The World Series Is Underway

If you blinked, you missed it.

A baseball game – a World Series game, no less – was played from start to finish in less than 2 ½ hours. Two hours, 28 minutes, to be precise. It was the shortest World Series game since 1992, following a season of bloated extravaganzas that averaged nearly three hours and six minutes.

That was probably a good thing, as the temperature Tuesday night at Dodger Stadium was 103 degrees, a record for a World Series game.

The details? The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Houston Astros 3-1 in a tight pitching duel to take a 1-0 lead in the World Series. Game 2 is Wednesday night at 8 p.m. ET on Fox.

The two teams combined for just nine hits and three of them landed in the seats, producing all of the runs. The Astros scored on Alex Bregman’s solo homer in the fourth inning. The Dodgers had scored on Chris Taylor’s home run to lead off the bottom of the first. Justin Turner homered with one on in the sixth for L.A.

Turner has four home runs in this postseason and tied Duke Snider’s team record with 26 RBI.

“He’s that guy you want up there in the big moments,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “He doesn’t scare off.”

Clayton Kershaw, however, stole the show. He has historically found himself in trouble in the seventh inning of postseason games but here he went seven innings and was nearly unhittable. He allowed the Astros the three hits and the one run, but struck out 11 and walked none. Kershaw threw only 83 pitches.

 
 
Post By: Larry Weisman, a longtime sportswriter for USA TODAY, blogs for Twistity.com. Follow him on Twitter @MrLarryWeisman