Clock-Out: A 7-Hour World Series Game Where Legends Wouldn’t Quit

🤩⚾ The Night Baseball Ate the Clock for The Longest World Series Game 3: Deconstructing the 18-Inning, Seven-Hour World Series Epic

What the hell was that? It was a question on the lips of every single person who watched Game 3 of the 2025 World Series between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the Toronto Blue Jays. The answer is simple, yet staggeringly complex: It was a six-hour, thirty-nine-minute, 18-inning saga—an emotional, physical, and historical baseball marathon that stretched from one calendar day into the next.

It wasn’t just a game; it was a dual-billing event, a spectacular theater piece where the script seemed to be rewritten with every single pitch for nearly seven hours.

The Unbelievable: Shohei Ohtani’s Historical Domination

The story of the first seven innings belonged to a single player, a performance so ludicrously good it made the Blue Jays’ eventual strategy seem like the only rational move. Shohei Ohtani wasn’t just on fire; he was a walking, hitting forge of offensive production.

• 4-for-4 with 4 Extra-Base Hits: Ohtani smashed two doubles and two solo home runs, the second of which, in the bottom of the seventh, tied the game at 5-5. That stat line alone tied a 119-year-old World Series record for extra-base hits in a single game.
• The Intentional Walks: After his second homer, Blue Jays manager John Schneider made the defiant choice: He will not beat us. Ohtani was intentionally walked four times, and walked a fifth time unintentionally, making him the first player in 83 years to reach base nine times in a single game, and the first ever to receive four intentional walks in a postseason contest. It was a concession of pure fear and respect, and it reset the entire narrative of the game.

The Attrition: When Baseball Became Endurance

From the eighth inning onward, the game transformed from a slugfest into a battle of survival. Runs were no longer a possibility; runs were a myth.

• The Bullpen Gauntlet: Both teams dipped deep, scraping the bottom of their pitching rosters. The Dodgers set a World Series record by using 10 different pitchers, while the Blue Jays countered with nine. Names you barely knew suddenly became legends, like Dodgers rookie Will Klein, who delivered four incredible scoreless innings to earn the win, and Blue Jays lefty Eric Lauer, who kept his team in it for 4 2/3 shutout innings of relief.
• The Future Hall of Famer: The tension peaked in the 12th inning when, with the bases loaded, Dodgers manager Dave Roberts summoned a legend. Clayton Kershaw—in his likely final season and making his first-ever extra-inning appearance—came out of the bullpen to escape the jam with a groundout, a moment of pure, unexpected drama that few will forget.
• Near-Misses and Heartbreak: The extra frames were littered with would-be walk-off moments. Freddie Freeman himself flew out deep to center in both the 13th (with the bases loaded) and 15th innings, inches from immortality each time. Defensive gems piled up on both sides, including multiple runners thrown out at the plate and third base, turning potential game-winning rallies into frustrating footnotes.

The Finale: A Walk-Off Sequel

As the clocks approached midnight in Los Angeles (3 a.m. in Toronto), the game became a bizarre, almost unbelievable encore of recent history. Just seven years earlier, the Dodgers had won another Game 3 in the 18th inning on a walk-off home run.

In the bottom of the 18th, Freddie Freeman stepped in, having been denied twice before. He crushed a full-count sinker 406 feet to dead center field, a shot that finally cleared the wall and ended the longest World Series game by innings in baseball history (tied with the 2018 marathon).

The 2025 Longest World Series Game 3: Why it Was an Instant Classic

The 2025 Game 3 was not just long; it was historically significant because of its:

1. Sheer Length: Matching the 2018 record of 18 innings.
2. Ohtani’s Dominance: A once-in-a-century offensive performance that forced an unprecedented strategic surrender (the four intentional walks).
3. Kershaw’s Moment: The future Hall of Famer pitching out of the bullpen in extras for a critical out.
4. The Walk-Off Hero: Freddie Freeman conquering his own near-misses with a decisive, late-night blast.

It was a game that emptied dugouts, tested the limits of the human body, and left everyone—players, managers, and sleep-deprived fans—mentally and physically exhausted. It was a reminder that in the World Series, every single pitch, even the 609th one, can rewrite history.

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