Dodgers: AJ Pollock’s Big Home Run Melts Away the Tension in Los Angeles

The Dodgers desperately needed a win on Friday night. Following a series sweep in San Diego, they returned home only to be no-hit by the Cubs on Thursday night. Things were starting to look a little bleak. 

It’s obviously a long season, but fans have come to expect much more out of the Dodgers over the years. They turned to Tony Gonsolin to hopefully keep them in the game. For his part, Tony had a very nice game and tossed 4 innings allowing just 1 run. 

But the Dodgers found themselves tied late in the game. Then AJ Pollock stepped up to the plate in the 8th inning and launched a ball over Joc Pederson’s head in left to give them the lead for good. Dave Roberts said himself that there was a collective “big exhale” in the dugout after that. 

When you’re in the middle of a losing streak, you’re at home, you feel the energy, the crowd’s waiting for us to do something … We’re trying to do everything we can to win a baseball game, and that AJ at-bat, we needed. You could just feel it from the dugout. Forty-nine thousand people were on their feet and it was a lot of fun. 

It’s not often that a regular-season game in June feels like a must-win. But with what the Dodgers have gone through over the last week, Friday’s win was huge. Pollock talked about the clubhouse atmosphere coming off of being no-hit. From his perspective, they were locked in and ready to go. 

Honestly, the clubhouse was good tonight. What are you going to do? Stuff like that happens. It was a tough series in San Diego, we didn’t play great, but you know, that happens, too. It was a rough one yesterday but we were ready to go today.

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Maybe Pollock’s home run was a turning point, maybe it wasn’t. But it certainly was a big moment in a game that felt like the Dodgers really needed. On to the next one. 

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