Los Angeles Dodgers manager Dave Roberts called Yu Darvish "the story of the night" on Tuesday, and though he was talking about the right-hander's pitching, everyone else wanted to talk about his big plate appearance.

Darvish got over an awkward start to win his second straight postseason game as the Dodgers downed the Chicago Cubs 6-1 to take a commanding 3-0 lead in their best-of-seven National League Championship Series. The Dodgers are now within one win of their first World Series berth since 1988.

Although Darvish allowed a run in 6-1/3 innings, he wouldn't have gone that far had Roberts elected to pinch hit for him in the top of the sixth with two outs and the bases loaded. Against hard-throwing right-hander Carl Edwards, Jr., Darvish got into an exaggerated crouch and took four straight balls, the last just off the corner, to drive in a run.

"He (Edwards) throws a 95 or 96 mile-per-hour (152 to 155 kilometer-per-hour) fastball and cuts it, so there's no way I'm going to be able to hit him, so I thought my only chance was to draw a walk or get hit by a pitch," Darvish said.

According to mlb.com, Darvish's bases-loaded walk was the first by a pitcher in the postseason since 1977 in Game 3 of the NLCS, and the irony of the inning came when the next batter, leadoff man Chris Taylor, struck out on three pitches to end the inning.

"You know he's not going to swing," Cubs manager Joe Maddon said. "That's part of it. It's like you're in the bullpen, throw it right to the catcher, if you can. Their hardest hitter comes up next and strikes out. But that's the nature of the beast."

"I am certain they told Darvish not to swing, which is a great tactic in that situation. We walk him (Darvish) and strike out (Chris) Tyler. That's called baseball."

Darvish said, however, he was never told not to swing.

"The manager was really conflicted right up until the last moment about whether to use a pinch hitter or not," Darvish said. "So by the time he told me to go hit, there wasn't much time for him to tell me anything."

Roberts said he wasn't counting on Darvish to do anything.

"I just felt that we had a two-run lead, and I felt Yu was throwing the ball really well," Roberts said. "I thought he could continue and go and get us outs. So in that situation, we have Grandy (Curtis Granderson) available, but Edwards has been really tough on left-handed hitters, so to get a base hit, it's not a gimmee at all. To think that I could extend Yu for more than an inning, I thought the value of continuing to get outs and deploy the bullpen later in the game, I thought there was more upside."

"You have to go into that at-bat thinking you're not going to score."

"The story of the night is Yu Darvish. After that first home run he gave up on a cutter that backed up he was dominant. He had rhythm, he had poise. He didn't allow a whole lot of hard contact and we just fed off him tonight."