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It was Sandy Koufax, one of baseball’s biggest legends who has authored his fair share of iconic performances in the Fall Classic. The 89-year-old Hall of Famer, who stayed for the duration of the six-hour, 39-minute contest, was there to congratulate Klein on a World Series outing that has quickly taken on a legend of its own.

Koufax’s gesture gave him a sense of the magnitude of what he had done.

“Getting to meet Sandy after the game was, I mean, kind of surreal,” Klein said on Tuesday. “He’s obviously a legend, a Dodger legend, baseball legend, and just getting to meet him and shake his hand just kind of put it all into perspective.”

Koufax was far from the only voice in an outpouring of praise for Klein around the baseball world. When the dust settled and he was able to sneak a peek at his phone on Monday, he said he had around 500 text messages waiting — and by the time he got through all of those, another 500 had popped up.

It struck Klein how baseball legends — including CC Sabathia, who called him an “October hero” in a social media post — have been among the prominent voices lauding his gutsy performance.

“Seeing that was kind of crazy,” Klein said, “because you grow up watching these guys, and now they’re watching you and acknowledging it.”

Just as special has been the support he has received from those he grew up around in his hometown of Bloomington, Ind. Klein said just about every coach he’s ever had, from college to T-ball, has reached out. He got word that his middle school even put up a photo of him from Game 3 in the hallway.

Klein’s family missed out on seeing his statement performance in person, but they will be at Dodger Stadium for Game 4. Klein is looking forward to spending some time with them as he continues to process everything that happened in the past 24 hours — without the pressure of needing to get ready for a game later, as he should be unavailable.

Well, unless the Dodgers need him. One day after tossing four innings, Klein put on a brave face and said he could be good to take on some more in Game 4.

“As many as they need,” Klein said. “Hopefully zero.”

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  Alden GonzalezOct 10, 2025, 08:14 PM ET

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  ESPN baseball reporter. Covered the L.A. Rams for ESPN from 2016 to 2018 and the L.A. Angels for MLB.com from 2012 to 2016.

Future Hall of Fame first baseman Albert Pujols met with Los Angeles Angels general manager Perry Minasian in St. Louis about the team’s managerial vacancy Thursday night, a source familiar with the process told ESPN on Friday, confirming an initial report by The Athletic.

A formal offer has not been made, sources cautioned, though Pujols has been considered a top candidate since the Angels declined the 2026 option on manager Ron Washington’s contract last week.

Pujols, 45, has expressed strong interest in managing at the big league level for years and led a Dominican winter ball team, the Leones del Escogido, to a championship in January. Pujols was previously named manager for his native Dominican Republic in next year’s World Baseball Classic, though he would likely rescind that role if he lands a big league job this offseason.

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The Angels are one of six teams looking for new managers. Other clubs have inquired about Pujols, though the Angels are the only team he has formally met about managing thus far, according to a source.

Pujols signed a 10-year, $240 million contract with the Angels in December 2011 that included a 10-year, $10 million personal-services contract that kicked in after he retired. What becomes of that deal would likely be part of any financial negotiations that would inevitably take place with the Angels.

Pujols has been a special guest instructor at Angels spring training each of the past three years and is considered a prime candidate by both Minasian, who held him in high regard even after releasing him in May 2021, and Angels owner Arte Moreno.

One of the greatest players of the 2000s, Pujols won three MVPs and two World Series championships in a 22-year career that included 703 home runs, 2,218 RBIs and 3,384 hits. His best years came in St. Louis, but the Angels could give him his first shot to manage.

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NEW YORK — Never were the questions of Aaron Judge’s fitness for October particularly fair, but that’s life for the biggest man in the biggest city whose biggest failures had come at the biggest times. The burden of greatness is heavy. The burden of greatness in New York is planetary. And for those unleashing screeds on Judge’s postseasons — on hot take shows and sports-talk radio and in bars and at family dinners and everywhere, really, that anyone talks about the Yankees — it was never about whether they were fair. After all, his performances had been undeniably foul.

Judge never paid any of this any mind because he does not wire himself to do so. He cares about winning. He cares about success. He cares more than anyone who criticizes him, mocks him, derides him, leans into his past performances as if they’re predictive of an unknowable future. Judge always separated those struggles, not just because he needed to but because it is how he lives, purposely boring and boringly purposeful. He believed the moment would present itself and he would meet it. And why wouldn’t he think that? Every other endeavor in his baseball life had treated him that way.

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Regardless of how the American League Division Series between the Yankees and Toronto Blue Jays breaks, what Judge did Tuesday night was the sort of thing that should put to rest questions about his October aptitude. It won’t, because it never could, but the wide-eyed, wonderstruck, childlike gawking of everyone in the Yankees’ clubhouse told the story of Tuesday night’s season-saving 9-6 victory against the Blue Jays in which Judge left jaws agape.

Poor Louis Varland. The right-handed reliever entered in the fourth inning to protect the Blue Jays’ 6-3 advantage in a game that could have clinched their spot in the AL Championship Series. He fooled Judge on a 90 mph curveball and then blew a 100 mph fastball by him and then threw another fastball at 100, up and in. Like, really in. Like, 5.9 inches off the inner corner of the plate, at triple digits, with tremendous carry, an absolute nightmare of a pitch for any hitter at any time in the game’s history to touch, let alone punish.

Nearly 400 feet later, when the ball banged off the left-field foul pole — the one place in Judge’s world where something foul is indeed fair — no one on the field could believe it. The absurdity of it all — manipulating his 6-foot-7, 282-pound body to so thoroughly alter his standard bat path, turn on 100 and keep it fair — was not lost on Varland, the Yankees who kept watching replays of the swing in the dugout, or the 47,399 at Yankee Stadium who bore witness.

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“He made a really good pitch look really bad,” Varland said.

All postseason, Judge has been doing that. His 11 playoff hits lead MLB. For all of the ugliness of striking out with the bases loaded in Game 1 of this ALDS, his at-bats have been competitive all October. What he did to Varland was the culmination, precisely what the Yankees needed to see another day.

“You could feel it like in your bones,” Yankees reliever Tim Hill said. “It was crazy. It was amazing. I mean, just the pitch that he hit. All that. I’m sure my guy over there on the other side is questioning everything.”

Yes, pitching to Aaron Judge is the sort of thing of which existential crises are made. Before Tuesday, he had never hit a pitch 100 mph or faster for a home run. He hit 53 home runs this season — and none on a pitch outside the rulebook strike zone. Before Tuesday, the Blue Jays were 39-0 this season in games during which they led by at least five runs, too.

It’s impossible to overstate how out of character this was for Judge. He prides himself on good swing decisions because he knows how important they are. On pitches in the strike zone this season, Judge batted .400, 40 points higher than the next-best hitter. He slugged .867, 115 points higher than Shohei Ohtani. In his 214 plate appearances this year that ended on pitches outside of the rulebook zone, Judge batted .109 and drove in one run. All year. He didn’t have a single extra-base hit on such pitches.

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One of the biggest home runs in the career of a two-time MVP favored to win a third this year was on something he never does. And if a willingness to exit his comfort zone and in the process do something that few in the history of baseball would be physically capable of doing doesn’t show that Judge isn’t just capable of success in October but destined for it, well, nothing would. And that’s fine with him. He knows emotion is the fuel that feeds the prognostications of inevitable letdown, not consistency or logic.

“I get yelled at for swinging at them out of the zone, but now I’m getting praised for it,” Judge said. “It’s a game. You’ve got to go out there and play. I don’t care what the numbers say or where something was at. I’m just up there trying to put a good swing on a good pitch, and it looked good to me.”

Inside the Yankees’ clubhouse, they’ve been yearning for Judge to have a game like this, to further validate their unflinching belief in him. The past is indisputable. Judge’s postseason OPS is more than 250 points lower than during the regular season. The Yankees haven’t won a championship during his 10 years in the big leagues. It’s real, and it’s regrettable, and it’s part of his legacy. It is also not the ink with which the future is written, which is why Aaron Boone, the Yankees’ manager with whom Judge is extremely close, said: “I don’t worry about Aaron and his state, even understanding all the outside noise.”

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From Boone’s perch atop the dugout, he had the perfect view of the left-field foul pole. As the ball carried through the night, Judge stood near home plate. He didn’t pull a Carlton Fisk, trying to wave it fair. He just waited for it to land.

And when it did, helping raise his batting average this postseason to .500 and his OPS to 1.304 — nearly 300 points better than his career regular-season OPS, for the record — Judge uncorked a mini-bat flip and started his jog around the bases. When he got back to the dugout, teammates lined up and greeted him with a full high-five line.

“He’s the real deal, and as beloved a player as I’ve ever been around by his teammates,” Boone said. “They all admire him, look up to him, respect him, want his approval, and that’s just a credit to who Aaron is and how he goes about things.”

After slapping the last hand, Judge took one more step toward the end of the dugout. There awaited a television camera. Judge looked at it, pointed and turned around. He then pirouetted back and gave the audience one more stare. This was not an accident. Nothing Judge does is. It was a message, a reminder, a siren for everyone that didn’t believe.

The Yankees were still alive. And as long as that’s the case, he plans on carrying them. Even in October.

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Seattle Mariners star Cal Raleigh met up with a fan who went viral after catching his 61st home run on Tuesday.

Following the Mariners’ win over the Detroit Tigers, the catcher met the fan who wore a shirt that said “Dump 61 Here.” The fan offered to give the ball back to Raleigh, but he told him to keep it. Raleigh also gave him a signed ball and bat.

Raleigh’s 61st home run this year came on the road in Detroit, so the fact that it ended up in the hands of a Mariners fan—let alone one wearing a “Dump 61 Here” shirt—seems like something out of a movie.

After catching the home run, the fan switched to a shirt that read, “Dump 62 Here,” but he wasn’t quite lucky enough to catch another home run from Raleigh.

Raleigh is coming off a historic regular season, hitting the most home runs (60) and the third-most RBI (125) while leading the Mariners to the postseason. He broke the single-season home run records for primary catchers and switch hitters and set a new Mariners franchise record, surpassing Ken Griffey’s 57.

Seattle is hoping to ride the MVP play of Raleigh into a deep postseason run. The Mariners already won their first AL West title since 2001, and they’re now just a win away from advancing to the American League Championship Series for the first time since 2001, when they came up short against the New York Yankees.

They’ll look to close the series out on the road on Wednesday, and they might want to have the fan from Tuesday night’s game there for good luck.

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The fan who caught Seattle Mariners superstar catcher Cal Raleigh’s 60th home run ball and gave it to a child was rewarded for his generosity on Thursday in the form of getting to meet Raleigh before the Mariners’ game against the Colorado Rockies.

Ahead of Seattle’s 6-2 win over Colorado on Thursday, Raleigh took photos with the fan and his family, and he gifted the fan a personalized, autographed bat:

According to Andrew Destin of the Associated Press, Raleigh also gave the fan two autographed baseballs, which he subsequently gave to his sons.

The fan, known only by his first name Glenn, caught Raleigh’s historic home run ball during Wednesday’s 9-2 win against the Rockies, and he handed it to a young boy who was nearby.

Per Destin, Mariners staff escorted the boy and his father away from their seats to get the ball authenticated, and the boy traded the ball for a Raleigh autographed bat and the chance to watch batting practice on the field.

Raleigh hit a pair of homers during Wednesday’s game, and the second one during the eighth inning cemented his place in baseball history.

He became the seventh different player to ever hit 60 or more home runs in a season, joining Babe Ruth, Roger Maris, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa, Barry Bonds and Aaron Judge.

Raleigh is also the first switch hitter and the first player who is primarily a catcher to hit 60 homers in a single season.

With three games remaining in the regular season for the M’s, Raleigh still has a chance to tie or break the American League single-season home run record.

Judge, who stars for the New York Yankees and is in the midst of a nip-and-tuck AL MVP race with Raleigh, set the record in 2022 by hitting 62 home runs, which broke the record of 61 set by Maris in 1961.

Raleigh and the Mariners start a season-ending, three-game set against the Los Angeles Dodgers on Friday night, with Raleigh needing two homers to tie or three to surpass Judge’s mark.

The Mariners’ season won’t end there, though, as they have clinched their first AL West title since 2001 and will make only their second playoff appearance since 2001 as a result.

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Three decades ago, Arsenal’s North Bank was famously replaced by a giant mural for a full season during redevelopment work…