TORONTO — The fingers of Dodgers catcher Will Smith played upon the keys of the PitchCom device on his right knee like those of a virtuoso pianist playing Johan Sebastian Bach. In and out, up and down, fast and slow, as if weaving multiple melodies within one work, Smith called one of the most beautiful World Series games ever composed because of how well the master on the mound followed his lead. Dodgers righthander Yoshinobu Yamamoto pitched the Brandenburg Concertos of the World Series oeuvre.
It was classical music on a ball field. Yamamoto threw 104 pitches at 19 different speeds with six different pitch types spaced apart as far as 24 mph. He didn’t just beat the hottest lineup of October; he also made the Toronto Blue Jays hitters appear overmatched in a 5–1 victory Saturday that evened the World Series at one throwback win apiece: an old-school contact-heavy win by Toronto in Game 1 and this magnum opus by Yamamoto in Game 2.
