Dodgers know they need historic comeback to stay alive - ESPN

LOS ANGELES — Will Smith reached second base, yelled into the night sky and pumped his fists as Dodger Stadium began to shake in Wednesday's sixth inning. It seemed like the type of moment that had played out countless times in this ballpark over these past years: the Los Angeles Dodgers breaking through, momentum swinging in their direction, the opponent crumbling in its wake.

Not in this series. Not against that team. Perhaps not this year.

As they did in the first two games of the National League Championship Series, the pesky, hungry, unrelenting Milwaukee Brewers absorbed the Dodgers' punch and hit back harder, turning a one-run deficit in the bottom of the sixth into a two-run lead in the top of the seventh, then rode their dominant bullpen the rest of the way. The result was a 6-2 victory that put the Dodgers in a 3-0 hole in a best-of-seven series and dealt them a sobering reality: To keep alive their hopes of becoming the first NL team to win three straight championships, they will have to make the type of comeback only one team has ever achieved.

«At the beginning of this year, we set out to do something historic,» Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said in the middle of a desolate home clubhouse. «It looks like we're going to have to make a little more history along the way if we want to accomplish that. That's the task ahead of us. We still have the pitching staff to be able to do it. We just have to get some hits.»

Those hits continue to be elusive.

The Dodgers put the leadoff man on in three of their five innings against Brewers left-hander Robert Gasser and never scored. By the time the sixth inning arrived, they were batting .139 with men on base in the NLCS and had accumulated only two hits in 28 at-bats