The silent, somber Bronx was suddenly bathed in joyfully dancing blue, a screaming scrum that leapt, bounced and embraced into history.
The Dodgers did it. They really did it.
The hallowed New York Yankees stood frozen in their dugout, stripped of their aura and beaten down to their very essence, painfully demolished pinstripe by pinstripe.
The Dodgers did it. They really did it.
The choking team has swallowed swords. The team that crumbles breathes fire. Baseball’s most teeth-gnashingly great team struggled through a legacy of frustration on the kind of October night that, while once forgettable, will now live on forever.
The Dodgers won the World Series. They really won the World Series.
They didn’t just win it, they dominated it, they weakened it, they fucking owned it, capping off a five-game win over the disintegrating Yankees on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium with a five-run comeback and a 7- 6 win to qualify. the title four games to one.
“I really don’t feel like it right now,” reliever Blake Treinen said, dazed as he stood on a field full of golden streamers and thick-necked teammates. “What a cool moment. This is great.”
While it ended here with the Dodgers joyfully engaging in a group hug that turned this weathered urban field into blue sky on earth, on the other side of the country all hell broke loose, celebrating a connection that 4,792 miles could not crumble.
Go ahead, Los Angeles, dance with your Dodgers. Hug your Koufax jersey neighbor, yell at Fernando, Scully, and Lasorda, and maybe even cry a little. It’s okay, you deserve it, you earned it. You weren’t here for the finish, you were here for the journey, the best fans in baseball, who filled the Chavez Ravine all summer long, shaking the old stadium with your unconditional support, your persistent roar, your love.
“The Dodgers are the premier franchise in town right now,” said Magic Johnson, co-owner. “We needed a championship. The Dodgers needed to make this happen for the city of Los Angeles, bring back that championship feeling and show our fan base that we will do whatever it takes to win.”
And now? Johnson smiled as only he can smile.
“Now we’re getting a parade,” he said. “The city deserves it; the last time [2020] we didn’t get one. Now they get one.”
The Dodgers have waited so long for that parade that they’re making it a reality Friday in downtown Los Angeles, perfectly timed with what would have been Fernando Valenzuela’s 64th birthday. The legendary pitcher died three days before the Series, but his inspiration lived on, on the team’s uniform patch and in battle.
“This is the strongest team I’ve ever seen,” Treinen said. “You can’t measure the heart of this team.”
Yes, the Dodgers really did it, and in a way that no Dodgers team, from Jackie to Bulldog to Kershaw, had done before.
This was the greatest team in Los Angeles Dodgers history, building through the greatest postseason in Dodgers history to form the greatest Dodgers dynasty ever.
This was Freddie Freeman, the World Series Most Valuable Player, running, and Mookie Betts running, and Teoscar Hernández spraying, and Tommy Edman scooting, and Shohei Ohtani with sore shoulders making the difference made just by standing.
This was a shaky rotation that turned to gold and a bullpen that turned to steel, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto strong early in the Series, Treinen trading late and Walker Buehler providing the finishing touch on Wednesday with a one-day strikeout of Alex Verdugo rest.
The 1988 champions had Bulldog; the 2024 champions had Buehler.
“It was all adrenaline,” said Buehler, who epitomized the grit of this team with his first relief appearance in six years. “I was being worked on so I could play catch tomorrow, and then I’ll get in the game.”
This was traditional Dodgers talent mixed with the new, stalwart Dodgers, the combustible combination that exploded across the baseball world and left teams in tatters from the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson River.
This was Los Angeles’ seventh championship and eighth in franchise history, the first since the shortened season in 2020 and the first full-season title since 1988.
“I’m sure there’s not an asterisk on it,” manager Dave Roberts said.
Very gratifying, as COVID-19 emptied stadiums in 2020, so this is the Dodgers’ first title with home fans since that Orel Hershiser-led group 36 years ago.
All told, the 2024 Dodgers season was a vision realized and a promise kept, finally fully fulfilling the expectation inherent in twelve consecutive playoff berths, including eleven National League West titles.
All that hardware and just one crazy crown so far, as Wednesday’s emotional ending completed a crazy, riveting journey through their best fall yet.
They reached their final outs against the San Diego Padres and then won two games in a row to capture the National League Division Series.
They defeated the New York Mets 46–22 to win the National League Championship Series in six games, during which the Dodgers’ pitching staff completed a 33-inning scoreless streak.
They defeated the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series with a walkoff grand slam by Freeman and never looked back, giving away Game 4 to ruin a sweep, but rebounding to pull off the greatest comeback in the history of the World Series.
Read more: Ready to celebrate? The Dodgers World Series championship parade will take place Friday
They trailed 5-0 after three innings with home runs by Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr. and Giancarlo Stanton. But the Yankees imploded with three terrible fielding plays in the fifth, allowing the Dodgers to tie the game.
The Yankees took the lead again in the sixth, but the Dodgers scored twice in the eighth on a pair of sacrifice flies – typical of a team that would unselfishly do anything to win – and Treinen and Buehler retired the Yankees to finish it off.
“Tonight was basically the epitome of our season,” Max Muncy said. “We took a few hits, came back, took another hit and came back. It’s just guy after guy coming out, doing the work, grinding away, as Walker comes in in the ninth. … It’s just, literally, the epitome of our season.”
Wow. Gasping for breath. Yells. Tears. The Dodgers have never had four weeks like this.
“It seems like we’ve hit every possible speed bump over the course of this year,” Freeman said. “And to overcome what we did as a group of guys, it’s special.”
The title of the best Los Angeles Dodgers team and the best Dodgers postseason was thus cemented, their two championships and four pennants in the past eight years also making them the greatest of the Dodgers dynasties.
“My ultimate, kind of big goal is that when we’re done, we can look back and say this was the golden era of Dodger baseball,” baseball president Andrew Friedman said.
There is no need to look back. It’s true now. This is the golden age of Dodgers baseball.
Read more: Dodgers beat Yankees to win another World Series, cementing ‘golden era’ of franchise dominance
It appropriately reached that peak this fall with key contributions from the three leaders who have spent the last decade trying to win this thing.
It starts with Mark Walter, the low-key chairman and controlling owner of the Dodgers, as CEO of Guggenheim Partners.
Walter isn’t around much – he wasn’t at Wednesday’s game – but the wallet he controls never goes away, and with his approval the Dodgers have one of the highest annual payrolls in baseball. Over the winter he signed more than $1 billion worth of contracts for the likes of Ohtani and Yamamoto, and you know what happened next.
Ohtani was the National League’s best player and the biggest difference between this successful playoff team and the failures of the past; witness his NLDS Game 1 home run that got this party started. Yamamoto was injured for much of the summer, but he defeated the Padres in the NLDS elimination game and was an October revelation.
“We came here because we understood what this organization stood for,” said president and co-owner Stan Kasten, who was part of the Guggenheim group that bought the bankrupt team in 2012. “We knew about the legacy and were privileged to continue it. It’s Jackie and Sandy and Fernando and so on. We have taken that responsibility seriously.”
Guggenheim’s investment was complemented by the renowned insight of Friedman, baseball’s greatest player who had a stellar season that far surpassed even the signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto.
Don’t forget, Friedman also signed Teoscar Hernández, the team’s second MVP, last winter. Then, at the summer trade deadline, he hit the trifecta by trading Edman, Michael Kopech and Jack Flaherty, all three big October contributors.
Finally, Roberts brought together the gifts of Walter and Friedman, who went from the hot seat to a possible spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame by deftly leading this diverse group to its second title in nine seasons.
Throughout a summer filled with pitching injuries and Bett’s position machinations, Roberts was a steady force, consistently positive, unwaveringly steadfast, and ultimately guided the team through waters that occasionally landed him in trouble.
Translated, he did a fantastic job managing his October bullpen, pressing all the right buttons and smartly guiding them through four bullpen-only games necessitated by rookie pitching injuries.
“This is something I really wanted, I wanted this,” said Roberts, who has never gotten the credit he deserves from the fans.
He wanted it, and his players wanted it, and their connection allowed everyone in blue to get the best out of themselves. After a month that used to be hell suddenly became heaven, their best was more than enough to finally earn them the title of best baseball player.
The Dodgers won the World Series. They really won the World Series.
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This story originally appeared in the Los Angeles Times.
