LOS ANGELES — Years from now this will be one of those games. A night of baseball so distinctive, everyone will remember it.

Every year on Oct. 27 somebody will remind us: On this date X many years ago, Max Muncy hit a walk-off home run ending a game that lasted 18 innings across 7 hours and 20 minutes. Somebody will do an oral history or maybe a 30-for-30 short on ESPN where they recount a night where 18 pitchers threw 561 pitches in game that started on one day and ended on another in every time zone in the continental United States.

The Los Angeles Dodgers’ 3-2 win over the Boston Red Sox in Game 3 of the 2018 World Series was great for history. Great for baseball and great for memories.

But it was bad for the Boston Red Sox.

Maybe catastrophic.

For all of their success, for all of their wins, the Red Sox are battered, bloodied and tired. Every inning that passed, it became clear that Boston was chasing one win, while potentially risking two losses, doubling down on Game 3, while letting Game 4 be Saturday night’s problem. Getting a 3-0 series lead would have all but sealed a championship, but they sacrificed an awful lot trying to get it.

Nathan Eovaldi’s effort was incredibly gutsy by any baseball standard and for 96 pitches in relief he was outstanding. But it’s hard to know when a guy with two Tommy John surgeries in his past will be capable of pitching again and he’d been the team’s best postseason starter.

Chris Sale hasn’t been himself on four days rest in recent starts. That combined with his health issues down the stretch make starting him Saturday questionable.

Spending a roster spot on third catcher/pinch hitter Blake Swihart instead of an extra arm looks more and more second-guessable.

The Red Sox have a 2-1 series lead, but the Dodgers are much better rested going into Game 4. Barring heroics from Eduardo Rodriguez or Drew Pomeranz, their most rested pitchers, they’ll almost certainly need to ask somebody to overextend themselves again. It’s hard to win that way. They need a rainout in a city that never has them.

Boston’s best chance is for their outstanding lineup to bash its way past the Dodgers. Their pitchers don’t have to be as fine in an 8-7 game. It’ll be interesting to see if Alex Cora sets his lineup with that approach.

If the Red Sox can put this behind them and still win the series, then this game is a footnote, a quirky piece of history that 53,114 people will be able to brag that they were at Dodger Stadium for. They’ll remember both teams running out of position players. Eduardo Nunez crashing into everything, making plays while hobbling around, Clayton Kershaw pinch-hitting.

But if it’s a turning point that leads to the Dodgers winning the World Series, Max Muncy will join Kirk Gibson in Dodger lore and Aaron Boone in Boston infamy.

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