Dodgers upend Yanks with historic comeback for 8th World Series title

NEW YORK – To win it all, the Dodgers had to give it all. Had to stare down an ugly early deficit. Had to empty their bullpen. Had to rally against Gerrit Cole and then against the Yankees’ best relievers. Had to get a World Series-clinching save from starter Walker Buehler, of all people.

With an unflappable team effort, the Dodgers claimed their second World Series title in the last five years and their first in a full season since 1988 by beating the Yankees in Game 5 on Wednesday night at Yankee Stadium.

And in this 7-6 victory, the Dodgers ushered in their champagne celebration the hard way, becoming the first team in a World Series-clinching win to come back from down five or more runs. They also became the first team in MLB postseason history to fall behind by five-plus runs, erase that deficit, fall behind again and yet still win the game.

Talk about earning your ring.

“We’re obviously resilient, but there’s so much love in this clubhouse that won this game today,” Mookie Betts said on the field postgame. “That’s what it was. It was love. It was grit. It was just a beautiful thing. I’m just proud of us, and I’m just happy for us.”

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The Dodgers trailed 5-0 against an unhittable Cole early, only to score five unearned runs by taking advantage of the Yankees’ many defensive miscues in the fifth. They got only 1 1/3 innings out of starter Jack Flaherty a night after a bullpen game, which meant deploying an army of arms to navigate a revived Yankee lineup. And they trailed again in the late innings, only to manufacture the tying and go-ahead runs off high-leverage relievers Tommy Kahnle and Luke Weaver.

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In a World Series stocked with superstars and heavy on historical significance, the Dodgers proved themselves the deeper and more fundamentally sound club. And in hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy on the heels of a 162-game season, they quieted anyone who claimed that their ongoing run of NL West dominance – including 11 division titles, 12 consecutive postseason appearances and five seasons with 100-plus wins dating back to 2013 – was marred by mostly empty Octobers, save for one burst of brilliance in the COVID-shortened 2020 season.

“Everybody talks [crap] about 2020 and whatever,” Buehler said. “But they can’t say a whole lot about it now.”

The Dodgers are champions now in a format that needs no additional explanation. En route to the franchise’s eighth title, they outlasted the division-rival Padres in a scintillating five-game Division Series, overwhelmed the Mets in the NLCS and humbled a Yankees team that had reached the Fall Classic for the first time since 2009 and had the raucous home crowds to prove it.

L.A. was led by one of the greatest offensive performances in World Series history from Freddie Freeman, whose pair of RBIs in Game 5 gave him a Fall Classic record-tying 12 in only five games and the World Series MVP honors. But the Dodgers’ performance in the clincher was also evidence of how they don’t always need a gargantuan walk-off grand slam like the one Freeman provided in Game 1 – or, in fact, any balls over the wall – to piece together a postseason win.

And they absolutely ripped out the hearts of the Yankees and their home fans.

“This,” said Cole, “is as bad as it gets.”

An emotional Yankees manager Aaron Boone added: “I’m heartbroken. It doesn't take away my pride of what that room means to me and what that group forged this year and what we've been through to get here. But I'm heartbroken. I'm heartbroken, and I'm heartbroken for those guys that poured so much into this. The ending is cruel. It always is.”

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The Dodgers won a Game 5 of wild extremes.

After going hitless in the first inning in each of the World Series’ first four games, the Bronx Bombers erupted in the first inning of this one. Facing Flaherty, Aaron Judge shook off his persistent postseason struggles with a 403-foot homer to the opposite field in right. And when Jazz Chisholm Jr. went back to back with a solo shot of his own to make it 3-0, Yankee Stadium was shaking.

Seemingly unlocked by Anthony Volpe’s Game 4 grand slam, the Yankee offense kept coming in the third, when Giancarlo Stanton obliterated Ryan Brasier’s elevated fastball for a solo blast – his seventh homer of this postseason.

Three innings, three dingers, and the Yankees were ahead, 5-0. The series, it appeared, would be heading back west.

But then came one of the most damaging defensive innings you’ll ever see.

It happened in the fifth. To that point, Cole had held the Dodgers hitless. But Kiké Hernández broke it up with a leadoff single. Tommy Edman then sent a fly ball Judge’s way in center field, but the ball kicked off Judge’s glove for his first error of 2024.

“I just didn’t make the play,” Judge said succinctly.

Will Smith then reached on a fielder’s choice when Volpe fielded a grounder to short and threw errantly to third on an attempted force play.

Thanks to the two errors, the Dodgers had the bases loaded. Cole settled down to strike out Gavin Lux and Shohei Ohtani. But then he made an inexplicable gaffe of his own when he didn’t cover first on a Betts grounder down the first-base line. First baseman Anthony Rizzo couldn’t beat Betts to the bag, Hernández scored, and the Dodgers were on the board.

“I took a bad angle to the ball,” Cole said. “I wasn’t sure how hard he hit it. By the time the ball got by me, I was not in a position to cover first. Neither of us were.”

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It only got worse for the Yankees from there. The unstoppable Freeman smacked a single to center to drive in a pair and make it 5-3. Then Teoscar Hernández lofted a long double off the wall in left-center to bring Betts and Freeman home to tie it at 5, with all the Dodgers’ runs in the inning unearned.

“We just took advantage of every mistake they made in that inning,” Teoscar Hernández said. “We put some good at-bats together. We put the ball in play. A lot of people say when you put the ball in play, things might happen. It happened to us in that inning, and we scored five runs.”

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Now, Yankee Stadium was stunned. But when New York regained the lead on a Stanton sacrifice fly in the sixth, the anticipation of a Game 6 was in the air again.

The Dodgers, though, just wouldn’t go away.

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In the eighth, they loaded the bases against Kahnle. The Yankees turned to Weaver, and Lux lifted a sac fly to center to bring in the tying run. A catcher’s interference called on Austin Wells on an Ohtani swing loaded the bases again, and Betts lifted another sac fly to center to make it 7-6.

“I had a little talk with Freddie right before that because I didn’t know what to do,” Betts said. “Freddie just said, ‘Trust your gut.’ So I went up there and just put it in play.”

After a one-out double from Judge in the eighth, Blake Treinen got some of the biggest outs of the evening when he got Stanton to fly out and Rizzo to strike out swinging. And with the ‘pen fully employed, manager Dave Roberts summoned his eighth pitcher of the evening – the most in a nine-inning World Series win. He went to Buehler, the winning pitcher in his Game 3 start on Monday and the guy who would have been in line to start a Game 7, for the final outs.

When Buehler finished a perfect inning by getting Alex Verdugo to swing through strike three, he raised his arms to his sides as the Dodgers sprinted toward the mound. With Frank Sinatra’s “New York, New York” nonetheless playing on the Yankee Stadium speakers, it was an odd end to an odd game. But this win was yet another example of the 2024 Dodgers having all the answers.

“This trophy belongs to everybody," Roberts said. “Even when we were down 5-0, they persevered, kept fighting, and now we’re world champions.”