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LOS ANGELES — They had all the money, all the stars and all the hype, but what these Dodgers needed most, they learned, was an edge.

They found it during the stretch run of their season, when injuries piled up and doubt crept in. It coalesced around a short, cutting message that littered their group chat throughout September and became their rallying cry after falling to the brink of elimination against their bitter rivals.

Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy was among the many who shared it Friday night, after overcoming the San Diego Padres in the National League Division Series: “F— them all.”

The Dodgers rode five innings from an effective Yoshinobu Yamamoto, home runs from Kiké Hernández and Teoscar Hernández and another run of dominant relief work to beat the Padres 2-0 at an electric Dodger Stadium in a winner-take-all Game 5.

Their postseason rotation is down to three members, and their No. 3 hitter, Freddie Freeman, continues to be bothered by a badly sprained right ankle. But the Dodgers will nonetheless move on to face the upstart New York Mets in the NL Championship Series, with Game 1 scheduled for Sunday.

Dave Roberts, winding down his ninth season as Dodgers manager, compared the achievement to his Boston Red Sox overcoming a 3-0 series deficit against the New York Yankees in 2004 and his Dodgers overcoming a 3-1 deficit against the Atlanta Braves in 2020. It’s because of recent history, which has seen the Dodgers get trounced by division rivals in the NLDS each of the past two years. And it’s because of the opponent.

“I wanted to beat those guys,” Roberts said. “We all wanted to beat those guys really bad.”

Roberts awoke Friday morning to manage his eighth winner-take-all game and felt a certain calmness about it. He didn’t know what to expect from Yamamoto and had no idea which other obstacles would present themselves, but he took solace in the identity of a team he considered uniquely relentless and resilient.

Said Roberts: “I believe in this team more than any team I’ve had.”

The Dodgers splurged more than $1 billion this offseason, adding Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow and Teoscar Hernández, among others. They outlasted the Padres and won 98 regular-season games to capture their 11th division title in 12 years. But many saw them as underdogs in this NLDS. The Padres were healthier, more complete, with an offense that was humming, a rotation that had been dominant and a bullpen that stood among the deepest in the sport. The Dodgers rallied around that.

“What was it, 80% of the f—ing experts said we were going to lose?” Muncy said. “F— those guys. We know who we are. We’re the f—ing best team in baseball, and we’re out there to prove it.”

When the Dodgers lost Game 4 to the Braves in the 2020 NLCS, requiring three consecutive victories to reach the World Series, a players-only group chat began to populate with positive messages. It helped lift the team to a championship. Something similar occurred recently, after Game 3, with the Dodgers down 2-1 in the series and requiring a bullpen game to survive Game 4. Kiké Hernández, a longtime spark plug in Los Angeles, was among the most vocal.

One message in particular resonated with Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux.

“He said, ‘F— everybody,'” Lux recalled. “‘Everyone that’s not in this clubhouse.'”

When Kiké Hernández was placed in the starting lineup for Game 4 — a by-product of Freeman and shortstop Miguel Rojas being too injured to play — he told Teoscar Hernández that two Hernándezes had never homered in the same postseason game. That Wednesday night, Kiké Hernández told him, they would be the first. When it didn’t happen, he told him they would do it in Friday’s Game 5. Then they did.

“I believe in him, he believe in me, I believe in myself, and we enjoyed today,” Teoscar Hernández said.

Seven years ago, in 2017, Kiké Hernández got into the habit of visualizing success going into postseason games. Lying in bed the night before, he would picture himself hitting a home run, rounding the bases, conducting postgame interviews. It helped make him one of the sport’s most productive postseason performers. He did the same thing before Game 5 then got a first-pitch fastball in the second inning and clobbered it 428 feet to left-center field to give the Dodgers a 1-0 lead. Five innings later, against a continually effective Yu Darvish, the other Hernández got a 2-1 slider that leaked out over the plate and sent it 420 feet to the same vicinity.

Teoscar Hernández has been a fixture in the middle of the Dodgers’ lineup all year. Kiké Hernández was brought back for his eighth year with the Dodgers to serve as a versatile bench player, but also to star in October. His latest home run was his 14th in 75 career postseason games.

“I kept telling myself, ‘They brought you here for a reason. They brought you here to play in October,'” Kiké Hernández said. “I wanted to come back to make a run with this team, because I really want to have a parade. I knew that whether it was going to be on defense or at the plate, I was going to find a way to win this game for us.”

“I wanted to beat those guys. We all wanted to beat those guys really bad.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts

Yamamoto did something similar, while working to sync up his delivery going into the biggest start of his major league career. The Dodgers made Yamamoto the highest-paid pitcher in baseball history this offseason, signing him to a 12-year, $325 million contract. He struggled in his Dodgers debut against the Padres in March and struggled in his postseason debut against the Padres in Game 1.

But the Dodgers had also seen him shine under Major League Baseball’s brightest lights, dominating at Yankee Stadium on June 7 and stifling the Chicago Cubs — in a matchup against countrymen Shota Imanaga and Seiya Suzuki — when he returned from a three-month absence on Sept. 10. The Dodgers hoped that version would present itself when it mattered most — then they saw him commanding a fastball that sat consistently at 97 mph in the first inning and knew it would.

“In talking to him,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said, “you can get the sense that he wanted the ball.”

The ball went from Yamamoto to Evan Phillips to Alex Vesia to Michael Kopech to, in the end, Blake Treinen. Together, they held the Padres to zero runs and three baserunners. They and many others combined to hold the Padres scoreless over the final 24 innings of this NLDS, the third-longest streak to close a series in postseason history. The Padres’ offense wasn’t supposed to be tamed like this. Their depth and their talent were supposed to overcome even the best relievers.

The Dodgers didn’t care for any of that, and Kiké Hernández summed up why:

“We have a lot of ‘F U’ in us.”

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Journalism rallies in $1M Haskell Invitational win

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Journalism rallies in M Haskell Invitational win

OCEANPORT, N.J. — Journalism launched a dramatic rally to win the $1 million Haskell Invitational on Saturday at Monmouth Park.

It was Journalism’s first race since the Triple Crown. He was the only colt to contest all three legs, winning the Preakness while finishing second to Sovereignty in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes.

Heavily favored at 2-5 odds, Journalism broke poorly under jockey Umberto Rispoli and wound up trailing the early leaders. He kicked into gear rounding the final turn to find Gosger and Goal Oriented locked in a dogfight for the lead. It appeared one of them would be the winner until Journalism roared down the center of the track to win by a half-length.

“You feel like you’re on a diesel,” Rispoli said. “He’s motoring and motoring. You never know when he’s going to take off. To do what he did today again, it’s unbelievable.”

Gosger held on for second, a neck ahead of Goal Oriented.

The Haskell victory was Journalism’s sixth in nine starts for Southern California-based trainer Michael McCarthy, and earned the colt a berth in the $7 million Breeders’ Cup Classic at Del Mar on Nov. 1.

Journalism paid $2.80, $2.20 and $2.10.

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Heavy rain helps Elliott to pole for Dover Cup race

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Heavy rain helps Elliott to pole for Dover Cup race

DOVER, Del. — Chase Elliott took advantage of heavy rain at Dover Motor Speedway to earn the pole for Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series race.

Elliott and the rest of the field never got to turn a scheduled practice or qualifying lap on Saturday because of rain that pounded the concrete mile track. Dover is scheduled to hold its first July race since the track’s first one in 1969.

Elliott has two wins and 10 top-five finishes in 14 career races at Dover.

Chase Briscoe starts second, followed by Christopher Bell, Tyler Reddick and William Byron. Shane van Gisbergen, last week’s winner at Sonoma Raceway, Michael McDowell, Joey Logano, Ty Gibbs and Kyle Busch complete the top 10.

Logano is set to become the youngest driver in NASCAR history with 600 career starts.

Logano will be 35 years, 1 month, 26 days old when he hits No. 600 on Sunday at Dover Motor Speedway. He will top seven-time NASCAR champion and Hall of Famer Richard Petty by six months.

The midseason tournament that pays $1 million to the winner pits Ty Dillon vs. John Hunter Nemechek and Reddick vs. Gibbs in the head-to-head challenge at Dover.

The winners face off next week at Indianapolis. Reddick is the betting favorite to win it all, according to Sportsbook.

All four drivers are winless this season.

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Hamlin on 23XI trial: ‘All will be exposed’

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Hamlin on 23XI trial: 'All will be exposed'

DOVER, Del. — NASCAR race team owner Denny Hamlin remained undeterred in the wake of another setback in court, vowing “all will be exposed” in the scheduled December trial as part of 23XI Racing’s federal antitrust suit against the auto racing series.

A federal judge on Thursday rejected a request from 23XI Racing and Front Row Motorsports to continue racing with charters while they battle NASCAR in court, meaning their six cars will race as open entries this weekend at Dover, next week at Indianapolis and perhaps longer than that in a move the teams say would put them at risk of going out of business.

U.S. District Judge Kenneth Bell denied the teams’ bid for a temporary restraining order, saying they will make races over the next couple of weeks and they won’t lose their drivers or sponsors before his decision on a preliminary injunction.

Bell left open the possibility of reconsidering his decision if things change over the next two weeks.

After this weekend, the cars affected may need to qualify on speed if 41 entries are listed – a possibility now that starting spots have opened.

The case has a Dec. 1 trial date, but the two teams are fighting to be recognized as chartered for the current season, which has 16 races left. A charter guarantees one of the 40 spots in the field each week, but also a base amount of money paid out each week.

“If you want answers, you want to understand why all this is happening, come Dec. 1, you’ll get the answers that you’re looking for,” Hamlin said Saturday at Dover Motor Speedway. “All will be exposed.”

23XI, which is co-owned by retired NBA great Michael Jordan, and FRM filed their federal suit against NASCAR last year after they were the only two organizations out of 15 to reject NASCAR’s extension offer on charters.

Jordan and FRM owner Bob Jenkins won an injunction to recognize 23XI and FRM as chartered for the season, but the ruling was overturned on appeal earlier this month, sending the case back to Bell.

Hamlin, a three-time Daytona 500 winner driving for Joe Gibbs Racing, co-owns 23XI with Jordan and said they were prepared to send Tyler Reddick, Bubba Wallace and Riley Herbst to the track each week as open teams. They sought the restraining order Monday, claiming that through discovery they learned NASCAR planned to immediately begin the process of selling the six charters which would put “plaintiffs in irreparable jeopardy of never getting their charters back and going out of business.”

Hamlin said none of the setbacks have made him second-guess the decision to file the lawsuit.

“Dec. 1 is all that matters. Mark your calendar,” Hamlin said. “I’d love to be doing other things. I’ve got a lot going on. When I get in the car (today), nothing else is going to matter other than that. I always give my team 100%. I always prepare whether I have side jobs, side hustles, more kids, that all matters, but I always give my team all the time that they need to make sure that when I step in, I’m 100% committed.”

Reddick, who has a clause that allows him to become a free agent if the team loses its charter, declined comment Saturday on all questions connected to his future and the lawsuit. Hamlin also declined to comment on Reddick’s future with 23XI Racing.

Reddick, one of four drivers left in NASCAR’s $1 million In-season Challenge, was last year’s regular-season champion and raced for the Cup Series championship in the season finale. But none of the six drivers affected by the court ruling are locked into this year’s playoffs.

Making the field won’t be an issue this weekend at Dover as fewer than the maximum 40 cars are entered. But should 41 cars show up anywhere this season, someone slow will be sent home and that means lost revenue and a lost chance to win points in the standings.

“Nothing changes from my end, obviously, and nothing changes from inside the shop,” Front Row Motorsports driver Zane Smith said. “There’s not typically even enough cars to worry about transferring in.”

Smith, 24th in the standings and someone who would likely need a win to qualify for NASCAR’s playoffs, said he stood behind Jenkins in his acrimonious legal fight that has loomed over the stock car series for months.

“I leave all that up to them,” Smith said, “but my job is to go get the 38 the best finish I can.”

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