Dodgers still the evil American mercenaries Toronto loves to hate

TORONTO — Fans lined up before the game, waiting patiently for the chance to take a selfie with trophies that commemorated the back-to-back World Series championships.

Dodger Stadium is not the only place you can do this. The trophies were from 1992 and 1993, and they honored the Toronto Blue Jays.

The Dodgers matched that back-to-back feat over the past two years, including a classic Game 7 victory in Toronto in last year’s World Series, and returned here Monday to a noise pit packed with fans primed to boo, and to urge their team to exact vengeance on the evil mercenaries from America.

On this night, the mercenaries prevailed, in a pummeling so relentless and a silencing so rapid that a three-peat appeared all but inevitable: Dodgers 14, Blue Jays 2.

Dalton Rushing celebrates with teammates in the dugout after hitting his second home run of the game in the eighth inning of a 14-2 win over Toronto on Monday.

(Mark Blinch / Getty Images)

“These fans, sadly, didn’t want to see us come to town,” Dodgers catcher Dalton Rushing said, “and rightfully so, after what we did tonight.”

Those fans did want to see the Dodgers, but they did not want to see this. On a night the Dodgers fielded a lineup without Mookie Betts and Will Smith, the team hit five home runs — two by Rushing — and scored in every inning but the second and ninth. Of the six Toronto pitchers, the only one to hold the Dodgers scoreless was catcher Tyler Heineman.

To the Dodgers, well, it was another day on the job, if a bit louder than usual at the start. They had a game to win on the long road toward October and, as they often do, they won.

In Toronto, however, pitcher Kevin Gausman said, “It feels like we’re getting ready for Game 8.” The fans mercilessly booed Shohei Ohtani, who turned down $700 million from the Blue Jays to take $700 million from the Dodgers, and outfielder Kyle Tucker, who turned down $350 million (over 10 years) from the Blue Jays to take $240 million (over four years) from the Dodgers.

They even booed Justin Wrobleski, the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, and Miguel Rojas, usually an infielder but on Monday the Dodgers’ final pitcher. Wrobleski, who won his seventh major league game Monday, said he expected the boos.

“It was fun,” he said. “They care about baseball here. It’s a fun environment. If people weren’t a little upset and a little, I’d say, passionate about what happened last year in the World Series, maybe they’re not real fans.”

The boos could have been a sign of respect, or of a long memory: about the ninth most-memorable part of Game 7 was Wrobleski hitting Toronto infielder Andrés Gimenez, then shouting language so profane Wrobleski later said he apologized to his mother for using it. You cannot be a nobody if you can get the benches to clear in Game 7.

“They wouldn’t boo me,” Wrobleski said, “if they didn’t know who I was.”

Dodgers pitcher Justin Wrobleski delivers during the first inning against the Blue Jays on Monday.

(Mark Blinch / Getty Images)

The Dodgers led 4-1, then 5-1, then 6-1, then 9-1, and that was before the sixth inning was done.

“When you score a lot of runs, you’re going to take the crowd out of it,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said.

“I think the media and everyone else was more hyped up. It’s a new team, new year. We’ve got different guys on our team too. But we obviously understand it’s a World Series matchup.”

The Blue Jays were different: infielder Bo Bichette is in New York, catcher Alejandro Kirk is on the injured list, infielder-outfielder Addison Barger is hurt, and Toronto is borrowing a page from the Dodgers’ playbook with a rotation full of hurting pitchers: Shane Bieber, José Berrios, Cody Ponce and phenom Trey Yesavage all are on the injured list, and Max Scherzer left after two innings Monday because of tendinitis in his throwing arm.

The Dodgers are 8-2. The only defending World Series champion to get off to a better 10-game start in the last 100 years: last year’s Dodgers, at 9-1.

Last year worked out just fine. This is April, and no one is facing elimination any time soon. That explains how Roberts rated his anxiety level on Monday.

“It was probably a 10 in October and probably a one tonight,” he said.

Monday’s game offered yet another example of how the team that supposedly is ruining baseball is fattening the wallets of the league’s other 29 teams. The Dodgers have led the league in road attendance in each of Ohtani’s two previous seasons and almost certainly will do so again this season — and a fair number of those ticket buyers are Dodgers fans following their team here, there and everywhere.

In a 10-minute pregame walk around the main concourse, I saw plenty of fans in Dodgers jerseys: not only with the names of Ohtani, Betts and Freeman but with the names of Rojas, Kiké Hernández and Roki Sasaki.

As soon as the third inning, a “Let’s Go Dodgers” chant echoed through the stadium.

The Blue Jays are off to a 4-6 start, including series losses to the Colorado Rockies and Chicago White Sox. The Jays should be good again, and soon. In the meantime, they are offering 77-cent hot dogs Tuesday.

For all the Dodgers fans here, that’s quite the trip: a rout that silenced a hostile crowd one day, hot dogs valued at 55 cents in U.S. currency the next. The fruits of victory, as Tommy Lasorda might have said, rarely are so cheap and filling.