I was in Los Angeles on Wednesday night, and I didn’t need to be at Dodger Stadium to know the Dodgers were playing. You could feel it all over the city. Every so often, someone would react to something you couldn’t see, and you’d know something important had happened. Most of the time, the reaction wasn’t a happy one.

L.A. looked like a city with a team in the National League Championship Series. The support was there. But among the people around me, I didn’t pick up much belief that this particular Dodgers team was going to pull it off. That was the strange part. They hadn’t even lost Game 3 yet, but there was already a quiet well, maybe next year feeling hanging over a team that was still four wins away from another World Series.

I know how that sounds. This was a fan base whose team had won the last two championships. I grew up around Boston fans who got used to winning, so I know the signs. A bad inning stops feeling like a crisis and starts feeling like an inconvenience. You still care — maybe a lot. But after watching your team find a way out so many times, the first reaction when it doesn’t can sound less like heartbreak and more like disbelief.

That’s what I heard in L.A. There was disappointment, sure. Frustration, too. But it didn’t sound like a city being gutted by an unexpected loss. It sounded like people who’d watched the first two games in Milwaukee, looked at the team in front of them, and quietly started making peace with the losses before they happened.

The Dodgers Came Into This Series With Everything to Lose

The Dodgers gave Milwaukee every reason to keep thinking that way.

Los Angeles won 100 games this season. Milwaukee won 103, the most in baseball. These weren’t some plucky Brewers who got hot for a week while the defending champions forgot how to play. They were excellent all year, and they’d spent last October watching the Dodgers sweep them out of this exact round. By Thursday night, Milwaukee had returned the sweep, becoming the first team to sweep someone the year after being swept by that same opponent.

Still, losing four games to the best regular-season team in baseball is one thing. Leading in every one of them and not winning any is another. That’s what made this NLCS so miserable from the Dodgers’ side. They kept showing just enough of the team everyone expected to see, then watched Milwaukee take the game right back. It was the first best-of-seven postseason sweep where the losing team held a lead in all four games. There’s a particular kind of exhaustion in that. You don’t even get to say you never had a chance.

The first two games in Milwaukee had already done plenty of damage to the mood. The Dodgers led Game 1 on an Andy Pages RBI single and lost 2–1. In Game 2, they scored four runs but managed only three hits; Milwaukee won 7–4, and their relievers retired the last 15 Los Angeles hitters in order. A series can be 0–2 and still feel close. This one felt like the Dodgers were working way too hard just to end up not being able to get the job done.

That didn’t mean the players had given up. Before Game 3, Mookie Betts said nobody in the clubhouse was panicking. He also knew how much help they needed from the building.

Now it’s our turn. I think Dodger Stadium needs to show up, and we’ve got to show up with them. We’ve got to show up with them to give them something to cheer about so they can give us some energy to keep going.

His point went both ways: Dodger Stadium had to show up, and the Dodgers had to give the crowd something to cheer about.

I keep coming back to that second part. It’s easy to look at a crowd and ask for more noise. But you've got to give them a reason. The Dodgers had spent two games leaving the door open for Milwaukee, then running into a pitching staff that seemed to have an answer for everybody. Fans can make themselves loud. They can’t make a ball fall in, and they can’t make a lead hold up.

Betts understood that. He wanted the team and the city to pull each other along.

Dodger Stadium Had Energy, but Not Much Certainty

There were 50,708 people at Dodger Stadium for Game 3, which is a lot of people by any reasonable standard. It also wasn’t a sellout in a park that holds around 56,000. Thursday’s elimination game drew 49,104. Those numbers deserve a little more context than a shot of an empty section and a joke about Dodgers fans. Both games started at 5 p.m. in a city where getting across town can take forever — literally. I can’t tell you how many empty seats came down to traffic, ticket prices, work, or people deciding they didn’t want to watch another loss. I can tell you the ballpark didn’t have the packed-out feel you’d expect from the defending champions trying to reach a third straight World Series.

For a little while Wednesday night, the crowd gave them exactly what Betts had asked for. Jackson Chourio homered on Blake Snell’s first pitch, which is about as bad a start as you can have in a game you desperately need to win. Then Snell settled in. He struck out nine and retired 18 of 20 hitters during his best stretch of the night. In the bottom of the sixth, Will Smith came up with the bases loaded and drove in two. The Dodgers led 2–1.

Then the building woke up. Around the city, this was the moment when the reactions finally sounded like people had been waiting for permission to believe again.

It should’ve been a turning point. The Dodgers had taken a late lead at home with one of their best pitchers rolling. Win that game and you’re still down 2–1, but at least the series looks different. Milwaukee has to beat you again instead of just waiting for you to run out of time.

But then Roberts sent Snell back out for the seventh. Snell hadn’t recorded an out past the sixth at any point this season. That's a lot to ask of anyone; but if you're going to trust a guy, Snell's the one you hand the ball to in that situation — especially with the way the Dodgers bullpen has been this season.

Then he walked Andrew Vaughn to start the inning. Bauers stayed with him through an 11-pitch at-bat and ended up hitting a two-run homer. Garrett Mitchell homered right after him. Just like that, a 2–1 Dodgers lead became a 4–2 Brewers lead, and the game ended 6–2. Roberts said afterward that he was trying to get three more hitters from Snell. He got three hitters. But they changed the series.

You can argue about the move, and people should. That’s what managers sign up for in October. I also don’t think one decision explains a sweep. The Dodgers still had plenty of time to answer. The bigger problem was that almost every chance L.A. got in this series came with the feeling that they had to be perfect. Milwaukee could take a punch and come right back. The Dodgers landed one and seemed surprised to even have that.

By Wednesday night, I understood why the people around me sounded like they were already talking about next season. The Dodgers had finally gotten themselves into the moment they needed, and it lasted less than an inning. That’s a tough thing to watch when you know what this roster can do.

Ohtani’s Homer Gave Everyone One Last Reason to Believe

Game 4 almost made those fans look foolish for giving in so early.

Roberts moved Shohei Ohtani back to the leadoff spot for the elimination game, and the move paid off right away. Pages singled home a run in the second, then Ohtani came up with two on and hit a three-run homer off former Dodger Dustin May. It was his first home run since August 18. Just like that, the Dodgers were up 4–0, and for a minute, they looked like themselves again: the stars were doing star things, the crowd was going nuts, and Milwaukee was the team scrambling to keep up.

Ohtani’s reaction told you how much it meant. Roberts later said it was unusual to see that much emotion from him:

The homer was great. Obviously he ended up striking out three times, but it was a big hit, big three-run homer, gave us a big lift. I’ll always trust Shohei. I think he’s the best player on the planet, and he’s not completely healthy. But I just give him a lot of respect for not running from it, still wanting to participate, still wanting to play when he’s not 100 percent.

Milwaukee didn’t need much time to get back in it. Tyler Glasnow retired the first 10 Brewers he faced, then the fourth inning got away from him: a walk, a double, and another double from Bauers that scored two runs. In the fifth, David Hamilton singled home another run. After Glasnow left, the Dodgers’ bullpen couldn’t finish the inning cleanly. Alex Vesia walked Bauers with the bases loaded, bringing in the tying run. Mitchell homered off Tanner Scott in the sixth to put Milwaukee ahead, and Hamilton added a solo shot off Edwin Díaz in the ninth. The Dodgers’ 4–0 lead was gone by the fifth, and they never got it back.

The most frustrating part of Game 4, though, might’ve come after Milwaukee took the lead. Pages opened the seventh with a double and moved to third on a sacrifice bunt. The tying run was 90 feet away. Aaron Ashby struck out Ohtani, then got Betts to ground out. In the eighth, Smith doubled and moved to third on a fielding error. Again, the tying run was 90 feet away. Kyle Tucker hit a shallow fly ball, and Teoscar Hernández struck out.

Ashby got the final nine outs for Milwaukee.

Milwaukee Kept Turning Dodgers Chances Into Their Own Wins

That’s the series in a nutshell. The Dodgers went 4-for-27 with runners in scoring position and left 24 runners on base. Their starters gave up 13 earned runs in 18 innings, which works out to a 6.50 ERA. Milwaukee’s bullpen, on the other hand, posted a 1.33 ERA in this series.

It’s easy to look at the Dodgers and say they looked old. A lot of their important players are in their thirties, and three deep October runs will take something out of any team. But Roberts pushed back on that after Game 4:

I just don't think that in four games that we came up short that age was a factor. What I will say is that those guys, some of the plays that Turang made going to his right, the plays that the outfielders made, that's certainly youth and talent. It wasn't that they were fatigued. We have off days going into series. I just don't think that our age of our ball club reflected this series. We got beat. There's no because we're too old or whatever. Every facet of the game, if you kind of unpack it, we were bested.

The injuries matter, too. Ohtani wasn’t the fully healthy. That's a two-way force the Dodgers had pictured carrying them through October. But it would be unfair to pin all four losses on him, especially after his Game 4 homer gave the Dodgers their biggest jolt of the series. The pitchers didn’t hold leads. The offense wasted too many chances. Milwaukee’s defense took hits away. There isn’t one clean culprit the Dodgers can blame and then move on from.

Maybe that’s why L.A. felt so strange. When a great team has one obvious problem, fans can tell themselves it’ll be fixed tomorrow. When the offense, rotation, bullpen, and late-game decisions all look a little shaky at the same time, “tomorrow” starts sounding a lot more like “eventually.” The two titles soften the blow because nobody can take those away. They also make the standard so high that a 100-win season and a trip to the NLCS can somehow feel disappointing.

I don’t think the people I heard Wednesday had stopped caring about the Dodgers. If they had, I wouldn’t have known the score just from their reactions. I think some of them stopped believing this roster was going to rescue themselves. That’s different.

I grew up hearing that difference in Boston. Winning lets you believe your team can fix anything. It also makes you impatient when the fix doesn’t show up when you think it should.

The Dodgers’ Next Challenge Is Rebuilding Belief

The Brewers had no reason to follow that script. They were baseball’s best regular-season team, and in this NLCS, they kept proving it every time they fell behind. Murphy said the Dodgers’ crowd got loud when Ohtani went deep, even with plenty of empty seats. He thought the homer might’ve woken up a giant.

His team answered anyway. Giving Milwaukee credit doesn’t make L.A.’s disappointment any smaller. It just makes the result easier to understand.

After the final out, the season ended with more questions than anyone could answer in one night. Miguel Rojas announced his retirement. Quite a few players from the NLCS roster have expiring contracts. Whatever the Dodgers build next spring, it won’t just be this October with a better ending tacked on.

That’s why the feeling I had Wednesday has stuck with me more than any empty seat. The city was still paying attention. The people around me were still reacting, still wanting the Dodgers to win, still getting annoyed every time they blew a lead. They’d just started to accept that wanting it — and expecting it — wasn’t going to be enough. Then Game 3 got away. Game 4 gave everyone one last reason to believe, and Milwaukee took that away, too.

The Dodgers have given Los Angeles two titles in two years. Fans can be grateful for both and still be disappointed by how this ended. What I heard Wednesday wasn’t a city turning their back on this team. It was the sound of people who know exactly how good this team can be realizing, a little sooner than they wanted, that they weren’t going to see that version of the Dodgers again this year.

All stats courtesy of MLB.com.

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