by Cary Osborne
This was power against power. Pitching against pitching. You strike first. We strike next.
It was a dry-mouthed, palm-sweating, heavy-breathed battle in Game 4 of the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium on Thursday.
Something had to give.
Bases loaded. Two outs. Bottom of the 11th inning.
Kiké Hernández on first base. Max Muncy on second. Hyeseong Kim on third base. Andy Pages in the batter’s box.
Phillies relief pitcher Orion Kerkering threw a 96 mph sinker to Pages, who swung and made contact — back to Kerkering.
“I just ran as fast as I could out of the box,” Pages said. “When I looked back, I saw the pitcher throwing to home, and I just knew there wasn’t a chance he’d get him out.”
Kerkering fumbled the baseball in front of him. He collected and decided to try and get the out at home.
“The moment that Pages hit the ball, I knew that I had to give it my all to home plate,” Kim said. “ So instead of thinking about sliding or anything like that, I just ran as hard as I could through home plate.”
Kerkering threw wide of Phillies catcher J.T. Realmuto.
“He hit it, and I thought it was going to go through, so I was trying to beat the ground ball to second base, and when I saw that he booted it, I was hoping that Pages was running hard,” Hernández said. “I expected a throw to home, and I kind of peeked back, and I didn’t see (first baseman Bryce) Harper trying to catch the ball. And I was like, ‘What?’ And I looked home and the ball was in the net, and this place was going crazy.”
Dodger Stadium began to shake in the first postseason walk-off win since Game 1 of the 2024 World Series. Like that game, there was pandemonium after. The Dodgers spilled out of their dugout.
“I wasn’t sure what happened,” Muncy said. “But the way everyone was standing around (on the field), I thought it was a foul ball at first. Then it turned to pure joy. Then you look over at Andy and he’s upset about a broken bat at first, and then he realized, ‘Oh, I just won the game.’”
Kim ran back to home plate to step on it a second time.
The Dodgers beat the Phillies 2–1 to win the NLDS in four games.
“I already knew that I stepped on home plate. I just wanted to make sure,” Kim said.
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That’s how unbelievable the end was.
Dodger starter Tyler Glasnow and Phillies starter Cristopher Sánchez matched zeroes for six innings. Each team scored in the seventh inning — the Phillies benefited from a Dodger error in the top of the seventh and later got an RBI double from Nick Castellanos; then the Dodgers scored the tying run on a based loaded walk from Mookie Betts.
What followed was an extraordinary effort by two bullpens — Roki Sasaki adding to a building postseason legend with three shutout innings, and the Phillies first going to closer Jhoan Duran in the seventh inning and then to Jesús Luzardo, who was supposed to be the Phillies Game 5 starter, in the 10th.
“That was incredible,” said Dodger catcher Will Smith. “Glas started it off just making pitches, putting guys away. Roki doing his thing, that was incredible today. Even Emmet (Sheehan), I thought he pitched really well. (Alex) Vesia great. They were all great today.”
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Vesia took the Dodgers to the bottom of the 11th with a scoreless front end of the inning.
Tommy Edman singled off Luzardo with one out and Kim went in to pinch run for him. Muncy hit a two-out single, and the Phillies went to Kerkering.
Kerkering walked Hernández on a 3–2 count.
It brought up Pages, who was 0-for-4 in the game to that point and 1-for-14 in the series.
“I knew at that point the game was on me,” Pages said. “Before I went up to bat, I looked at Freddie Freeman and he motioned to me that I could do it. He gave me a sign that he believed in me. I just tried to put the ball in play. When you put the ball in play, good things happen.”
The Dodgers are going to the National League Championship Series.
2025 NLDS: The hard-to-believe pure joyful ending of the Dodger NLDS was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.