One out from a no-no somehow too much to ask

Yamamoto tosses 8 2/3 innings of no-hit ball, then Dodgers implode in epic walk-off loss.

- BY JACK HARRIS

YOSHINOBU YAMAMOTO exits after giving up a home run to Jackson Holliday that broke up the right-hander's no-hitter Saturday.

From the verge of history, to the depths of horror.

The kind of unimaginable nightmare even these slumping Dodgers could have never possibly fathomed.

One minute, Yoshinobu Yamamoto was on the precipice of a no-hitter, needing just one more out to put his name in the history books. The next, orange Baltimore Orioles jerseys were sprinting around the bases; a night destined for a storybook ending, instead going so wrong, so fast.

"It's hard to recount a game like this, where you feel like there's so many things where you can get a little bit of momentum, build off a great outing by Yoshinobu, and take that into tomorrow," manager Dave Roberts said.

"And then, obviously, it completely flipped."

Indeed, entering the ninth inning at Camden Yards on Saturday night, the outcome of the game never appeared to be in doubt.

The Dodgers were leading by three runs. The last-place Orioles had hardly threatened all evening. And the only real question was whether Yamamoto would complete the 24th no-hitter in the franchise's illustrious history.

He couldn't, giving up a wall-scrapping home run to Jackson Holliday.

Still, the somber mood around the team — which had lost four straight games, six out of seven and was nine games under 500 going back to July 4 — had finally seemed like it was starting to lift.

At that point, all the Dodgers needed was simple.

"One flippin' out," as reliever Blake Treinen bluntly put it.

The out, however, would never come. The victory, somehow, wouldn't be sealed. In one of the most stunning finishes you could ever script, the Dodgers collapsed in a sequence almost impossible to comprehend.

They didn't just lose 4-3 to the Orioles.

They sent their already spiraling season to a new, and even more painful, nadir.