Braves break through against Dodgers’ pitching in ninth, win NLCS opener

By Dave Sheinin,

ARLINGTON, Tex. — The biggest moment of Game 1 of the National League Championship Series arrived with a sound unheard for the entirety of the 2020 baseball season until that very moment — the spontaneous roar of an actual, honest-to-goodness crowd.

Some of the 10,700 fans at Globe Life Field on Monday night were jubilant when Atlanta Braves left fielder Austin Riley crushed the go-ahead home run off Los Angeles Dodgers reliever Blake Treinen leading off the top of the ninth inning. Even more were dejected.

But they all made noise — a warm, fully human sound that supercharged the atmosphere during the Braves’ 5-1 victory, their sixth straight this postseason, and reminded everyone what was lost during this chaotic, pandemic-altered season.

Fittingly, for a pair of October juggernauts who entered this series with twin, unblemished 5-0 record in these playoffs, the Dodgers, who hadn’t lost a game in 18 days, and Braves, who hadn’t lost in 14, battled each other to a draw for eight taut innings before Riley’s fateful swing — at a 98-mph fastball Treinen left over the heart of the plate on a 1-2 count — broke the tie.

“I didn’t feel my legs when I was running around the bases,” said Riley, who hit just the second homer given up all year, regular season and postseason combined, by Treinen.

The Braves tacked on another run when Marcell Ozuna singled home Ronald Acuña Jr., then two more when Ozzie Albies greeted lefty Jake McGee with a two-run homer to left-center — the fourth homer of the night in a stadium with a reputation for keeping long balls in the park.

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“I feel like it’s going to be like this the whole series,” said Braves first baseman Freddie Freeman, who homered off Dodgers starter Walker Buehler in the first. “They’ve got power arms. Every guy coming out of their bullpen seems to be 95-plus. But our pitching staff is pretty good, too. It’s going to be hard to string hits together against these guys. It’s probably going to come down to home runs.”

With ace Max Fried tossing six strong innings and a trio of relievers carrying it home by retiring the final 13 Dodgers hitters in order, the Braves extended their historic run of exquisite pitching performances — which included four shutouts in their first five games of this postseason. Limiting baseball’s most potent offense to a single run Monday night was at least as impressive as shutting out the Cincinnati Reds or Miami Marlins. The Braves’ ERA through their first six games: 0.92.

Fried, the Braves’ ace and a Cy Young Award contender, pitched as if he thought the 1-0 lead he took to the mound for the bottom of the first might have to hold up the entire night. He struck out the Dodgers’ first batter of the game, Mookie Betts, on a 96-mph fastball, and the second, Corey Seager, on a 76-mph curve. In the fourth, he got Cody Bellinger on an 87-mph slider, Fried’s seventh strikeout of the night. He finished the night with nine K’s.

Game 2 will be Tuesday, with Braves rookie Ian Anderson facing legendary Dodgers lefty Clayton Kershaw.

At 5 p.m. sharp, Central time on Monday, the doors to Globe Life Field were flung open and the first paid fans to see baseball in person in 2020 streamed — in a socially distanced manner — into the stadium. The first stop: a temperature scan.

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It was the first paid crowd to attend a major league game all season, and MLB will continue to sell tickets at about one-fourth capacity for the rest of the NLCS and World Series. The ALCS remains fan-free, as MLB did not gain the same clearances from government officials in California as it did in Texas.

The entire proceedings were elevated from the moment the gates opened. Even batting practice was transformed by the novel sight of fans, now bunched in a decidedly not-socially-distant manner, crowded along the outfield railing to snag home run balls that, all season long, have been banging jarringly into plastic seats. All night, players on both teams seemed to delight in tossing stray baseballs into the outstretched hands of nearby fans.

“It was really weird going on the field to get ready before the game and seeing people in general,” Dodgers utility man Kike Hernández said. “I think it was shocking for everybody to see, at least for the first few minutes. It definitely added a little more to this game. I missed what the roar of the crowd sounded like.”

In an unscientific scan of the stands, Dodgers fans seemed to be in the majority, but there were plenty of Braves fans, as well as a sizable contingent from parts unknown who just seemed glad to be seeing baseball again in person and who cheered at everything.

“They had to be happy with the product,” Braves Manager Brian Snitker said. “It sure sounded like more [than 10,700]. The people were into it.”

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Globe Life Field debuted in 2020 and quickly vaulted near the top of the most difficult ballparks in baseball in which to hit a home run. It is cavernous by design and spacious in dimension, and even with the retractable roof open — as it was Monday night on a perfect, 74 degree night — it plays big.

When Acuña, the Braves’ dynamic outfielder, crushed a 101-mph fastball from Dodgers right-hander Dustin May to deep right field in the top of the seventh, the body language of both Acuña and May indicated they both thought it was leaving the ballpark. But instead, it hung in the air just long enough for Betts, the right fielder, to settle under it on the warning track. The game remained tied at 1.

But a no-doubt homer is a no-doubt homer anywhere, and there were four of those. Freeman, one of the best fastball hitters in the game, destroyed a 97-mph heater from Buehler and deposited it a dozen rows up in right field. For once, since there were fans in the stands, the ball didn’t have to sit there forlornly until someone thought to go retrieve it.

Hernández got the run back in the fifth, crushing an 0-2 hanging curveball from Fried to left for a solo homer, Hernández’s first hit of the postseason.

And during the pivotal sequence in the ninth inning, as the Braves were jumping all over Treinen and the Dodgers, the crowd was a mixture of Braves fans standing, throwing their arms forward in a chopping motion and chanting at the top of their lungs — pull those masks over your mouths and noses, people! — and Dodgers fans screaming at Manager Dave Roberts to get Treinen out of the game.

After so many months without fans, and only canned noise piped in over the loudspeakers to take their place, even the ugly sounds sounded great.