SIMMONS: Were Blue Jays robbed? ‘The ball wasn’t lodged in the fence. I saw it.’

Get the latest from Steve Simmons straight to your inbox

He closes his eyes, the same way he did when he was a kid growing up as just outside of Philadelphia.

He used to walk to the park near his house, see if he could hit the ball over the fence, see if he could win the World Series one more time in his mind. Always in Game 7. That dream never changes.

It’s the way kids play in the purest form of baseball or any other sport.

Nobody ever dreams of winning hits in Games 4 or 5 or 6. It is always Game 7. The game of pure jubilation and devastating heartbreak. The game that’s celebrated and remembered forever when you win and dealt for much of your life when you do not.

And here are the Toronto Blue Jays, never expected to be in the World Series, never expected to get to Game 7 of their dreams or your dreams — never expected to be even after six games with the team that’s ruining baseball, the Los Angeles Dodgers, ready to play Game 7 on Saturday night after a Game 6 that defies logic, explanation and replay which in some ways defines this crazy and still unexpected Blue Jays season.

“This is what we do,” said Myles Straw, after all that noise and hysteria of the ninth inning that needed replay and further replay to completely explain how it was the Blue Jays lost 3-1 to the Dodgers.

And still we can’t explain it in absolutes.

The Jays went to the bottom of ninth inning trailing by two runs and not looking like they had any chance to come back against the Dodgers’ closer, Roki Sasaki. Then the inning began.

And they got to Sasaki. And they almost eliminated the Dodgers in the process.

It is a half inning needing to be watched again and again. In the bottom of ninth, Jays trailing by two runs, Alejandro Kirk led off and was hit by a pitch. Straw came in to run for him. The new dad, Addison Barger, then doubled to left field, his second double of the night.

That should have scored Straw. Except for one problem. Barger’s double didn’t just kiss the left field wall, it got stuck in the bottom of the wall for what seemed like a split second. The ball apparently lodged in the wall, for long enough for Dodgers’ outfielder Justin Dean to raise his arm and alert the umpire that the ball wasn’t playable.

By then Straw had scored. Or thought he scored.

The officials ruled — with the help of instant replay — that Straw would go back to third base and Barger would stay at second.

The Jays remained down two runs with two runners in scoring position and nobody out.

Yet from the Blue Jays dugout, where the veteran Isiah Kiner-Falefa was watching, he didn’t think the ball properly lodged in the wall..

“It wasn’t lodged in the wall,” said Kiner-Falefa. “I saw it. He got lucky they called it his way. You think of a tennis being stuck in a fence. It doesn’t move. It just sits there. That’s not what happened here. That ball was moving.

“Really, he got the call. But I don’t know if he deserved it.”

Then the fighting back Blue Jays unfortunately tripped over themselves. Straw was back on third base. Barger was on second when Andres Gimenez dripped a line drive to left field.

It almost dropped in. Had it not been caught by Kike Hernandez, the Jays would have tied the game in the bottom of the ninth inning, might have been in position to win the game with George Springer coming to the plate.

It could have been his own kind of Joe Carter win the World Series moment.

Except the game ended with Barger being doubled off second base after the line drive was caught on the run. That needed replay too. Everything these days needs replay.

The Blue Jays and Dodgers were then on to Game 7. A best of one championship. The first time a Game 7 in the World Series will be played in six years.

And how weird is this? The last time there was a Game 7, Max Scherzer was the starting pitcher for Washington and George Springer was starting in the Houston outfield.

So now on Saturday night, Scherzer will start for the Blue Jays in an all hands on deck kind of pitching night and Springer will play alongside Scherzer as the Jays’ designated hitter.

In Game 7. The game of both dreams and anguish. The games we always played in our driveways, and our backyards and in the park not far from our homes. We all did it in our minds and with our friends.

And like Davis Schneider, sometimes we still dream about it as professionals. We never really stop having those sporting dreams.

This game is everything for Scherzer, the 41-year-old whose season like the Blue Jays defies logic and explanation. We already witnessed enough of that in Game 6, with a brilliant pitching duel between Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Kevin Gausman, with the Jays losing while giving up just four hits, while starting the ninth with no outs and runners on second and third, with eyes closed and an entire Rogers Centre wishing for the best.

It’s time for Game 7 now. The Blue Jays won two World Series before without playing a seventh game. This is a different team with a different story to tell and a final chapter still to be written on Saturday night.

One game to decide everything. One game for more magic to happen.