Los Angeles Dodgers' Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman celebrate after scoring a run during Game 5 of the World Series against the New York Yankees, in New York, on Oct. 30.Seth Wenig/The Associated Press
The play that best illustrated this year’s World Series happened in the fifth inning of the final game Wednesday.
For the first time in the championship contest, the New York Yankees had worked up enough momentum to put themselves into cruise control. Five runs already on the board, and the feeling that more were still to come. Starter Gerrit Cole pitching like a metronome, only throwing the ball harder as the innings passed.
Like all avalanches, the disaster started with a few falling rocks. An easily caught fly ball dropped in centre field by Aaron Judge. A throw to third flubbed by shortstop Anthony Volpe.
Eventually, it came down to Cole versus L.A.’s Mookie Betts with two out and the bases loaded. Cole won. He drew Betts into a weak grounder to first. Then everything went wrong.
First baseman Anthony Rizzo looked as though he would field it on the run. Because of that, Cole gave up on covering the bag. Rizzo decided at the last instant that caution was required and squared himself to receive the ball. Cole was already halfway to the Yankees dugout. Rizzo, who isn’t exactly a picture of grace, was now in a foot race with Betts. Betts won.
That was the Dodgers’ first run of the game, but it was the end of the Yankees. As the game slipped away slowly, then in a great hurry, cameras kept catching New York players in thousand-yard stares. They knew they had beaten themselves.
Their starters were duds. Their stars regressed. Their bullpen got tired. Their manager got out-managed. They could not buy a hit in the early going.
But it was New York’s inability to perform the basic tasks of the game – fielding the ball, hitting the cut-off man, running the bases correctly – that will resonate after this is over.
The Yankees didn’t suddenly forget that with one out and a ball hit hard into the outfield, a man on second should always advance halfway to third rather than waiting to tag up (Volpe in Game 4). But with the bright lights back on them, New York froze.
The Yankees’ panic highlighted the Dodgers’ poise. Down a run in extras at home in Game 1? No problem – Freddie Freeman will take care of that.
Need a big hit in the second game? Freeman again.
Need to shut the New York crowd up early in Game 3? What’s Freddie up to right now?
Of L.A.’s trio of expensively acquired former MVPs – Freeman, Betts and Shohei Ohtani – Freeman is the least talked about. Or was. After hitting home runs in each of the first four games, he’s Kirk Gibson minus the limp.
What would the Yankees have given for a Freeman type?
Better question: what will the Yankees soon be giving for several players they hope become Freeman types?
Congratulations to the Dodgers. They had a plan and it worked. Their plan was “Hire Shohei Ohtani.” In the end, he didn’t win them a World Series, but winning the race to get him convinced everyone in the L.A. clubhouse that it was possible.
The story moving forward from this year’s championship isn’t “What’s L.A.’s next move?” Their moves are done. It has the team it wants.
The story is “Exactly how humiliated are the Yankees, and what are they going to do about it?”
For a lot of clubs, getting hammered in a final is disappointment with a bright side. For the Yankees, it’s a disaster without mitigation. There are no moral victories for a team that has 27 of the real kind.
As this World Series went sideways, you could see the shape of the American League East over the next five years beginning to take form.
The sloth of the 2010s and the pandemic has been shaken off. Something more revitalizing than success has been injected into the Yankees: resentment. The Yankees are the capital-T, capital-Y version of themselves again.
The Boston Red Sox will do what they must when the Yankees are going hog wild – try to go hog wilder. The Red Sox have been soporific for years because their greatest rivals weren’t much more vigorous. That will end now.
Baltimore has spent the past two years being pleased with itself for managing to avoid losing 100 games every time out. That’s also done. It is either in this thing for titles or it’s the biggest missed opportunity in baseball. Given that the club has just been sold to a 75-year-old billionaire who’s looking to add some excitement to his life, the former seems more likely.
Which leaves the Toronto Blue Jays where exactly?
Nowhere.
In the 15 years before New York’s last championship in 2009, the AL East won seven World Series. In the 15 years since, up until right now, it has won two.
It’s only possible to see it now, but that second stretch was the window of opportunity for everyone else. The Jays were involved for a minute, then dropped off.
The next few years will not be that way. In a division featuring the No. 1 and three most valuable franchises in the game, normal operating service is about to return.
To compete against those no-longer-sleeping giants will require a combination of unusual smarts, huge money and great luck. It’s been a while since the Jays had the bare minimum of any of those things.
You don’t want to say any team is completely doomed for the foreseeable future. Unexpected things are always happening. But given their particular circumstances (run like a banana stand) and environs (three new McDonald’s moving in next door), the Jays are lightly predoomed.
If L.A. versus New York is what it looked like – the beginning of a next-level arms race driven by a renewed sense of verve throughout baseball – Toronto doesn’t need new players. It needs a whole new model.