The Los Angeles Dodgers Win the World Series
They did it. Oh my God, they did it.
Hi friends-
Well, wow.
It’s been 12 hours but the shock of what happened last night will endure for the next several months. Or maybe several lifetimes.
The Yankees had all the momentum in this World Series after they shellacked LA in Game 4. And even though New York once trailed in this series three games to none—a deficit no team has ever erased in the World Series— when Jack Flaherty came out to start Game 5 with nothing but a water gun and a prayer, all I could see were montages of the Dodgers making history as the biggest playoff chokers of all-time.
We all knew this series would turn on a dime the second Aaron Judge showed up. And when he homered on the first pitch Flaherty threw him in the first, I was thinking about the black car that must have been idling in the Bronx waiting to whisk the Dodgers Game 6 starter, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, to JFK to catch an early flight back to LA.
But then Dave Roberts did what I knew he would, and brought in his very best relievers in the second and third to fight with everything the Dodgers had to win this game and end the series. He must have felt the same sickening bowling ball in his stomach that every Dodger fan did. Had the Yankees crushed the Dodgers last night to cut the series deficit to three games to two, with Juan Soto, Giancarlo Stanton, and Judge all on heaters—boy, that’s a terrifying position to be in going home, even if you have two games to win one.
Gerrit Cole absolutely cruised through the first four innings without allowing a hit. And hey, had Cole no-hit the Dodgers, it wasn’t gonna matter that Flaherty sucked and gave up four runs while only recording four outs.
But then Dodger October legend Enríque Hernández led off the fifth by ambushing a Cole fastball for a single. At this point the Dodgers must have been thinking, “OK. Keep battling. Just get a little closer and make them so nervous that they use all their best relievers again for the 80th time this series and that’s still a W even if we lose.”
And then:
Tommy Edman hit a shallow fly ball to Judge that was so easy to catch that Judge actually took his eye off the ball and looked at Hernández to see if he might double him off first because he had strayed a little too far away from the base.
Clank.
Bang.
Disaster.
Every baseball sicko out there saw that play and thought the same thing. The Yankees had a five-run lead.
And yet.
Judge flubbing the ball in such a catastrophic way was like Bill Buckner watching one roll through his legs, like Steve Bartman catching one that might have landed in Moises Alou’s glove. It was the kind of catastrophe so specific and so painful to playoff baseball that I’m gonna have PTSD from it for the rest of my life and I wasn’t even rooting for the Yankees.
Plays like that let the Bad Thoughts In. The faces of Yankee players tightened. The home crowd clenched and cursed and held its breath.
Then Will Smith hit a ground ball to Anthony Volpe’s right, and rather than take the sure out at first with a five-run lead, Vople played hero ball and tried to make a difficult play getting the lead runner at third. He spiked the ball in the dirt.
Cole, who had pitched an absolute dandy, was now staring down a bases loaded, no out situation. The good news was that he got to face Gavin Lux, and a badly injured Shohei Ohtani. He struck them both out.
The bad news was that Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Teoscar Hernández all lurked.
I texted a friend that if Betts got on, that Freddie Freeman would tie the game.
I was close.
Betts grounded a ball weakly to first that should have ended the inning.
And then:
