Los Angeles Dodgers’ third baseman Juan Uribe (5) celebrates after hitting a two run home run against the Atlanta Braves in the 8th inning of Game 4 of the National League Division Series at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles yesterday. The Dodgers won 4-3 to close out the series and advance to the NLCS.
LOS ANGELES: The Los Angeles Dodgers advanced to the National League Championship Series for the first time since 2009 by beating Atlanta 4-3 in game four of their opening round play-off series yesterday.
Juan Uribe’s two-run homer in the bottom of the eighth lifted the Dodgers to victory and capped a late-inning rally in front of a crowd of 54,438 at Dodger Stadium.
“It was an unbelievable game,” said Uribe, who hit his second career play-off go-ahead homer in the eighth inning or later. “I wanted to have a good swing and try to win the game.”
Los Angeles will face either St. Louis or Pittsburgh in the next round. The Cardinals beat the Pirates 2-1 yesterday to even their opening round play-off series at two games apiece. Leading 3-2, Atlanta sent David Carpenter to the mound. But Cuban star Yasiel Puig led off the eighth with a double down the right-field line. Uribe then clubbed a 2-2 pitch over the wall in leftfield.
Kenley Jansen tossed a perfect ninth to put the Dodgers in the Major League Baseball’s semi-finals for the third time in the past six years.
“This team has a lot of pride,” said Dodgers outfielder Carl Crawford, who clubbed two solo home runs.
“We just go out there and try to play and have fun doing it.”
The Dodgers closed out the series after turning the ball over to left-hander Clayton Kershaw on short rest. Kershaw threw a total of 91 pitches giving up two runs in six innings of work.
Ricky Nolasco was scheduled to start yesterday but the Dodgers manager Don Mattingly decided to roll the dice and go with Kershaw, who was pitching on just three days rest for the first time in his career.
Kershaw was brilliant in a game one victory in the series.
Braves starter Freddy Garcia surrendered both home runs to Crawford.
Crawford got things started for Los Angeles, leading off the bottom of the first with a homer. It was the first time a Dodger has led off the game with a home run since Davey Lopez in the 1978 World Series.
This was the first play-off meeting between the Braves and Dodgers since 1996 when Atlanta swept the first-round series.
Atlanta won five of its seven regular-season matchups with the Dodgers this season.
The first game of the NL Championship Series will be Friday in either St. Louis or Los Angeles. In Pittsburgh, rookie Michael Wacha took a no-hitter into the eighth in a terrific 7 1/3-inning, nine-strikeout performance.
Wacha also came within an out of no-hitting Washington in his final regular-season start on September 24. Monday’s no-hit bid was shattered by Pedro Alvarez’s solo homer that cut Pittsburgh’s deficit to 2-1. Wacha then walked Russell Martin, but the Cardinals got big efforts from two other young pitchers to take the series back to Busch Stadium for Wednesday’s deciding game five.
Meanwhile, back-up catcher Jose Lobaton kept Tampa Bay’s season alive with a walk-off home run in the ninth inning that lifted a jubilant Rays to a 5-4 win over the Boston Red Sox in Game Three of their American League Division Series.
Trailing 2-0 in the best-of-five series, the writing looked on the wall for the Rays after they fell 3-0 behind early in the must-win encounter then blew a 4-3 lead in the top of the ninth.
However, Lobaton smacked a two-out blast off Koji Uehara to give the Rays the win and cut the series deficit to 2-1 ahead of Game Four in Tampa Bay today. “It’s unbelievable. It’s something you can’t explain,” Lobaton told reporters after coming off the bench in the ninth to win the game for Tampa Ray.
“We never give up. We’re going to keep fighting.”
The Rays are used to being on the brink and fighting their way out of it, having now won an elimination game for the fourth time in nine days.
They defeated Toronto in a must-win regular season finale, then beat Texas in a one-game tiebreaker and Cleveland in the wild card play-off.Agencies
