Base-running blunder cost Toronto a World Series championship -- by just a few inches

I love to watch sporting events because they so often — heck, maybe always — reflect life as a whole. Meaning, victory or defeat often doesn’t go to the better team, or the most deserving team, but the luckiest team.

That’s true of life in general.

We like to believe that successful people earned their way to the top of the Success Pyramid through hard work, talent, and perseverance. Actually, though, being in the right place at the right time and benefiting from chance events that ended up being the difference between success and failure often is a better explanation.

Last night the Los Angeles Dodgers won the 2025 baseball World Series by beating the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 in eleven innings. That deciding seventh game of the series was a pleasure to watch. Unless you were an avid Blue Jays fan. Because four plays in the ninth inning made the difference, as described in this X post:

The home run by Rojas occurred in the top of the ninth. That made the score 4-4. The Blue Jays had two scoring opportunities in the bottom of the ninth that would have won the game for them, along with the World Series. The bottom right photo above shows an amazing catch by Andy Pages that sent the game into extra innings.

That was simply a terrific play by the Dodgers’ outfielder. Much more painful for Blue Jays fans, which included me, because I felt Canada deserved a celebration, was the play shown in the top right and bottom left photos above.

The sliding foot just a few inches from home plate belonged to Isiah Kiner-Falefa, who was a pinch runner put into the game for more base-running speed after a slower Blue Jays player singled in the bottom of the ninth. The other foot touching home plate was the Dodgers catcher, who caught the ball thrown by Rojas after a Blue Jays batter hit a ground ball to second base.

Kiner-Falefa had a very short lead off of third base. If he had moved just a few feet closer down the line after the Dodgers pitcher started his motion, likely Kiner-Falefa would have beaten the throw to home plate and the Blue Jays would have won the World Series. A story in The Athletic tells the tale:

TORONTO — The Blue Jays had chances. For two games, they held opportunities to win their first championship since 1993. In Game 7 alone, Toronto held a lead for six innings. They left 10 runners on base and finished 3 for 14 with runners in scoring position. The Jays came to bat with three opportunities to walk-off in one of the most dramatic World Series ever played.

No play was closer than Isiah Kiner-Falefa’s dash to the plate in the bottom of the ninth inning on Saturday night, two innings before the Los Angeles Dodgers sealed a 5-4 win on Will Smith’s 11th-inning homer.

Perhaps it would have played out differently if Kiner-Falefa had gotten a larger lead off third with one out, the bases loaded, and the Dodgers playing in.

As the replay of Kiner-Falefa’s slide showed over the stadium jumbotron, fans cheered. They thought he was safe, driven in by Daulton Varsho’s grounder to second. They thought, upon review, the Jays were about to celebrate a title. It would have been a wild and fitting end to a tension-packed World Series: an overturned call at home plate.

Instead, the out call on the field was confirmed. The game, and the season, continued for a little while longer.

Kiner-Falefa needed just a few more inches to slide safely home. He may have been closer to that walk-off slide with a larger lead off third base. According to Statcast, his primary lead off the base, 7.8 feet, ranked 357 of 381 primary leads in the World Series. It was 3.8 feet shorter than Mookie Betts’ lead off third base an inning later, when the Dodgers faced the same bases-loaded opportunity.

Betts was forced out just like Kiner-Falefa, though Betts’ primary lead off third base was 11.6 feet.

After receiving hateful messages following the game, Kiner-Falefa told reporters that his short lead was due to being instructed by coaches to stay close to the base in that situation. Other Blue Jays leads at third base throughout the World Series appear to corroborate that thinking. Daulton Varsho’s primary lead at third base, with the bases loaded in the sixth inning of Game 1, was just 8.5 feet. Ernie Clement’s lead off third, in that same Game 1 inning, was just 5.7 feet.

The Jays, seemingly, tried to combat back-picks and line-drive double plays with those short leads, hoping to score on any ball that found a way out of the infield rather than beating grounders to the plate. For a team that led baseball in hits with runners in scoring position, it’s a trade off that worked all year.

“They told us to stay close to the base,” Kiner-Falefa told Sportsnet. “They don’t want us to get doubled off in that situation with a hard line drive.”

Baseball hasn’t changed. Even with bigger bases and limits on throwing over, it remains a game of inches. That inch, between Kiner-Falefa’s foot and the plate, will live in the minds of Blue Jays fans.

Yet, so will so many other chances in the final innings of the 2025 World Series, from Addison Barger getting doubled off at second to end Game 6 to the back-breaking homers allowed in the eighth, ninth and 11th innings in Game 7 on Saturday. Miguel Rojas, who tied the game with one out in the ninth, had hit just one prior homer off a right-handed pitcher in 2025 before he launched a homer to left field to save the Dodgers season against closer Jeff Hoffman.

“I cost everybody in here a World Series ring,” Hoffman said after the game. “So it feels pretty s—-y.”

That’s the thing about losing the World Series in extra innings in Game 7 — every missed play or squandered chance will be dissected for decades. If the Jays capitalized on just one more moment, their magical season would’ve ended in a parade. They would be World Series champions right now. Instead, only the missed opportunities linger.

Said Kiner-Falefa: “It sucks that we didn’t get the job done.”