LOS ANGELES — So the big-spending Dodgers have gone and ruined baseball again?
Sure, whatever they say.
I must say, though, the Dodgers’ second consecutive World Series title – celebrated joyously Monday by more than 250,000 dancing Southern Californians along the parade route downtown and then by 52,703 more who went to party at the ballpark – did produce an embarrassment of riches.
Just a glut of signature moments, an all-you-can-eat buffet of iconic plays and performances that ranged from unexpected to never before seen. So many wild plot twists that my new friends along the parade route Monday morning had trouble picking their favorite, as if I were asking them to choose among their children and not events that happened on a baseball field.
What was fun about this dogpile of not-so-minor miracles was that the best of them, the real bacon-saving heroics, came not necessarily from the most heralded of Dodgers, but the other guys. Not only the headliners, but so many members of the beloved ensemble.
Or if they came from the headliners – it was in ways that you wouldn’t have guessed not so long ago. Like, say, slumping-outfielder-turned-Golden Glove-nominated-shortstop Mookie Betts turning a stunning, unassisted double play to finish off the Toronto Blue Jays in the bottom of the 11th inning on Saturday.
So, sure, haters and pundits and fans of the Blue Jays, Brewers, Phillies and Reds, cry that the Dodgers’ $320-some million payroll is out of control.
But it wasn’t $700 million man Shohei Ohtani who snatched victory from Toronto’s grasp in the top of the ninth in Game 7. It was veteran utility man Miguel Rojas did, with his solo shot that tied the score at 4-4.
Also, it was Rojas’ off-balance throw that got the Jays’ Isiah Kiner-Falefa at the plate by an eyelash to preserve the tie in the bottom of the ninth in Game 7.
And it was Rojas who made the tough snag for the final out at second base in Game 6 – actually the highlight of all the highlights for 25-year-old Victor Muñoz, a third-generation Dodger fan from L.A. “Just because there were so many doubting that the Dodgers were even going to win the last two games, even Dodger fans,” he said. “And I always just felt faithful.”
That ginormous payroll and it was Andy Pages who crashed the Blue Jays’ party in the bottom of the ninth inning. It was the guy with the paltry .078 postseason batting average who, in the end, wouldn’t be denied, running over fellow outfielder Kiké Hernandez to get to the ball, snatching it and keeping the winning runs from crossing the plate to send Game 7 to extra innings.
Rewind to the 18-inning marathon that was Game 3 on Tuesday. Yes, Freddie Freeman – a World Series hero before for his Game 1 grand slam against the Yankees in 2024 – hit another game-winning home run to secure the 6-5 victory and send everyone mercifully to bed just before midnight. Ohtani, of course, was omnipresent on the basepaths that long night, going 4 for 4 with two home runs, two doubles and five walks the day before taking the mound as the Dodgers’ starting pitcher in Game 4.
But that night there was also Will Klein, who was the Dodgers’ first Unlikeliest Hero of the series, who wasn’t even on the Dodgers’ active playoff roster the previous week but who got the call to come into the game in the 15th inning to face the heart of the Jays’ order.
The 25-year-old, red-headed rookie pitched four scoreless innings, allowing just one hit and striking out five to earn the improbable win – and, one would assume, free drinks around in L.A. in perpetuity.
So I asked a bunch of Dodgers fans like Muñoz, folks from Ventura to Riverside to right up the street, to pick their favorite moment (or moments) of all the wild ones they just experienced, because I wondered if I was right to think it would be the unsung guys’ exploits would be the ones stuck in people’s heads like catchy songs.
Mostly, I was.
“That Pages catch, that one – Kiké’s my favorite player, and tough as it was seeing him go out like that, it was like, ‘Hey, gotta do what we gotta do to win, right?’” said Ventura County’s Miguel Arana, 21, who visited Puerto Rico last year because he wanted to see Hernandez’s home.
Said Ronald Yuh, 40, of L.A.: “They gotta make a statue of that catch!”
“For me, it’s gotta be the Miguel Rojas home run,” said Julian Huerta, 16, of Baldwin Park. “It was such a special moment for him, and it’s a moment for all time.”
Got the same answer from Riverside’s Teresa Salas and son Johnny Salas, who watched Game 7, respectively, at work, and alone at home ignoring all text messages and phone calls. “It was stressing me out so much,” said Johnny, who was on his lunch break at Target but still too anxious to do anything but follow the scoring updates on his app. “I couldn’t even watch it, but when he hit the home run, I was going crazy.”
Said Steven Gonzalez, 30, of Pomona: “That Pages catch!”
Echoed his brother, Christopher: “That Pages catch!”
Fellow Pomona resident Dugo Verdugo chimed in with another sequence. “When the benches cleared! [Justin] Wrobleski, man! That sparked us up,” said the the 30-year-old, who seemed energized still by the fourth-inning fracas that occurred after the Dodgers’ left-hander hit Blue Jays shortstop Andrés Giménez in the hand.
This World Series really was a movie with something for everyone. And with no small parts.
“The whole series was crazy,” Yuh said. “And I don’t believe it’s scripted, but that was just a perfect Hollywood ending there.”