Blake Treinen threw his hands in the sky. His teammates poured out of the dugout and swallowed him near the mound.
Around them, the collective force of 53,000 fans all too accustomed to October frustration and heartbreak roared in delirious unison.
And not for the last time this fall, either.
Not after a nearly flawless performance from their ball club on Friday.
With a 2-0 defeat of the San Diego Padres in Game 5 of the National League Division Series, the Dodgers did more than just eliminate their Southern California rivals and advance to the NL Championship Series.
Staring down a third straight potential NLDS exit, they banded together, shut down the Padres’ powerhouse lineup, and exorcised some maddening recent postseason demons in the process.
In each of the last two years, and three of the last five, the Dodgers had failed to produce a moment like Friday’s.
In 2019, 2022 and 2023, they watched division-winning, 100-win ball clubs crash out of the playoffs in the best-of-five division series round.
Even in 2020, when they won a World Series in that stretch, their NLDS victory came in a neutral-site ballpark in front of zero fans.
This was different. This was catharsis.
“We didn’t come here to win the NL West,” utilityman Kiké Hernández said before the game. “We came to win the World Series.”
For the first time in three years, they finally completed the first step on that championship quest.
In what was the Dodgers’ first postseason series clincher in front of a home crowd since 2013, a raucous 53,183 fans were given reasons to cheer from the start.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto, the $325-million offseason signing the Dodgers entrusted with the Game 5 start, even after tipping his pitches in a three-inning, five-run clunker in Game 1, set the tone with a one-two-three inning in the first, then stranded a two-out walk in the second.
Hernández then delivered the night’s first big blow, driving a first-pitch fastball from Padres starter Yu Darvish to the upper reaches of the left-field pavilion in the bottom of the second.
From there, Darvish was dominant — until he wasn’t.
After retiring 14 consecutive batters following Hernández’s homer, the Dodgers took the veteran right-hander (who has a 2.27 ERA in his regular-season career against his former club, and held them to one run over seven innings in a Game 2 San Diego win) deep again in the seventh.
In a 2-and-1 count, Teoscar Hernández got a slider over the plate. After depositing it in the left-field seats with a line-drive solo blast, he chucked his bat away with one hand. The pandemonium that ensued caused Chavez Ravine to shake.
“This is my first time in this kind of atmosphere,” Hernández, the veteran slugger who signed a one-year deal with the Dodgers this offseason, told the Fox broadcast in the dugout afterward. “But I love this. This is why I came here.”
Meanwhile, the Dodgers pitching staff gave the Padres no way back, completing the series with back-to-back shutouts and a stunning 24 consecutive scoreless innings.
Yamamoto commanded his fastball with precision and snapped off an unhittable flurry of sliders, curveballs and splitters, producing a scoreless five-inning outing that was everything the Dodgers were hoping for, and then some.
Evan Phillips got five outs after that, pumping up the ballpark as he left the mound following a strikeout of Manny Machado (who hit two balls to the warning track earlier in the game, but finished the series in a three-for-20 slump).
A cursing, screaming Alex Vesia had veins popping from his neck after striking out Jackson Merrill to end the seventh.
There was one nervy moment at the start of the eighth, when Vesia — who returned to the mound for a second inning with a string of lefties due up — called for a trainer while warming up and left the game with an apparent injury.
That forced Roberts to turn to hard-throwing right-hander Michael Kopech earlier than he wanted, for matchups that better suited the left-handed Vesia instead.
No matter.
Kopech retired the side in order, punctuating the inning by blowing a 102-mph fastball past Jake Cronenworth. Trienen took care of the ninth, setting up an NLCS meeting with the New York Mets that will begin on Sunday at Dodger Stadium.
After two years of early October misery, the Dodgers will be playing deep into the autumn this year.
Eight more wins still separate them from a World Series title.
But in a postseason all about redemption, the Dodgers’ triumph Friday night served a long-awaited start.
