by Mark Langill
Dave Roberts looks quite comfortable in his blue Dodgers warmup jacket and white uniform pants.
His arms are crossed as he leans on the edge of the podium inside the interview room at Dodger Stadium. In three days, he will be in the visitor’s dugout at the Rogers Centre in Toronto, managing his fifth World Series.
On the verge of history for both Roberts and the Dodger franchise, he is content to wait.
An intersquad game on a Tuesday afternoon inside the empty Dodger Stadium will commence within the hour, the calm before the storm as the big moments lurk on the horizon.
In his decade as Dodger manager, Roberts has learned to wear many hats. His natural, affable personality makes his pregame public relations duties a breeze.
He shakes hands and poses for pictures with various groups led onto the field and hugs the familiar faces donning the opponent’s uniform. Even with the press, his composed manner allows him to scatter verbal breadcrumbs for the daily news cycle.
He has credibility inside the clubhouse as a former player, 10 seasons as an outfielder in the Majors.
And at age 53, Roberts is still a player at heart, savoring the competition.
“Personally, I want to win this one in 2025 as much as I wanted to win any of them,” he said.
In the upcoming chess match with Toronto manager John Schneider, one moment can change the course of history.
One throw.
One catch.
One hit.
Ask Roberts about one stolen base.
As a pinch-runner with the 2004 Boston Red Sox, his ninth-inning theft of second base just under the tag of shortstop Derek Jeter against the New York Yankees in Game 4 of the American League Championship Series triggered the largest comeback in postseason history.
The Red Sox had lost the first three games. Boston trailed 4–3 in the ninth inning. After Kevin Millar drew a leadoff walk from reliever Mariano Rivera, manager Terry Francona inserted Roberts into the game with orders to steal second base.
In that moment, Roberts recalled his lessons at the Dodgers’ Spring Training in Vero Beach, Florida, from a Dodger stolen-base legend, Maury Wills, who swiped 104 bases during his 1962 NL MVP season, advising Roberts one day he would need to steal a base with everyone in the ballpark knowing his mission.
Against the Yankees, Roberts stole the base and scored on a Bill Mueller single. The Red Sox won 6–4 on David Ortiz’s two-run walk-off homer in the 12th inning.
The eventual championship, Boston’s first in 86 years, forever made Roberts a New England hero. Roberts played only 45 regular-season games in a Red Sox uniform after a trade by the Dodgers, who had acquired outfielder Steve Finley at the trading deadline.
Back in a Dodger uniform, Roberts enjoyed another comeback last season against the Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium after the Dodgers trailed 5–0 in the fifth inning. A five-run rally let Roberts switch gears, ditching a potential Game 6 in Los Angeles for the chance to close out a championship with an unconventional bullpen strategy. Walker Buehler, a starting pitcher by trade, saved the 7–6 victory with a scoreless ninth inning.
And now Roberts is ready for more. You’ll have to forgive him for being greedy.
It may be his status as a 28th-round draft pick by the Detroit Tigers out of UCLA in 1994. With speed and little power, nothing would come easy as a 5-foot-10, 172-pound hopeful during his methodical climb through the Detroit and Cleveland Minor League systems.
The Dodgers acquired him after the 2001 season, and his hard work in Spring Training in 2002 made an impression on first-year Dodger manager Jim Tracy. In 302 games with Los Angeles, Roberts slashed .262/.342/.341/.683 with seven home runs, 71 RBI and 118 stolen bases in 143 attempts.
When he was named the Los Angeles manager on Nov. 23, 2015, Brian Stephenson, a Dodger scout and former UCLA teammate, marveled at the sight of Roberts on center stage at The Stadium Club.
“He had the worst throwing arm of any outfielder at UCLA when he started,” Stephenson said to a colleague before the press conference. “But he kept working.”
Stephenson was at Dodger Stadium on Wednesday, and he still remembered that scouting report.
“On a scale of 80 to 20, Dave’s arm was 20,” Stephenson said. “But his speed was 80, his glove was 80, his baseball knowledge was 80. The bat was around 60. As a person, he was 80. And I think that’s what everyone sees today.”
With 10 consecutive postseason appearances and five National League pennants, Roberts is joining an elite group of managers with postseason credentials that include Hall of Famers Casey Stengel, Joe Torre, Walter Alston and Sparky Anderson.
The Dodgers are attempting to become the first team in a quarter-century to repeat as World Series champions since Torre’s Yankees (1998–2000) and the first National League team since Anderson’s Cincinnati Reds (1975–76).
Stengel’s teams won seven World Series and three AL pennants during his Yankees tenure from 1949 to 1960. As a player, Stengel was a member of the 1921 and 1922 New York Giants, the only other NL team to win consecutive World Series.
On the first day of Spring Training 2025 in Glendale, Arizona, Roberts gave a speech to his players along the lines of “uneasy lies the crown on the head of a champion.” It was a made-for-TV moment because the camera crew documented Roberts telling his players that no team in 25 years had repeated as World Champions.
“I haven’t brought it up since,” Roberts said. “I think it’s one of those added pressures that I don’t want to take on, and I don’t think our players want to take on. Be in the moment. Take care of business. At the end of the day, at the end of the season, you can look back. But right now, the only focus is winning four games.”
2025 World Series: Roberts awaits another Fall Classic was originally published in Dodger Insider on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.