The Los Angeles Dodgers are having a season where pretty much everything is going right. They hit the All-Star break with the best record in baseball. They just became the first team to reach 60 wins this year. And they’re chasing a third straight World Series title, which would put them in some pretty serious company.
But none of that happens last October without one catch. A catch so absurd they’re now making a bobblehead of it.
Andy Pages, the Dodgers’ rookie outfielder, made a play in Game 7 of the World Series that still looks fake when you watch the replay. Bottom of the ninth inning in Toronto. The Blue Jays are down to their last out. A fly ball heads toward the warning track in left-center. Pages, running full sprint, basically climbs over teammate Kiké Hernandez — who was camped under the ball and had no idea Pages was coming — and snags it at the last second to keep the game alive.
The Dodgers won in extras after Will Smith hit a homer. Miguel Rojas had tied it up in the ninth with his own big swing. But the catch is the thing everybody remembers.
So now the Dodgers are turning it into a giveaway. On September 6, fans at Dodger Stadium will get a bobblehead of Pages mid-air, with Hernandez right there underneath him. It’s a specific moment. Almost too specific. But that’s kind of the point.
How the bobblehead came together
The team announced the promotion this week, sharing a mockup that shows Pages fully extended, glove out, with Hernandez looking up from below. It’s not every day you see a bobblehead that commemorates a catch made over a teammate. Usually those get turned into memes, not collectibles.
Hernandez, for what it’s worth, seems to be a good sport about being the guy who almost caught it. The bobblehead has him looking almost surprised. Which is probably how he felt at the actual moment.
The Dodgers have kept rolling since that title. They signed Kyle Tucker and Edwin Diaz in the offseason, though neither has been totally healthy or dominant so far. But even with a pile of injuries, they’ve got the deepest roster in baseball and look like clear favorites again.
They open the second half Friday night against the New York Yankees. But for one night in September, the attention will be on a rookie and a bobblehead that freezes a moment nobody in L.A. is going to forget.
Leave a Comment