The one play that left the Dodgers fuming in their pivotal loss to the Cubs

LOS ANGELES — There were three minutes between the final out of the game and when Adrian Gonzalez tapped the “send” button.

Gonzalez marched off the field, through the bowels of Dodger Stadium, into his team’s clubhouse. He immediately grabbed his phone and made it clear he was still fuming about a play that happened three hours earlier.

“Somehow this is an out,” Gonzalez tweet said, with a picture attached of the second-inning play where he was ruled out despite his contention that his hand beat the tag. “Take series lead tomorrow. Got to do this. Us against the world.”

His Dodgers had lost 10-2 to the Chicago Cubs in Game 4. That tied the series 2-2, guaranteeing it goes back to Chicago. In other parts of this stadium, they were talking about how the Cubs’ bats had awoken. How they broke a 21-inning scoreless streak and erupted for 10 runs. How Anthony Rizzo and Addison Russell, both riding tough slumps, shrugged them off with homers and multi-hit games.

In the Dodgers clubhouse, they were still talking about the tag and the replay and the ruling that they swear was wrong.

“It should be what did you see: safe or out?” Gonzalez said, focusing on the idea that the replay officials didn’t see enough to overturn the call on the field. “They didn’t say I was out. They said there not enough evidence. It’s not a trial. Evidence should not be involved.”

“It’s pretty embarrassing,” said outfield Joc Pederson, whose locker is next door.

With two outs and Gonzalez on second, Andrew Toles singled to right. Dodgers third-base coach Chris Woodward made the aggressive call to send Gonzalez. With pitcher Julio Urias on deck, it’s hard to second-guess that. Jason Heyward nailed the throw. Willson Contreras reached for the tag. Gonzalez dove and swiped his hand to his left.

The call on the field was out, but Gonzalez didn’t believe it for a second. He pointed and yelled. It went to the replay review booth in New York City and Dodger Stadium broke out in a chant. “He was safe. He was safe. He was safe.” The replay officials didn’t agree.

Out. No run. Inning over. Still 0-0.

Gonzalez wore his contempt through three more hours of baseball, including a four-run Cubs fourth-inning, a five-run sixth and four Dodgers errors. Those weren’t good things, but this play at the plate, he couldn’t let it go. It gnawed at him.

His locker is all the way at the end of the Dodgers’ clubhouse. The furthest one. Even more time to stew. When he got there, he dug out his phone and did what so many other people have done in a moment of anger — let it out in a tweet.

When the flock of reporters got to him, Gonzalez still had his phone in his hand. He calmly — and repeatedly — contended that the entire game turned on that one play, not the Cubs homers or the sloppy fly out to center field that turned into two Cubs runs or Rizzo’s three hits.

The play at the plate, he said, was the first domino that set the Dodgers tumbling to defeat.

“It changes everything,” he said.

“One hundred percent different game,” he said a few minutes later.

“I think the game would have been a completely different game,” he said again, to an even bigger crowd.

Two other umpires on the field, Gonzalez recounted, said he looked safe from what they could see on the jumbotron. And, no, he hadn’t forgotten that, even after all the things that followed the play: seven of the roughest innings the Dodgers played this season.

“We take the lead right there,” Gonzalez said. “And we could easily put them in a backs-against-the-wall situation. Because of that, they got momentum and they were able to score some runs.”

Some runs is an understatement. The Cubs tied the Toronto Blue Jays’ ALDS Game 1 mark for the most runs scored in a game this postseason. They’d only scored 25 runs in seven games before Wednesday night. This was their breakout.

If there’s one compliment you can give this 2016 version of the Dodgers — with their history-making list of injuries and their bruised pitching staff — it’s that they’ve played better with a chip on their shoulder.

When their ace Clayton Kershaw went on the disabled list with a back injury and everyone wrote off their season, they thundered out of a seven-game hole and won the division. Could this be the chip on their postseason shoulder? Or is it just sour grapes?

“That call at home plate gave them life,” he said. “It was a big momentum shift for them. Now we just gotta take the momentum back tomorrow.”

And if they do, we might be looking back one day at the angry tweet that changed the momentum of the 2016 NLCS.

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Mike Oz is the editor of Big League Stew on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at mikeozstew@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter! Follow @MikeOz