There were more veins standing out of Will Smith’s neck than the Dodgers collected hits in the series. Around him, a creature with 50,000 throats roared back at him in a single vowel of joy. Eyes still flashing with rage, Smith made the obligatory doubles gesture, as briefly as possible, before he went back to delivering the coup-de-grâce to his 1-for-25 slump in his mind. It was the team’s first extra-base hit, and first run, in more than nine innings, and it put Los Angeles back on top, 2-1, with Milwaukee’s vaunted bullpen suddenly looking, for the first time, vulnerable.

It wasn’t the story of the game.