Wait 'til Next Year, L.A.?: Dodger Fans Bleeding Blue After Crushing Defeats

What an agonizing two days it has been to be a Dodger fan.

First, an embarrassing 11-0 loss on Sunday, followed by the sheer disbelief of watching Jimmy Rollins’ game-winning hit trickle to the base of the wall can’t be explained.

If you want to know what Dodger fans were feeling during those series-changing hops of the ball in the outfield, just go into your kitchen and find a corkscrew. Insert said corkscrew into heart, and begin turning—if you’re a true Dodger fan, a blotch of Blue should appear.

I’ve seen a lot of walk-off hits, but this might have been the most explosive and devastating of them all.

That Phillies team was beaten.

Jonathan Broxton was pitching 100-mph heaters to a man 100 lbs. lighter than him.

And still, the champs proved that they were not yet defeated, rallying to force the Dodgers into the reality of a do-or-die game on Wednesday night.

The old saying for the Brooklyn Dodgers used to be, “Wait ‘til next year.”

Well, last night’s letdown may have Dodger fans decreeing the same downtrodden melody with the Bums currently in a 3-1 hole.

Ironically, that motto might fit well because along with the saying comes the connotation of Emmett Kelly. He was the former mascot of those “Wait ‘til next year” Brooklyn Bums teams, and Kelly dressed as a clown named Weary Willie and performed at the old Ebbets Field.

It was such an excruciating loss that only a clown-like performance would draw a smile on the face of Dodger fans.

The hurt was magnified because the team had battled back from a beat down just 24-hours earlier and gift wrapped a ninth inning lead for their closer.

I can’t even explain how much of an emotional roller coaster this game turned out to be, and as a Dodger fan I’ve been locked in on this amusement park ride of a team all season long.

The 13-0 start at home.

The Manny steroid scandal.

Andre Ethier’s walk-off heroics.

The near-collapse in the final week of the season.

And to see all that hard work, all that scratching and clawing for an NL West title, slip so quickly in what could be the defining moment of the 2009 campaign.

Los Angeles was so close—just one out away—from taking the fate of their season back into their grasp. A win in Game Four would have meant they had done the task they came to Philly to accomplish, and that is win one game.

But it just wasn’t to be.

The wild lows and highs started when they fell behind 2-0 in the first inning, yet Randy Wolf displayed the veteran fight you have come to expect from him. He certainly summoned some inner strength as he found a way to ride out the early surge and guide his team into the lead.

Keep in mind that the 4-2 lead came on the heels of a two-and-a-half game offensive struggle, finally ending with the Dodgers pushing across four runs in the middle innings and quieting the once rowdy crowd at Citizens Bank Park into a faint lull.

At that point Torre’s club had the Phillies on the ropes, but the once-mighty Dodgers were out scrapped by the devastatingly resilient defending champs and couldn’t record the ever-elusive 27th out.

While the game may have culminated with the Rollins two-RBI double, the beginning of the end began for the Dodgers in the top of the ninth, when the offense batted for 18 minutes but was unable to register an insurance run for Jonathan Broxton.

The time spent sitting in the dugout in the cold temperature put a deep freeze on Broxton’s release point, and he started the inning with a first pitch ball to Raul Ibanez before getting the Phillies’ slugger to groundout.

Then came pinch-hitter Matt Stairs, and he flat out rattled all 300 lbs. of Broxton right down to the bone.

Stairs is like Heddo from Rookie of the Year , the big slugger who was the only person in the league able to tee-up Henry Rowengartner’s 104-mph fastball.

Well, Rowengartner got his revenge and Broxton did not.

Henry fanned Heddo for the final out in that movie by tossing the famous “floater” for the last pitch, and I was fully expecting a showdown right up there with the likes of Rowengartner-Heddo.

Except Broxton didn’t want anything to do with the aging slugger.

Why do I bring this up?

Because Broxton will never be able to maintain his status as an elite closer if he doesn’t have faith in his stuff, and he needed to go after Stairs in order to make the Phillies earn the opportunity to put the tying run on base.

The young flamethrower must still have the image of a 2008 slider (in Game Four also, nonetheless) flying high into the right-field grandstand burned bright into his bulldog eyes, and those flames blurred his vision of the game at hand last night.

He was mortified to throw a pitch anywhere near the plate when the situation called for him busting Stairs in on the hands. Instead, he pitched around Stairs and let three consecutive fastballs run far off the outside corner.

By doing so, he lost a feel for the ball for just long enough to destroy a gritty team performance in the eight-and-a-half innings prior to the ninth0inning disaster.

Suddenly, he couldn’t find the zone, and after the four-pitch walk to Stairs, he drilled Carlos Ruiz on the elbow with his first pitch.

The thing is that I genuinely thought Rollins was going to be retired, and I think that’s the same sentiment most Dodger fans had at the time.

This was it.

We had our big dog on the mound with a ninth-inning lead.

It was the situation in which this team is tailor-made to excel—they went 77-3 when taking a lead into the ninth inning during the regular season—and yet the execution became so hard on a cold night in Philly.

With this in mind, one other glaring stat comes into the forefront.

The Dodgers went 68-16 in the regular season when their opponents scored three runs or less; they went 26-51 when an opponent scored four runs or more.

Can you believe how delicate of a line that is?

This team was built to win by scoring four runs and relying on the pitching staff to shoulder the rest of the load.

So, while Broxton is certainly the goat in this instance, some blame does have to fall on the offense, which once again outhit the opposition but failed to pick up a win. In Game One the Dodgers notched 14 hits to the Phillies eight, and last night they held an eight-to-five advantage.

The complacency that manifested in the Dodgers inability to push across an insurance run after the sixth inning was a microcosm of the offensive battle that has waged war on Los Angeles throughout the entire season.

Now, the real craziness and excitement starts again on Wednesday.

The beautiful thing about the ups-and-downs of baseball is that a team is never out.

There’s no shot clock, no play clock, no game clock.

Just a pitcher, his defense, and 27 outs—that’s the real brilliance of the game.

That the Dodgers, even in the aftermath of two devastating losses, still have a chance to take back home field advantage, perhaps regaining control of the NLCS on Wednesday night in Philadelphia.

Sure, they might very well lose Game Five and the season will screech to a close.

And yep, I couldn’t be angrier with Broxton right now.

But for Dodger fans, there’s always next year.