Dodgers' walk-off stuns Orioles as Dalton Rushing helps cap wild comeback

Dalton Rushing was frustrated. He’d just chased a slider in the dirt — again. And this time, the game was on the line. The Dodgers were down to their last out. He was down to his last strike.

So he took a moment, took a breath and looked to the Dodgers dugout.

The first person he spotted was Mookie Betts, who had just cut the Baltimore Orioles’ lead to a run with a solo homer. Betts was locked in with Rushing, brimming with confidence, cheering him on.

“For a guy like that, a guy that’s lived in that moment, he’s succeeded in that moment, he’s failed in that moment, he knows what it feels like; it’s pretty special,” Rushing recounted.

Rushing’s eyes traveled along the railing, noting his teammates all on the top step, all relying on him.

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He dug into the box, expecting the slider that Baltimore’s Ryan Helsley threw next — it was high, for a ball. Then Rushing got a fastball he could drive. And he did not miss.

The next moments in the Dodgers’ 6-5 walk-off win Friday night were chaos.

Rushing lined a tying single into right field, allowing Alex Call to score from second. Call slid across the plate as the throw from Orioles right fielder Tyler O’Neill took for a long hop to catcher Samuel Basallo.

Basallo misjudged it, taking an unhurried shuffle up the line, before the ball glanced off his glove and rolled toward the Dodgers dugout.

Third base coach Dino Ebel waved home Ryan Ward, who scored standing up. Manager Dave Roberts, who looked down at his card when the throw was in the air, already was thinking through extra innings when the crowd erupted again. He heard field coordinator Bob Geren shouting something like, “The run counts.”

The Dodgers ran onto the field and swarmed Rushing, who had just reached second. They jumped and yelled as the Dodger Stadium lights flashed around them.

“It was good to get Freddie [Freeman] a night off for being the guy in the middle for a change, you know?” Rushing said with a grin. “No, it’s a great feeling, and I think it honestly just feels great that we won that baseball game.”

For several innings, it looked like they wouldn’t.

The Dodgers had jumped out to an early 3-0 lead, on a two-run single from Max Muncy in the first inning and an RBI double from Andy Pages in the second. Then their scoring dried up.

Rushing was having as frustrating of a night as anyone, with a line out and three strikeouts.

His first strikeout was part of a brutal sequence. The Dodgers loaded the bases with no outs in the third. Then Ward, Rushing and Alex Freeland all went down swinging.

Rushing struck out on a slider in the dirt. And Orioles starter Trey Gibson got him to bite on the same putaway pitch in the fifth.

Rushing’s reactions steadily grew more animated, on the field and in the dugout.

“He plays with a fire under his ass,” Freeland said. “He gets after it. He expects nothing but the best for himself day in and day out, and that comes with it.”

Said Roberts: “After he ... vents, he does a good job of collecting himself to get back into the next play, the next at-bat, catching.”

On Friday, Rushing was catching Roki Sasaki, who faced just one batter over the minimum through five innings. But during the third time through the order, the Orioles finally figured him out and hit back-to-back home runs.

With two outs and a runner on, Sasaki yanked a splitter to the inside edge of the strike zone, and Gunnar Henderson swung and lifted it over the wall in right field. Pete Alonso then homered to left-center field on an inside fastball about belt high to tie the score.