CHICAGO _ Just like that, the Los Angeles Dodgers magic was mashed.
With one swing, a new Dodgers miracle was sent sailing into a warm Midwestern night, disappearing into bleachers filled with laughing, singing fans who howled with a pounding reminder.
The Dodgers aren't playing the Washington Nationals anymore.
These are the Chicago Cubs, the seemingly destined Chicago Cubs, bearing down on 108 years of bad history, and at least for one night, even the charmed Dodgers weren't going to get in their way.
"It stings a little bit, absolutely," Manager Dave Roberts said Saturday night. "Yeah, I thought we were going to win."
They did not win. They were down, they were tied, and then, they lost, oh, how they lost, on an eighth-inning grand slam by Miguel Montero to give the Cubs an eventual 8-4 win in Game 1 of the National League Championship Series.
For one delicious moment, the Dodgers appeared once again headed for another improbable October victory. They had come back from a 3-1 deficit in the eighth inning against the Cubs' heat-throwing reliever Aroldis Chapman. They had tied the score in the top of the inning, and reliever Joe Blanton appeared on the verge of fighting through a rally in the bottom of the inning.
The bases were loaded but Montero, who did not have a hit in this postseason, was down 0 and 2 to Blanton and looking overmatched and ...
And, boom.
Montero deposited a hanging slider into the right-field bleachers for a grand slam that set the old ballpark to rocking and the Dodgers to packing in an eventual 8-4 victory.
It was just one loss in the first game of a seven-game series, but it felt like much more. It was a knockout delivered moments after the Dodgers had punched the Cubs in the jaw and knocked them against the ropes.
If was the kind of Cubs win that confirmed that the Dodgers aren't the only one in this series with magic, and for Dodgers fans that is a scary thing indeed.
Next up, Game 2 on Sunday night, and guess who must once again pull the Dodgers off the same ledge from which they have dangled repeatedly in the last week. Welcome back to Clayton Kershaw, and wasn't he just on the mound a few minutes ago?
"I'm not going in with any restrictions. No excuses at this point," said Kershaw, who threw seven pitches in a two-out save Thursday night in the clinching division series game against the Nationals.
The Dodgers need no excuses after hanging tough until that hanging slider, which came during an inning when Roberts seemed to make all the right moves.
Ben Zorbrist led off with a double against Blanton, but Roberts put the Dodgers in a position to survive with two intentional walks sandwiched by a groundout and a flyout. And it really seemed like Blanton was dominating pinch-hitter Montero, until he wasn't.
"I trust Joe, I trust him all year long, he was ahead 0 and 2 and he left one up," Roberts said. "I felt good about us winning the game but it just didn't work out for us that inning."
The hardest part for the Dodgers wasn't just watching that ball sail out of the park, but thinking about how far they had climbed to get into a position to even make that inning matter. In the top of the eighth, they were trailing, 3-1, and showing few signs of real life.
Then it was classic Dodgers, starting with Andrew Toles, who had hung tough to get hit by a pitch in the Game 4 winning rally against the Nationals. This time, he began the inning with another pinch-hit beauty, this time lining a single barely out of the reach of flailing shortstop Addison Russell.
Facing a new pitcher, Pedro Strop, pinch-hitter Chase Utley then coaxed a five-pitch walk. He was followed by Justin Turner, who has rarely gone down easy this October, and this time he bounced a two-strike hopper down the line. Kris Bryant caught the ball and ran toward third base but Toles beat him to the base to load the bases.
Enter Chapman, the Cubs ninth-inning, 100-mph-throwing savior summoned into the earlier high-leverage situation.
For two hitters, he was all gas, striking out Corey Seager and Yasiel Puig on flailing hacks that missed pitches that thwacked loudly into the catcher's mitt.
But on his third hitter, Chapman' gas exploded off the bat of Adrian Gonzalez, who steered a one-out single to center field to tie the score
It was a huge sigh of relief after early struggles that, for the Dodgers, it made this seem like a hangover game more than an opening game.
The Dodgers gave up a run in the first when Howie Kendrick, making his second start of the postseason, misplayed a ball in left field.
They cost themselves a potential rally in the second when Gonzalez was thrown out at the plate after a questionable decision to send him on a two-out single by Kenta Maeda.
They gave up a run in the third when catcher Carlos Ruiz, making his first start of the postseason, made an ill-advised pickoff throw that allowed Javier Baez to record the first Cubs postseason steal of home in 109 years.
Meanwhile, the Cubs saved themselves twice with two streaking-then-diving catches by Dexter Fowler in center field. One dive was to his left on a Turner bloop, another was to his right on a Ruiz line drive. Then there was Anthony Rizzo taking away a hit from Puig with a diving stop by first base in the sixth.
The Dodgers pulled back with a pinch-homer by Andre Ethier in the fifth inning, his second big pinch-hit of the postseason after his single during the Game 4 winning rally against the Nationals. It was his first homer against a left-handed pitcher in three years.
It gave the Dodgers momentum but it didn't last.
"We played hard, we played well, we have Kershaw tomorrow," said Roberts, looking for a silver lining after a loss that nonetheless felt like the beginning of a storm.
