LOS ANGELES — The perfect game bid was alive. The Dodger Stadium crowd was locked in. And then a routine ground ball rolled through Mookie Betts’ glove like it had somewhere else to be.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto was six outs away from perfection Sunday afternoon against the Chicago White Sox. He had carved through 22 batters without a baserunner. But in the bottom of the eighth, with two outs, White Sox hitter Miguel Vargas chopped a two-hopper to second base — the kind of play Betts has made ten thousand times. He didn’t make this one.
Betts didn’t wait for the question to come. He didn’t deflect. He didn’t blame the sun, the hop, or the stakes. He went straight to accountability.
“Just a routine ground ball that I missed,” Betts said after the Dodgers’ 7-1 win. “I’m not making any excuses. Obviously, with the situation going on, it was great, but I think us winning is the most important thing. That’s all we care about.”
He knew exactly what was at stake. Everyone in the ballpark did. Betts acknowledged he was “very aware” of Yamamoto’s perfect game bid, but insisted that awareness didn’t add pressure.
“I did everything I was supposed to do,” Betts said. “Just didn’t catch the ball.”
Yamamoto’s Resilience — and One Swing That Changed the Story
Yamamoto didn’t unravel after Betts’ error. He got the next batter to end the eighth with no runs allowed, then jogged back out for the ninth with a no-hitter still intact. But on the second batter of the final frame, Tristan Peters deposited a solo home run to left field. That was it — one hit, one run, seven strikeouts, 109 pitches.
It was a dominant outing by any measure. But the perfect game, and later the no-hitter, were both gone.
Betts was quick to praise his teammate after the game, calling him a master of his craft.
“He was in the zone, he kept it out of the middle, kept him off balance,” Betts said. “That’s just Yoshi being Yoshi. I’m glad he’s on our team.”
Shohei Ohtani’s Return and a Series That Still Ended Right
The Dodgers avoided what could have been a deflating Sunday by stacking runs and finishing the series win. It helped that Shohei Ohtani was back in the lineup after a brief absence — and Betts didn’t downplay what that meant.
“Anytime you can get the best player in the world back in your lineup, it’s definitely gonna help,” Betts said. “And he showed that immediately.”
Betts himself went 3-for-5 with three runs scored, adding a reminder that even on a day when a single play becomes the headline, he remains one of baseball’s most dangerous table-setters.
For Yamamoto, the numbers will show a near-miss. For Betts, the story will be the error he owned before anyone asked. But for the Dodgers, the bottom line is simple: they left Sunday with a win, their ace feeling good, and a star second baseman whose honesty might mean more than any perfect game ever could.
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