Dodgers beat Yankees to win World Series in five games

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.”

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.

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.

The final game of this World Series tested the Dodgers’ 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. Former Mariner Teoscar 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. Austin 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.