and that’s where the laughs from a Hallmark film come from.

“They’re realizing that they’re being emotional about somebody who can’t find the right Christmas sweater,” he said.

The people in “The History of Concrete” aren’t funny because Wilson makes them out to be ridiculous. He doesn’t emphasize their eccentricities or tell the audience what makes them funny. He simply lets them be themselves. He captures their personality through a curiosity lens.

The humor comes from their passions not seeming worthy of the level of seriousness with which they pursue them. These people love something so much that their devotion mirrors the kind of energy normally reserved for higher stakes.

“There’s no definition of normal that sticks,” Wilson said.

A Christmas celebration isn’t objectively a life-or-death situation, and neither is concrete. But when people care deeply about them, those seemingly mundane things can take on an emotional significance the audience understands.

“Even if it’s something absurd … [the casts] are also committed to the idea of making it real,” Oliver said.