World Series: Houston Astros outlast LA Dodgers in epic Game 5

The Astros’ Alex Bregman celebrates hitting a game-winning single during the 10th inning of Game 5. It was his first career walk-off hit. (Jamie Squire/Getty Images)In their darkest nightmares this winter, if not the rest of their lives, the Los Angeles Dodgers will see rockets and hear train whistles. They will feel the walls of Minute Maid Park creeping slowly in on them and catch ghostly glimpses of Houston Astros circling the bases, one after another. The Dodgers may see themselves closing in on victory, over and over, but they will forever be one run short and one out away, always one too few. And then the rockets and the whistles will return.A had-to-see-it-to-believe-it Game 5 of the World Series featured massive and incomprehensible swings of both lumber and momentum. But the last of each belonged to the Astros, giving them an impossibly rich and harrowing 13-12 win, one that tested the hearts and stomachs of everyone in the building until the final swing of Alex Bregman’s bat in the bottom of the 10th. And it leaves this upstart franchise, born in 1962 as the Colt .45’s, one victory away from its first World Series title.“Back and forth, the two best teams in baseball duking it out,” said Bregman, the Astros’ precocious, 23-year-old third baseman. “And we came out on top.”After a much-needed day off — for the teams’ respective arms, if not their blood pressures — the World Series heads back to Dodger Stadium for Game 6 on Tuesday night, when the Dodgers, behind left-handed starter Rich Hill, must defeat Astros ace Justin Verlander, who is 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA this postseason, just to force a Game 7 the following night.“They’ve got to beat us again,” Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen said, boiling the math down to its essence. “Ain’t gonna be easy.”At some point, on either Tuesday or Wednesday, the 2017 baseball season will come to an end, but not before leaving us this classic on the final night of baseball this year in Houston — a game that didn’t end until the bottom of the 10th inning, 5 hours 17 minutes after it started, when Bregman singled off Jansen to score pinch runner Derek Fisher from second with the winning run and end the second-longest game in World Series history.“I don’t even know what to expect anymore,” said Astros reliever Collin McHugh. “You think you’ve seen everything in baseball, until you haven’t.”It was the most amazing, astounding, incredible — and yes, bonkers — World Series game since ... oh, four days earlier.Jansen, who blew the save in the classic that was Game 2, was in his second inning of work Sunday at the end of a long, taxing and gruesome night for the Dodgers’ bullpen. With two outs in the 10th, he hit Brian McCann with a pitch. After George Springer walked, the Astros sent Fisher in to pinch-run for McCann at second, and Bregman delivered a line-drive single to left, with Fisher sliding home ahead of the throw.“This was the craziest atmosphere and the craziest outcome I’ve ever seen,” Springer said. “Big pitch after big pitch, big play after big play.The Astros rallied from deficits of 4-0, 7-4 and 8-7. They squandered leads of 11-8 and 12-9. The Dodgers were down to their last strike in the ninth, only to tie it — and lose it again. Both teams blew through the best arms in their bullpen — and a few of the ones they had hoped never to have to use.“I don’t think I’ve ever seen guys put such good swings on pretty good pitches all night long in big situations than I did tonight,” McHugh said.This rollicking, entertaining all-timer of a series has had controversies, feats of brilliance, extra-inning slugfests and topsy-turvy outcomes — but mostly what it has featured is home runs, 22 of them to be exact by the end of Sunday’s proceedings, setting a new World Series record with at least one more game to go. Fifteen of those homers have either tied the game or put one team ahead.In Sunday night’s thriller, there were three three-run homers in a span of 14 batters, two of which tied the game. There was the greatest pitcher of his generation blowing two big leads and failing to make it out of the fifth inning. There was a go-ahead blast by the probable NL rookie of the year, and an answer by the probable AL most valuable player. There were starters pitching in relief.And that was just the first five innings.By the end of the seventh, when the Astros blitzed the dead-armed remnants of the Dodgers’ overtaxed bullpen for four runs, the game had entered a bizarro realm where literally