NEW YORK — Walker Buehler spread his arms wide and waited for his teammates to engulf him, the most fitting symbol of a season defined by persistent resilience. Called into emergency relief, Buehler closed out the World Series and shut the door on the New York Yankees as the Los Angeles Dodgers captured a 7-6 victory in a heart-stopping Game 5.
The game did not go as the Dodgers designed it. Then again, little did for them in 2024. Yet they will finish the season as champions of the world. They can thank Buehler, pitching on only one day of rest after starting Game 3, less than two years removed from a second Tommy John surgery. His scoreless frame stunned the crowd at Yankee Stadium and incited a mid-field jubilee from the Dodgers.
Freddie Freeman was an easy choice for World Series MVP after homering in the first four games and providing a crucial, two-run single as the Dodgers erased a five-run deficit in the fifth inning. Yankees ace Gerrit Cole capsized as his defense crumbled around him and made three fielding glitches. All five runs were unearned.
The comeback only set the stage for the excruciating conclusion. Called into duty in the sixth inning, Blake Treinen recorded seven outs. An eighth-inning rally capped by sacrifice flies by second baseman Gavin Lux and outfielder Mookie Betts put the Dodgers in front. Buehler kept them there, ensuring that a parade will roll down Figueroa Street later this week.
“I’m sure there’s no asterisk on this one,” manager David Roberts said.
This title, the eighth in franchise history, can stand beside the Dodgers’ trophy from the pandemic-shortened season in 2020. The championship validated a $1.4 billion offseason splurge built around Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto, solidified the historical standing of Roberts and brought president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman closer to a vision he outlined earlier this month.
“My ultimate, 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,’” Friedman said. “And that is an incredibly high bar to even say that.”
TEOSCAR HERNÁNDEZ TIES IT FOR THE @DODGERS! #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/RZToAqDBHs
— MLB (@MLB) October 31, 2024
The standard was set in the last century. The Dodgers won four titles between 1955 and 1965 as the franchise transitioned from the Boys of Summer in Brooklyn to the kings of Southern California. Those were the days of Jackie Robinson and Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale and Duke Snider, Roy Campanella and Pee Wee Reese. The precedent feels preposterous until you consider the current Dodgers who will one day join them in the Hall of Fame. That Cooperstown group could expand to include Roberts and Friedman.
The current era started in the spring of 2012 when Mark Walter formed a group to purchase the Dodgers from bankrupt parking lot magnate Frank McCourt. Walter’s Guggenheim Baseball Management paid $2.15 billion. Walter tasked Stan Kasten, a veteran executive from the Atlanta Braves and Washington Nationals, to be team president. After winning the National League West in 2013 and 2014 but falling short in October, Kasten approached Friedman, an innovative thinker who had established the small-market Tampa Bay Rays as a force among the big spenders in the American League East.
“He was in a great organization, a great organization,” Kasten said. “But this is the Dodgers.”
Under Friedman, the Dodgers established hegemony in the West. The team lost the 2017 World Series to the Houston Astros, who were later revealed to be using an illegal sign-stealing scheme, and then lost to the Boston Red Sox in the Series again in 2018. The group did not break through until 2020, in a season limited to 60 games by the COVID-19 pandemic and a World Series contained within a so-called bubble in Arlington, Texas.
The celebration after beating the Tampa Bay Rays morphed into a COVID-19 scare when clubhouse leader Justin Turner learned late in the game he had tested positive for the virus. There was no champagne bash at the ballpark and no rally awaiting them in Los Angeles. One of the items Roberts donated to the Hall of Fame was his mask. The players scattered across the country on private flights or long car rides. “It was like we were Navy SEALs,” former Dodgers outfielder Joc Pederson said in the spring of 2023. “Did a mission, completed it and you just don’t hear about it.” At the team’s Arizona spring training home, there is no signage commemorating the title.
In the years after the championship, the Dodgers behaved as a bumbling colossus, beset by public relations gaffes and early October exits. The goodwill from the title was squandered on Trevor Bauer. The team won 106 games in 2021 but foundered in the National League Championship Series. A 111-win team in 2022 got rocked in four postseason games. The 100-win 2023 Dodgers were swept in the National League Division Series.
The defeats soured the public perception of the team and embittered the group. Players and team officials groused about perceived villains both internal and external: Max Scherzer and Jake Cronenworth, Lance Lynn and Eddie Rosario, the red herring of the layoff wrought by the expanded postseason. “We’ve got to find a way to get back up and not feel sorry for ourselves and get better,” Roberts said after losing to the 84-win Arizona Diamondbacks last year. “That’s just the only option.”
A week after Roberts spoke, Friedman polled a few players to preview the offseason. He had two new stars in mind: Ohtani and Yamamoto. When Freeman asked if Walter would shoulder the cost, Friedman was insistent. “Mark,” he told Freeman, “wants to win really bad.” That desire became clear to Ohtani when he met with the Dodgers. Walter informed Ohtani he considered his tenure as an owner to be a failure. One title, after all those Octobers, was not enough. The moment lingered with Ohtani, who mentioned it at the press conference after he signed his historic, heavily deferred, 10-year, $700 million contract.
The total outlay for the winter surpassed 10 figures. Ohtani was the biggest ticket. The others were not cheap: $325 million, plus a $50 million posting fee for Yamamoto; a $111.5 million extension after a trade for pitcher Tyler Glasnow; a $23.5 million flier on outfielder Teoscar Hernández. The path to October looked clear. At spring training, a rival general manager cracked to The Athletic: “So how many games are the Dodgers going to win this year, 120?”
The number was 98, a hard 98, the sort of 98 that added more gray to Friedman’s stubble. So much went wrong it can be hard to recall what went right. The season opened with a worldwide scandal after Ohtani’s interpreter, Ippei Mizuhara, admitted to swindling his friend out of millions to finance gambling debts. Betts and Yamamoto suffered serious injuries in June. A rash of pitching ailments has prompted an internal reckoning with their development process. In September, with the team trying to fend off the Diamondbacks and the San Diego Padres, Glasnow was ruled out for October because of a recurrent elbow injury. “Everyone was like, ‘Man, not again,’” third baseman Max Muncy said earlier this month.
WALKER BUEHLER CLOSES IT OUT! #CHAMPS pic.twitter.com/1S2242udt6
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) October 31, 2024
The team received the Glasnow news while in Atlanta. Roberts called a meeting. He reminded them what the name on the front of their jersey represented. “We’re still the Dodgers,” he told them. And he reminded them what the names on the backs meant, too.
“You have a meeting,” Muncy said, “and say, ‘Guys, look around. We still have Hall of Famers in this room. We still have All-Stars in this room. We have guys who are getting paid a lot of money in this room. We can still do this.’”
The first step was the toughest. The San Diego Padres pushed the Dodgers to the brink in the NLDS. Down 2-1, bereft of starting pitching, Roberts asked his relievers for 27 outs to keep the season alive in Game 4. The players gathered before the game and discussed ridding themselves from the burden of expectations. The group responded with a shutout. Two days later, Yamamoto bested his countryman Yu Darvish in a decisive Game 5 victory. The Padres did not score a run during the final 24 innings of the series, a stunning result given the talent on San Diego’s roster.
The rest of the competition paled to the Padres. The Dodgers smashed both of New York’s baseball clubs these past two weeks. The National League Championship Series was a six-game demolition. After Freeman launched his grand, Gibsonian walkoff in Game 1 against the Yankees, the Dodgers got the job done.
The final game tested their resilience. Jack Flaherty permitted four runs before exiting with one out in the second. When the fifth inning began, the Dodgers trailed by five and Cole had not given up a hit. A series of Yankees miscues opened the door. Aaron Judge dropped a fly ball. Anthony Volpe spiked a throw in the dirt. Cole neglected to cover first on a slow roller down the line. With two outs and the bases loaded, Freeman slashed a two-run single. Hernández followed with a two-run double to tie the game.
The Yankees did not cower. They declined to chase wayward offerings from relievers like Alex Vesia and Brusdar Graterol. The erratic command of the Dodgers bullpen put men on base and fouled up Roberts’ pitching plan. Graterol walked Juan Soto and Judge to start the sixth. After Soto took third on a grounder, Giancarlo Stanton lofted a ball deep enough to bring the go-ahead run home.
From there, Roberts was forced to solve an equation with insufficient data. He had lined up six relievers behind Flaherty. But the abbreviated outing from Flaherty and the waywardness from the other pitchers forced his hand. Blake Treinen was the sixth reliever in Roberts’ trust tree. He was supposed to close the game. But he entered the game after Graterol failed to hold the line in the sixth.
As Treinen toiled on the mound, an assortment of pitchers loosened up in the bullpen. Buehler had been there since the fifth inning. Daniel Hudson also got up to throw. The lineup soon gave them a lead to protect. The group loaded the bases with no outs in the eighth. Sacrifice flies from Lux and Betts put the Dodgers ahead.
Treinen returned for the eighth as the heart of the Yankees’ order loomed. Judge awakened the crowd with a one-out double. The ballpark entered a froth when Treinen walked third baseman Jazz Chisholm Jr. Roberts left his dugout. He gestured to Treinen to settle down. The closer’s night was not done. Treinen steeled himself to get Stanton to pop up before striking out first baseman Anthony Rizzo to strand the runners.
The bullpen door opened for Buehler at 11:43 p.m. Earlier, he told Roberts: “If it gets squirrelly, I’m ready,” and went to the bullpen on his own accord. He made the emergency assignment look easy. Volpe grounded out. Wells struck out. The final pitch of the 2024 season was a knuckle curveball. Yankees outfielder Alex Verdugo could only touch the air. The rest of the Dodgers mobbed Buehler. The celebration had only begun for this franchise.
They will get their title without an asterisk. The people of Los Angeles will get their parade. And the patina of this era will look that much closer to golden.
(Photo: Elsa / Getty Images)
