LOS ANGELES — Now it's a series.
Now, the home-field advantage flips. Now, the pressure shifts. Now, an intriguing whiff of possibility lingers in the air. Now, things get edge-of-seat interesting.
The Padres macheted through Hall-bound pitcher Clayton Kershaw, Dodgers home runs in each of the first three innings, a see-sawing stretch of lead-tied-trailing-leading-tied again before the dawn of the fourth inning Wednesday to win wild, critical Game 2 of the NL Division Series 5-3 at Dodger Stadium.
Instead of digging out of a hole the size of Lake Baikal, the Padres evened things with two of potentially three games set for what is guaranteed to be an electrified Petco Park.
"Going 1-1, going back home, so that's huge," third baseman Manny Machado said. "It's playoff baseball. … You've got to be locked in. It's exciting."
The Padres won because they apparently refused to consider losing.
The Dodgers did Dodger things from the start, with Freddie Freeman homering to center in the first inning, Max Muncy clearing the right-field fence in the second and Trea Turner finishing off the trifecta by going to left in the third.
When the Padres scored, starting with Machado's 381-foot moonshot to left off Kershaw in the first, the Dodgers answered. When the Dodgers scored, the Padres did the same.
Machado began the fireworks by reminding the 53,122 fidgeting in seats of his big-bat reputation against Kershaw. Though Machado had hit .257 against the Dodgers' mainstay in 35 career at-bats, he'd homered three times with a .514 slugging percentage — fifth all time among those with at least that many at-bats.
When the Dodgers pushed in front 2-1, Machado cranked an RBI double to knot things up. Two hitters later, Jake Cronenworth's RBI groundout regained the lead.
When Turner mashed a slider 400 feet to left off Padres starter Yu Darvish on the first pitch of the third inning, he briefly froze to watch it like a statue with his bat high into the follow through. The pose signaled it was long gone, without a doubt. It did nothing, though, to foreshadow the barrage of highlights still to come.
As a friend texted in the bottom of the sixth, "This game is on drugs."
Dramamine, maybe.
Turner booted a potential double-play ball at shortstop in the top of the sixth. Cronenworth, the Padres' sure-handed second baseman, did the same in the bottom of the inning on Will Smith's grounder, even though it somehow was ruled a hit.
When Muncy followed with a single off the wall, it seemed certain a trademark Dodgers' throat punch was waiting in the on-deck circle. The Padres, though, turned a crowd-silencing 4-6-3 double play to match the momentum-changing version the Dodgers uncorked in Game 1.
The Dodgers raised a massive threat with a Cody Bellinger single and Mookie Betts double one out into the seventh before walking away with nothing. In the top of the eighth, Cronenworth joined the home run derby with a shot to right to double the Padres lead to 5-3.
It felt like the heyday of boxing's middleweight division, when Marvin Hagler, Sugar Ray Leonard, Roberto Duran and Thomas Hearns pummeled each other silly with no consideration of stepping any direction other than forward.
Padres manager Bob Melvin sifted through the minuscule margins in a series like this, against a team like that.
"It was a back-and-forth game. There was a lot of drama," Melvin said. "We take a lead. All of a sudden, they come right back. It seemed like it went back and forth the entire game. ... It's probably as back and forth a game as you are going to see."
When someone says the game had it all, that included goose-chasing delay in the bottom of the eighth as late-game drama stewed on national TV.
The bird established residence on the grass in shallow right-center near Cronenworth. Grounds crew workers rushed to corral the animal, which relocated near the Dodgers' on-deck circle, then near third base before being caught.
Just part of the Game 2 lunacy.
"That was pretty gnarly there, huh?," Machado said. "... I guess that was good luck for us."
In the ninth, Freeman roped a two-out double to the wall in right off Padres closer Josh Hader. The count climbed full to Smith, the next hiter, who made solid contact on a fly ball. Right fielder Juan Soto caught the deep, well-hit drive to mute the Dodger Stadium crowd.
"You have two out, nobody on in the ninth, and Freeman hits an 0-2 pitch that's up around his chin that I don't know how he even gets to," Melvin said. "Then all of a sudden, you are one pitch away from being in trouble again."
The Padres knew they would need to defy long adds and the faint beliefs of others to stave off a loss that would have felt fatal. Falling twice in Los Angeles would have meant a three-game sweep of the Dodgers to move on, including an NLCS ticket puncher at rowdy and rambunctious Chavez Ravine.
ESPN.com's pregame matchup predictor gave the visitors just a 27.4 percent chance of winning, even with Darvish, their ace, toeing the mound.
Then again, nobody was picking them to survive the Mets in New York, either.
Now it's a series.
