It was said that the Los Angeles Dodgers were angry after being humiliated by the Toronto Blue Jays in the opening game of the World Series on Friday night.

Yoshinobu Yamamoto certainly pitched like he was absolutely furious.

Toronto’s bats were silenced in Game 2 by a dazzling performance from the Dodgers starter, who allowed just a lone sacrifice fly to Alejandro Kirk over nine brilliant innings. The Jays had just four hits on the night, two of them bloops, and not one after the third inning.

The Dodgers eventually won 5-1, evening the series at a game apiece.

If the Jays launched rockets on Friday, Saturday brought a whole mess of wet firecrackers.

Yamamoto, a 27-year-old from Japan in his second year in the majors, worked with a repertoire that seemed frankly unfair. He struck out Nathan Lukes on a 97-mile-an-hour fastball and froze Daulton Varsho on a 77-mile-an-hour curveball, while also mixing in a sharp, hard split-fingered fastball.

Good pitches are often called filthy. This stuff was disgusting. Gross. Cover-your-eyes nasty. You get the idea.

Other than a shaky first inning, Yamamoto had Blue Jays hitters off balance all night, in a way they had not been since Game 5 against Seattle in the American League Championship Series, more than a week ago.

Yamamoto struck out eight Toronto batters and threw 105 pitches for a complete game, which is the modern baseball equivalent of spotting a unicorn.

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A Rogers Centre crowd that began the night rocking and joyous, with franchise legend Joe Carter throwing out the ceremonial first pitch and then hamming it up with the present-day Jays, ended up resigned to its fate as Yamamoto mowed down hitter after hitter. Hopefully not too many attendees were stewing over the prices they had paid on the resale ticket market.

Toronto’s inability to do much of anything at the plate made an unfortunate victim of starting pitcher Kevin Gausman, who was quite filthy himself through six innings before surrendering a pair of solo home runs in the seventh, to Will Smith and Max Muncy.

For a team that has talked so much about the brotherhood and camaraderie that they share in a tight clubhouse, Gausman could be forgiven for wondering if he has caused some sort of offence to his teammates given the lack of run support they have given him.

Gausman also pitched well in both of his starts against Seattle — Games 1 and 5 of the ALCS — but the Jays lost both. Toronto’s potent offence, the best of any playoff team by some distance, backed Gausman with just four runs across his last three starts.

Gausman’s departure after those seventh-inning home runs turned things over to the Blue Jays bullpen, which exposed the soft underbelly of the team.

The Dodgers tacked on two more runs against a series of Jays relievers, more evidence for the pre-series theory that whichever team is forced to go to its bullpen first is in trouble.

And, as if to prove that when things go sideways in the baseball playoffs, they often go really sideways, Toronto’s normally reliable defence helped Los Angeles score both of those runs.

Alejandro Kirk failed to block a pitch in the dirt that allowed a runner to score, and Andres Gimenez tried to turn a double-play on a slow grounder with the bases loaded instead of taking the force out at home. That decision allowed the Dodgers’ fifth run to score when the double-play attempt was unsuccessful.

Given the wet noodles that the Jays were waving at Yamamoto, an extra run felt like it might as well have been a grand slam.

Indeed, the Japanese sensation struck out the side in the eighth inning, at a point in the game when the vast majority of starting pitchers have long since been sent to the showers.

And so now it is off to Los Angeles for the next three games. The Jays will be disappointed to have given up the home-field advantage they brought into the series, but all is not lost. Toronto is 3-2 on the road in these playoffs, and they went to Seattle in the last round, having lost twice and promptly won the next two.

Perhaps more importantly, the Jays’ emphatic Game 1 win proved that they could trade punches with the defending World Series champions and their roster of All-Stars. The Jays haven’t rolled over and had their tummies rubbed.

Sometimes, a baseball team runs into a pitcher who is simply unhittable. The hard thing to fathom is that, with the way Yamamoto has been pitching — he also threw a complete game in the National League Championship Series, which is downright freaky — he was still not the Dodgers’ choice to be the Game 1 starter. The Los Angeles rotation is that good.

If the series does end up coming back to Toronto, Yamamoto would likely be the Game 6 starter for the Dodgers. It’s probably best for Jays fans not to think about that possibility just now.

TORONTO – One of the highlights of Toronto skipper John Schneider’s first day at the World Series — aside from the 11-4 win over the Los Angeles Dodgers — was getting a chance to connect with former Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston.

“He’s always been great to me,” Schneider said before Game 2 on Saturday. “He just said, ‘I love what you’re doing, I love the way your team plays and you should be very proud of what you’ve done.’

“And I said, ‘That means a lot coming from you.’”

Gaston, who threw the ceremonial first pitch to Schneider before Game 1, guided the Blue Jays to World Series titles in 1992 and ’93.

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After throwing the pitch, the 81-year-old Gaston asked Schneider to autograph the ball for him since he planned to put it on his mantle.

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“I did and I made him a promise that I need to get one from him,” Schneider said with a smile.

DOGGED APPROACH

Blue Jays catcher Tyler Heineman said his team is well aware the defending-champion Dodgers entered the World Series as heavy favourites.

Los Angeles dropped only one playoff game entering the Fall Classic and boasts a lineup that includes sluggers Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and others.

At the start of the series, the Dodgers were listed as a -220 favourite on BetMGM to win the series while the Blue Jays were at +180.

“We know we’re severe underdogs but that doesn’t matter to us,” Heineman said. “We were severe underdogs at the beginning of this season. We weren’t even supposed to be in the playoffs, yet alone the World Series.

“To the group inside (the clubhouse), that doesn’t hold any weight to us. We know what a special group we have.”

Before Game 2, the sportsbook had L.A. down to a -120 favourite to win the series while the Jays were at +100.

BACK TO BACK

The Dodgers are aiming to become the first team to win consecutive World Series crowns since the New York Yankees won three titles between 1998 and 2000.

Major League Baseball’s current 24-year streak without a repeat champion is the longest of its kind in the history of the so-called Big Four sports (MLB, NBA, NHL, NFL).

The Dodgers are the first defending champions to return to the Fall Classic since the Philadelphia Phillies in 2009.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.

&copy 2025 The Canadian Press

TORONTO – More than three decades after hitting the biggest home run in Blue Jays history, Joe Carter is still feeling the love from Toronto.

Carter threw out the opening pitch to all-star shortstop Bo Bichette ahead of Game 2 of the World Series as the Blue Jays hosted the Los Angeles Dodgers on Saturday. Carter received a rousing ovation from the packed Rogers Centre, especially after donning Toronto’s home run jacket and jogging through the home dugout.

“I’ve had the emotions for 32 years. I come back here so often,” said Carter, who famously hit a three-run homer to win the 1993 World Series. “I get that wherever I go here in Toronto, which is great. They just appreciate what I did.

“I didn’t do it myself. I just happened to come up in that situation because I was the next guy in line.”

Carter played for the 1992 and 1993 Blue Jays when they won back-to-back World Series. The five-time all-star finished his career with a .259 batting average, 396 home runs, and 1,445 runs batted in over 16 years in Major League Baseball with the Chicago Cubs, Cleveland Indians, San Diego Padres, Toronto, the Baltimore Orioles, and the San Francisco Giants.

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He knows, however, that it’s his climactic home run in Game 6 of the 1993 World Series that he’s best remembered for.

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“It’s going to be a ruckus crowd. It’s going to be loud,” said Carter in a pre-game news conference about an hour before throwing the opening pitch. “I wish I could go back and be (acrobatic St. Louis Cardinals shortstop) Ozzie Smith right now because I said I would kind of run out there and do a backflip with the round-off, you know, a tuck.

“But at 65, no, it’s going to be a walk out there. But it’s going to be fun.”

Carter was also at Rogers Centre for Toronto’s 11-4 victory over Los Angeles in Game 1 on Friday. After the game Carter joined Blue Jays manager John Schneider and his staff in the coaches’ room of Toronto’s clubhouse.

Schneider said it was a treat picking Carter’s brain and that of former Toronto manager Cito Gaston, who threw out the opening pitch before Game 1.

“For one, you forget how big these guys are, like, they’re physical presences,” said Schneider. “I think that swing, obviously the most recognized swing in our franchise.

“So to have him be a part of it is just as cool as having Cito here yesterday and getting to share a few minutes with him and exchange some thoughts.”

Carter said there were quite a few similarities between Toronto’s championship teams of the early 1990s and this year’s club.

“One thing that we had in ’92 and ’93 it was the cohesiveness of the team playing together. Even though we had great players, everybody pulled for one another,” said Carter. “We had the great chemistry in the clubhouse, on the field, and every day it was somebody different. It wasn’t just one guy you could focus on.

“What this 2025 Blue Jays team has is you’ve got from one through nine, everybody coming through.”

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 25, 2025.

&copy 2025 The Canadian Press