This is how it happened in the baseball October before this for Dave Roberts and the Dodgers, when they were supposed to be on their way to another World Series: They were ahead of the Nationals, 3-1, in Game 5 of a Division Series in the seventh inning and he didn’t just give the ball to one of his starters, he gave it to Clayton Kershaw -- the greatest Dodger pitcher since Sandy Koufax.

  You know what happened once he did. Kershaw got the last out of the seventh, and then in the eighth, he gave up back-to-back home runs to Anthony Rendon and Juan Soto on consecutive pitches, and two innings later the Dodgers lost the series, and their season.

“It took me six months to recover,” Roberts told me in September.

Now, a year later, it was Game 7 of the National League Championship Series against the Braves. Roberts had made another terrific move, sending up Kiké Hernández to pinch-hit and watching Hernandez tie the game at 3-3 with a home run. This was a night, of course, when Roberts -- who has heard a lot over the past four years about managing moves that didn’t work out for him in October -- did his job as well as a manager can do that kind of job in October.

And in a 3-3 game, Dave Roberts gave the ball to another starting pitcher, a 24-year old named Julio Urías, who’d started 10 games for the Dodgers in the short season, with a record of 3-0. Urias had gotten a win out of the bullpen in the Dodgers' Wild Card Series against the Brewers and another in the NL Division Series against the Padres, had started and gotten a win in Game 3 of the NLCS against the Braves on the night when the Dodgers scored 11 runs in the top of the first.

Seventh inning again. One year later. Roberts gave the ball to the kid the way he’d given it to Kershaw against the Nationals. And the whole world saw what happened next: Three perfect innings, all the way through the bottom of the ninth. There was some thought from all of us watching that Roberts might give the ball to his closer, Kenley Jansen, for the save chance. No chance.

As they say in Hollywood, the kid stayed in the picture.

“Tonight,” Roberts said afterward, “it was [Urias’] moment.”

It was a moment for all of them, in a truly memorable Game 7, one that had everything. There were home runs like Hernandez’s and Cody Bellinger’s shot in the bottom of the 7th -- the one that ultimately won it for the Dodgers, one year after he didn’t hit a single home run or knock in a single run against the Nationals. It had Mookie Betts, the best right fielder of his generation, climbing the right-field wall again, this time to take a home run away from Freddie Freeman, changing another game with his glove and his talent.

And it had Justin Turner somehow starting a crazy double play when the Braves had second and third and nobody out in the fourth and were already leading, 3-2. Nick Markakis hit a ground ball to Turner, who didn’t hesitate and threw home to start a rundown that ended with him laying out to tag Dansby Swanson and then somehow having the presence of mind to get to one knee and throw back to third, where Corey Seager tagged out Austin Riley. There has maybe never been a play in the field like it in postseason history.

The Dodgers needed it. They needed all of it on Sunday night in Arlington, as they finally came all the way back from being down, 0-2 and 3-1, in the NLCS to the Braves to make it to their third World Series in the past four years.

And if Turner hadn’t made that play and Hernandez and Bellinger hadn’t made those swings and Dustin May hadn’t managed to get out of the first having given the Braves only one run, if Urías hadn’t come out of the bullpen to pitch the way Madison Bumgarner did in a Game 7 of the World Series once, you know who would have taken all the blame. Roberts would have.

When I spoke to him right before the postseason began, I asked if he was ready to get back on the roller coaster, and he said, “We all are.”

Even though Bellinger was hitting just .238 at the time, Roberts calmly said, “He’s going to be fine. ... He’s getting his swing right mechanically.”

Then he watched, the way we all did, as Bellinger launched the biggest home run of his career, at least so far, in the seventh off Chris Martin.

With all that, the star of this night for the Dodgers was Urías, who didn’t even turn 24 until two months ago. Now, he is 4-0 in the postseason to go with that 3-0 in the regular season. He has given up just one run in eight postseason innings. And when all the money was on the table, the manager trusted his own judgment and trusted the kid and now the Dodgers get Game 1 against the Rays on Tuesday night.

He was great, Game 7 really was great, Hernandez and Bellinger and Mookie and Turner were great. But so, too, was their manager. The roller coaster turned out to be Game 7 for the Dodgers.

Dave Roberts was right. They were ready for it. All of them.