LOS ANGELES (AP) — Fans threw baseballs in the direction of San Diego left fielder Jurickson Profar and then threw trash, causing a long delay before the Padres beat the Los Angeles Dodgers 10-2 Sunday night to even their NL Division Series to bring. game by piece.

Yu Darvish limited the Dodgers’ high-powered offense to one run and three hits over seven innings and Fernando Tatis Jr. went deep twice as the Padres tied the postseason record of six home runs.

David Peralta and Jackson Merrill each hit two-run homers, and a hobbled Xander Bogaerts and Kyle Higashioka had solo shots. At age 21, Merrill became the youngest Padres player with a postseason homer.

“Six of those is a special treat for us,” Merrill said.

The stoppage in the middle of the seventh inning led to a twelve-minute break between throws and was caused by two balls being thrown from the stands towards Profar. He chased one of them, but a security guard got there first. There was trash on the warning track near the Padres bullpen.

“I feel like that’s when it crossed the line, that’s when they started throwing stuff on the field,” Tatis said. “I had the feeling that this shouldn’t happen in a big league game.”

There were constant cheers from the sold-out crowd of 54,119 – the largest at Dodger Stadium this season.

“The bear has been poked for a while. It has been pinned over the last few years, decades,” Merrill said. “We finally have the firepower, we finally have the team to take it to them. They are a good team. I like the way they play. They give us a fight every time. They don’t stop.”

Security rushed the field as Padres manager Mike Shildt and his team huddled in shallow left. They were accompanied by the referee team. Security appeared to be trying to identify potential perpetrators in the crowd.

“We were looking for a higher security presence in the left field corner to make sure that that behavior wouldn’t continue,” crew chief Dan Bellino told a pool reporter, “and to make sure that if someone threw something on the field, on the field they would be immediately identified and removed from the stadium.

The Dodgers did not immediately respond to the question of whether there had been any arrests.

Manny Machado gathered his teammates in the dugout to give them a boost before the game resumed.

The Dodgers have lost four straight Game 2s and seven of their last eight playoff games.

The best-of-five series shifts to San Diego on Tuesday.

Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty hit Tatis with a pitch in the sixth inning, and Profar exchanged words with Dodgers catcher Will Smith.

“There are too many important series to just throw to guys,” Tatis said. “When he hit me, he just gave me more energy. My boys gave me more energy.”

The Dodgers thought they had it accomplished in the bottom of the first inning. Mookie Betts hit a deep catch to the corner and left field umpire Adrian Johnson circled his arm, signaling a home run.

But Profar fought the outstretched arms of fans, reeling the ball in on the fabric of his glove. He barely reacted to his spectacular grab and jumped back as he stared at the astonished fans.

“That was hilarious,” Merrill said of Profar trolling the fans. ‘He’s having fun. He played like a little kid and I love that.”

Later there were verbal exchanges between fans and Profar.

The Dodgers lost first baseman Freddie Freeman, who left after five innings with discomfort in his sprained right ankle. He struckout and flied out in two at bats. Freeman was injured on September 26 and has fought to be healthy enough to make the playoffs.

Just like in Game 1, the Padres took a quick 3-0 lead. Tatis went deep in the first inning off Flaherty and former Dodger Peralta added a two-out shot and two runs in the second.

Darvish struck out three and walked two against his former team. He retired fellow countryman Shohei Ohtani, who struckout and grounded twice against his friend.

“I was trying to see how he reacted to some of the pitches I threw,” Darvish said through an interpreter. “Moreover, I tried to keep him off balance by holding him a little longer. I think it worked quite well.”

Ohtani finished 0 for 4 with another strikeout. Mookie Betts was hitless for the sixth consecutive time.

Pitching not far from where he grew up in Burbank, Flaherty gave up four runs and five hits in 5 1/3 innings, becoming the first Dodgers starter to reach the sixth inning of a postseason game since Max Scherzer in 2021.

Max Muncy homered for the Dodgers in the ninth.

NEXT

RHP Walker Buehler will start for the Dodgers in Game 3 and RHP Michael King will go for the Padres. King was dominant against Atlanta in the NL Wild Card Series, striking out twelve in seven scoreless innings. King faced the Dodgers four times this season, pitching twelve innings of shutout ball in two of the games while getting hit hard in the other two.

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