For Dodgers fans, the must-have souvenir from last year’s World Series was not a cap or T-shirt commemorating the team’s championship. It was one of the stickers that popped up all over town, reproducing the Fox Sports score box that showed the New York Yankees leading, 5-0, with two out in the fifth inning.
For the Yankees, it was the image that encapsulated an inning of extremely unfortunate events: Aaron Judge dropped a fly ball, Anthony Volpe committed a throwing error, Gerrit Cole did not cover first base.
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The Dodgers tied the score before the Yankees could secure that third out and, a couple hours later, boisterously raised the championship trophy atop a makeshift stage in the Yankee Stadium outfield.
The celebrations raged for days, including a Mookie Betts podcast on which Chris Taylor said the Yankees had “s— down their leg” and a “Baseball Isn’t Boring” podcast on which Joe Kelly said the Dodgers’ scouting reports had highlighted the Yankees’ deficiencies: “They can’t make a play.”
Dodgers third base Kiké Hernández is safe at second base after an error by Yankees outfielder Aaron Judge (99) (not shown) in the fifth inning of Game 5 of the World Series on Oct. 30. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
You cannot glorify bat flips, as Major League Baseball itself does these days, and you cannot encourage players to market themselves and share their personalities, as the league also does, without running the risk of what the old-fashioned among us might call poor sportsmanship. To the Yankees’ credit, they get it.
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“The way I personally look at it is, when you go out and you are on the right side of the victory, you’ve got a leg to stand on,” Yankees closer Luke Weaver told me this week at Angel Stadium. “When you lose, you ain’t got much to say.
“They said what they said. That’s what they felt. I don’t take it too personally. In a perfect world, yeah, you don’t want to hear that type of stuff. We know what happened. We know we had to do a better job. We just didn’t quite do what we wanted to do. With that being said, it is what it is.”
For the first time since the World Series, the Yankees return to Dodger Stadium this weekend. The Dodgers are sold out of suites advertised this week for as much as $15,000 per game. As of Wednesday, available tickets on the team website for Friday’s series opener ranged from $103 to $567 in general, $146 to $607 with early entry included.
Read more: How one ‘crazy’ inning ignited Dodgers’ comeback in World Series clincher
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The entire series will be nationally broadcast: Friday on Apple+, Saturday on Fox, Sunday on ESPN.
“I understand that it’s going to get a lot of eyeballs,” Yankees manager Aaron Boone said. “I think that’s great for our sport.”
Said Weaver: “It’ll be a big series because, one, they’re a great team, and we feel like we’re a great team. It’s hard to say it’s not a rematch.
“To be honest, there’s probably some deeper pride that wants to go in there and play good ball and play clean ball, and make sure that we take the series and do our job.”
ESPN played up the “rematch” angle during last Sunday’s Dodgers broadcast. However, of the 10 players that started that fateful Game 5 of the World Series for the Yankees, only three are active on the Yankees’ roster: Judge, Volpe and catcher Austin Wells.
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Gone in free agency: outfielders Juan Soto and Alex Verdugo and infielders Anthony Rizzo and Gleyber Torres. On the injured list: Cole, infielder Jazz Chisholm Jr. and designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton. New to New York: former Dodger Cody Bellinger, former Dodger-killer Paul Goldschmidt and L.A.’s own Max Fried, who is Friday’s scheduled starting pitcher.
Dodgers celebrate with pitcher Walker Buehler (21), back left, after defeating the Yankees during Game 5 of the World Series, clinching the championship at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 30. (Wally Skalij/Los Angeles Times)
In spring training, Judge said there was a simple solution to whatever verbal shots the Dodgers took in the wake of the World Series: “Play better.”
At the time, Boone said he hoped the Yankees would “handle things with a little more class” if they won the World Series this year. He also noted the Dodgers’ stars did not say anything to diminish the Yankees.
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“Some guys are more inclined to spout off and be a little more colorful than others, and that’s their right. They won,” he said then. “And again, hopefully we’re in that position and do things a little better.”
Have the Yankees used that fifth inning for motivation or just flushed it?
“I’ve used the phrase ‘another log on the fire,’” Boone said this week. “We’ve had some really tough ends to the season, and probably in some way, shape or form serve as some motivation.
“But I’d like to think that, had we won the World Series last year, we’d be hell bent on getting back again. You put this uniform on, and this hat, and what it represents, and our goal is to get back and do that again.”
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Read more: Shaikin: Apple’s documentary on Dodgers provides ‘all-access’ look at World Series run
The Detroit Tigers, not the Yankees, have the best record in the American League. The Philadelphia Phillies, not the Dodgers, have the best record in the National League.
Yet the projections at Baseball Prospectus and Fangraphs say the most likely World Series matchup is a Dodgers-Yankees rematch. That would be great for L.A. and New York, and for Fox, but that also would make a lockout after the 2026 season even more likely than it already is.
You can hear the owners now: If the price of admission to the World Series again is a team in one of the two largest markets in baseball, how can a team in any other market hope to compete? And, if the Dodgers spend $1 billion on free agents, win, spend another half-billion on free agents, and return to the World Series, are the Dodgers ruining baseball?
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“It’s difficult for most of us owners to be able to do the kinds of things that they’re doing,” an owner said last January.
Read more: ‘You want your chance to win one.’ New Dodgers feel World Series hunger during celebrations
Oh, wait: That was Hal Steinbrenner, owner of the Yankees, the one team that CNBC estimated generated more revenue than the Dodgers last year.
This, we hope, is Steinbrenner being a team player. One high-ranking sports industry executive told me he never has seen baseball owners so united on pursuing major changes to the sport’s economic structure, salary cap or otherwise. Either the large-market owners and small-market owners truly are on the same page, or at least they need the players’ union to believe they are.
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It is difficult to imagine Steinbrenner willfully offering to surrender some of the Yankees’ competitive advantage so the Pittsburgh Pirates can squander a few more bucks. What Steinbrenner said is reasonable at a time cable television revenue has dried up for many teams, even as the Dodgers and Yankees continue to cash in, but the “us” makes the comment look silly.
If a couple players on the Dodgers can make a silly comment, so can the owner of the Yankees. Bring on the World Series rematch.
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
