Plaschke: The Greatest! Historic Dodgers overpower Yankees for 8th World Series title
The silent, somber Bronx suddenly was bathed in joyous dancing blue, a screaming scrum leaping and bouncing and hugging 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 bludgeoned at their essence, painfully demolished pinstripe by pinstripe.
The Dodgers did it. They really did it.
The team that chokes swallowed swords. The team that crumbles spit fire. The most teeth-grinding great team in baseball chomped through a legacy of frustration on the sort of October night that, while once forgettable, now will live forever.
The Dodgers won the World Series. They really won the World Series.
They didn’t just win it, they dominated it, they debilitated it, they freaking owned it, finishing a five-game beating of the disintegrating Yankees on Wednesday at Yankee Stadium with a five-run comeback and a 7-6 victory to clinch the title four games to one.
“It really doesn’t make sense to me right now,” reliever Blake Treinen said, looking dazed while standing on a field filled with gold streamers and thick-throated teammates. “What a cool moment. This is amazing.”
While it ended here with the Dodgers joyfully engaging in a group hug that transformed this weathered urban field into blue heaven on Earth, all hell was breaking loose on the other side of the country, the celebration of a connection that 2,792 miles could not fray.
Go ahead, Los Angeles, dance with your Dodgers. Hug your Koufax-jerseyed neighbor, scream up to Fernando and Scully and Lasorda, maybe even cry a little. It’s OK, you deserve it, you earned it. You weren’t here for the finish, but you were here for the journey, best fans in baseball, filling Chavez Ravine all summer, shaking the ancient stadium with your unconditional support, your lingering roars, your love.
“The Dodgers are the most important franchise in town right now,” said Magic Johnson, part owner. “We needed a championship. The Dodgers needed to make this happen for the city of Los Angeles, bring back that championship feeling, show our fan base that we’ll do what it takes to win.”
And now? Johnson smiled as only he can smile.
“Now we get 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, they’re rushing it into 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, yet his inspiration lived on, on the team's uniform patch and in its fight.
“This is the toughest team I’ve ever seen,” Treinen said. “You can’t measure the heart on this team.”
Yeah, the Dodgers really did it, and in a manner in which no Dodgers team from Jackie to Bulldog to Kershaw had done before.
This was the greatest team in Los Angeles Dodgers history, soaring through the greatest postseason in Dodgers history, cementing the greatest Dodgers dynasty ever.
This was World Series most valuable player Freddie Freeman slugging, and Mookie Betts scampering, and Teoscar Hernández spraying, and Tommy Edman scooting, and sore-shouldered Shohei Ohtani making a difference 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 dealing late, and Walker Buehler providing the finishing touch Wednesday with a strikeout of Alex Verdugo on one day's rest.
The 1988 champions had Bulldog; the 2024 champions had Buehler.
“It was all adrenaline,” said Buehler, who epitomized this team’s grit with his first relief appearance in six years. “I was getting worked on so I could play catch tomorrow, then I’m coming into the game.”
This was traditional Dodgers talent mixed with newfound Dodgers tough, the combustible combination exploding across the baseball world, leaving teams in tatters from the Pacific Ocean to the Hudson River.
This was the seventh championship in Los Angeles and eighth in franchise history, the first since the abbreviated season in 2020 and first full-season title since 1988.
“I’m sure there’s no asterisk on this one,” manager Dave Roberts said.
Most gratifying, because COVID-19 emptied the stadiums in 2020, so this is the Dodgers’ first title with home fans since that Orel Hershiser-led group of 36 years ago.
In all, the 2024 Dodgers season was a vision met and a promise kept, finally fully fulfilling the expectation inherent in 12 consecutive playoff berths that included 11 National League West titles.
All that hardware and only one freaking crown until now, when Wednesday’s emotional ending completed a crazy, compelling trip through their best autumn ever.
They were down to their last outs against the San Diego Padres, then won two straight games to capture the National League Division Series.
They outscored the New York Mets 46-22 to win the National League Championship Series in six games, which included the Dodgers pitching staff completing 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, gave away Game 4 to ruin a sweep, but rebounded to pull off the greatest clinching-game comeback in World Series history.
Read more: Ready to celebrate? Dodgers' World Series championship parade will be 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 awful fielding plays in the fifth that allowed 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 couple of sacrifice flies — typical of a team that would unselfishly do anything to win — and Treinen and Buehler shut down the Yankees to finish it.
“Tonight was basically the epitome of our season,” Max Muncy said. “We got dealt a couple blows, came back, got dealt another blow, came back. It’s just guy after guy coming out, doing the job, grinding away, Walker coming in in the ninth. … It’s just, literally, the epitome of our season.”
Whew. Gasp. Screams. Tears. The Dodgers never have had four weeks like this.
“It seems like we hit every speed bump possible over the course of this year,” Freeman said. “And to overcome what we did as a group of guys, it's special.”
Read more: Dodgers beat Yankees to win another World Series, cement ‘golden era’ of franchise dominance
The title of greatest Los Angeles Dodgers team and greatest Dodgers postseason thus cemented, their two championships and four pennants in the last eight years also establish them as the greatest of Dodgers dynasties.
“My ultimate, kind of big-picture goal is that, when we are done, that we're able to look back and say that was the golden era of Dodger baseball,” baseball president Andrew Friedman said.
No need to look back. It’s true now. This is the golden era of Dodgers baseball.
It reached that peak this fall appropriately with major contributions from the three leaders who have spent the last decade trying to win this thing.
It starts with Mark Walter, the understated chairman and controlling owner of the Dodgers as the chief executive of Guggenheim Partners.
Walter is not around much — he didn’t attend Wednesday’s game — but the wallet he controls never leaves, and with his approval the Dodgers annually have one of baseball’s highest payrolls. Over the winter he signed off on more than $1 billion in 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 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 beat the Padres in the NLDS elimination game and was an October revelation.
“We came here understanding what this organization was about,” 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 we were privileged enough to continue. It’s Jackie and Sandy and Fernando and on and on. We took that responsibility seriously.”
Compounding Guggenheim’s investment has been the renowned acumen of Friedman, baseball’s best executive who had a stellar season that far exceeded even the signings of Ohtani and Yamamoto.
Don’t forget, last winter Friedman also signed Teoscar Hernández, the team’s second MVP. Then, at the summer trading deadline, he hit the trifecta by dealing for Edman, Michael Kopech and Jack Flaherty, all three giant October contributors.
Finally, bringing the gifts of Walter and Friedman together was Roberts, who went from the hot seat to a possible spot in the Baseball Hall of Fame by deftly managing this diverse group to his second title in nine seasons.
Read more: Photos: Dodgers, Yankees, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge in the starriest World Series in decades
Throughout a summer filled with pitching injuries and Betts position intrigue, Roberts was a steady force, consistently positive, unflinchingly steady, ultimately steering the team through waters that occasionally have troubled him.
Translated, he did a terrific job managing his October bullpen, pushing all the right buttons and smartly leading them through four bullpen-only games necessitated by starting pitching injuries.
“This is something I really wanted, I wanted this one,” said Roberts, who never has received the credit from the fans that he deserves.
He wanted it, and his players wanted it, and their connection combined to get the best out everybody in blue. After a month that used to be hell and suddenly became heaven, their best was more than enough to finally give them the title of baseball’s best.
The Dodgers won the World Series. They really won the World Series.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
