Here is the bottom line for the Yankees and the Mets and their fans now that the greatest World Series any of us will ever see just ended with the greatest Game 7 there has ever been, and, yeah, that the includes Bill Mazeroski walking off the Yankees in the 1960 World Series:
You may hate the Dodgers.
But you ought to love who they are.
You ought to love who they are and what they just did, even with all the big stars and even with the biggest baseball payroll. You ought to love the way they play the game and the way the team has been assembled and the way it’s managed and general managed, because they do that better than everybody else, too.
And everybody ought to respect the way they came back from being two match points down in Games 6 and 7 – same as they were down two match points against the Padres in their division series last year – and won Game 7 the way they did. That means a Game 7 in which they led for – what? – about 15 minutes in real time.
Of course the Yankees and Mets spend money. The Dodgers just spend theirs better. The Yankees and Mets have their stars, too. But guess what? The Yankees had three former MVP’s in the lineup this season – Aaron Judge, Cody Bellinger, Paul Goldschmidt – and a former Cy Young winner, Gerrit Cole, on the sidelines. The Mets had Juan Soto and Francisco Lindor and Pete Alonso, one of the home run stars of baseball from the time he was a rookie.
But it is the Dodgers’ tars who ended up winning it all, again: former MVPs Shohei Ohtani and Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman; Yoshinobu Yamamoto (who had a Japanese player not named Ohtani being MVP of the Series on their Bingo cards?); and even Clayton Kershaw (another former MVP) on his way out the door.
The Dodgers do pony up the dough year after year. Our Yankees have been throwing crazy money around for a long time and have won one World Series in 25 years. The Dodgers just won their third in the last six.
Did the Dodgers figure out a way to game the system by deferring so much of Ohtani’s $700 million. They did. It just means they have better accountants, too. Did the Dodgers save themselves with home runs in Game 7? They did. One from Max Muncy, another one from Miguel Rojas as Rojas joined the list of unlikely World Series home run guys, finally Will Smith’s shot over the leftfield wall in the top of the 11th. But they’re more than just home runs the way the Yankees so rarely are.
The Dodgers also beat the Blue Jays with defense. There was Rojas – whom Dave Roberts had put in at second base the night before – throwing out Isiah Kiner-Falefa to keep the Dodgers in the World Series in the bottom of the 9th on Saturday night. Right after that came one of the most memorable and important outfield moments in World Series history:
Enrique Hernandez and Andy Pages both chasing down the ball that Ernie Clement had just hit to deep-left center. Pages ended up catching that ball on the backhand after running Hernandez over. So twice the Dodgers have saved themselves with defense in what could have been the bottom of their season. And you know why Pages was out there? Because Dave Roberts had replaced Tommy Edman with him a few minutes earlier, on the occasion of Roberts having one of the best managing nights anybody ever had in a deciding World Series game.
When that play was over, Kike’ Hernandez was face down out there near the outfield wall. But it wasn’t because he was hurt. It was because he thought that because of the collision, the ball hadn’t been caught, and their team had just lost the World Series. When Pages told him he’d caught the ball, Kike’ Hernandez jumped up and yelled “Let’s go!”
One more time, a great champion had showed it could take a punch and get back up.
Maybe you think there have been better Game 7’s. I say that none of the others ever had more than this one, even before Yamamoto came out of the bullpen to finish Game 7 after starting Game 6 the night before, same as Randy Johnson did against the Yankees in ’01. You better believe Johnson was something to see that weekend. But he pitched 1.1 innings that night in Phoenix. Yamamoto pitched three. New York had its shot at Yamamoto when he left Japan. The Dodgers ended up with him. When the Dodgers identify who they want, they don’t get outbid, and weren’t with the guy who became the storied MVP of this World Series.
But it really isn’t just their stars. It’s a guy like Kike’ Hernandez, made for October. It’s Pages, and Tommy Edman, and Muncy. When that ball got stuck at the base of the outfield wall on Friday night, both Justin Dean and Hernandez knew that Dean couldn’t touch it, because if he did it was no longer a dead ball, and at least one run would have scored there.
Right after that, Hernandez was flying in from left and making that running catch, starting the 7-4 double play that ended Game 6. The Dodgers don’t just beat you in all ways, they don’t beat themselves when the money is on the table. Before the Series started I asked Dave Roberts about the grinders on his team and he said this:
“We wouldn’t be here without them.”
In the end, Roberts’ Dodgers won a World Series that made baseball feel like the biggest winner of all. Made the Series feel as big as it used to. Everybody who loves baseball should love that. And hate the idea that, a year from now, a sport just now honored this way — and mightily — might be shamed by another lockout.
