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Dodgers’ Mookie Betts Had Great Quote on Making Angels Pay for Walking Shohei Ohtani

Betts made the Angels pay.

Josh Wilson

Betts celebrates his go-ahead home run.
Betts celebrates his go-ahead home run. / Jayne Kamin-Oncea-Imagn Images
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The trouble with facing a team like the Los Angeles Dodgers is that they have weapons up and down their lineup. You can delay having to face one or two of their stars, but chances are someone else is going to make you pay for it. Tuesday night, that person was Mookie Betts.

The Dodgers and Los Angeles Angels went to extra innings Tuesday night. With first base open (and Kevin Kiermaier on second base) the Angels opted to walk Shohei Ohtani intentionally. That brought Betts up. He swung at the first pitch—a slider over the middle of the plate—for a home run, putting the Dodgers up in the crosstown rivalry game, 6-2.

Betts was interviewed on-field after the game. He had a great reaction to the Dodgers opting to face him instead of Ohtani, giving a casual reaction to being chosen to pitch to:

"That [display of emotion] doesn't happen often, so I kind of [blacked] out. I just knew they walked Sho' to get to me, and I was like alright. That's kind of what you want," Betts said. "I know Freddie [Freeman is] behind me, so they're not gonna mess around," Betts also explained as far as why he felt he could be aggressive at the plate.

In fairness, the Angels had no good options here. Choosing between pitching to Ohtani or Betts in this scenario is a "pick your poison" kind of scenario. And as Betts said, Freeman gives him protection as well.

That would be all she wrote for the game, as the Angels would go down 1-2-3 in the bottom of the 10th inning. Betts didn't put the Dodgers ahead (offense earlier in the inning pushed the free runner at second in for a 3-2 lead) but did make the lead virtually insurmountable.

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Josh Wilson

JOSH WILSON

Josh Wilson is the news director of the Breaking and Trending News team at Sports Illustrated. Before joining SI in 2024, he worked for FanSided in a variety of roles, most recently as senior managing editor of the brand’s flagship site. He has also served as a general manager of Sportscasting, the sports arm of a start-up sports media company, where he oversaw the site’s editorial and business strategy. Wilson has a bachelor’s degree in mass communications from SUNY Cortland and a master’s in accountancy from the Gies College of Business at the University of Illinois. He loves a good nonfiction book and enjoys learning and practicing Polish. Wilson lives in Chicago but was raised in upstate New York. He spent most of his life in the Northeast and briefly lived in Poland, where he ate an unhealthy amount of pastries for six months.

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