For the second time in five seasons and the first time in a full season since 1988, the Los Angeles Dodgers are World Series champions. It took a supremely ugly Game 5 to get them there. They will take it with a swig of Champagne.
Entering Wednesday with a 3-1 series lead but perhaps more than a few nerves after a rough loss to the New York Yankees in Game 4, the Dodgers fell behind 5-0 before a chaotic comeback put the Commissioner’s Trophy in their hands with a 7-6 victory.
It is a win few observers saw coming when the postseason began, even for one of the most talented lineups in baseball. With a rotation ravaged by injuries, the Dodgers overwhelmed opponents on offense and got just enough quality pitching to make it work.
Freddie Freeman, who homered in a record four straight games to open the Fall Classic, was named a deserving World Series MVP after the game.
The Yankees would have become the first team in World Series history to force a Game 6 after falling behind 3-0. They got started early in Game 5, as Aaron Judge broke through his postseason demons with a two-run homer in the first, and the Yankees got one more when Jazz Chisholm Jr. went back-to-back.
It was a rough start for the Dodgers’ Jack Flaherty, who was more than solid in Game 1 but exited after 1 1/3 innings Wednesday with four earned runs to his name. A Giancarlo Stanton homer off Ryan Brasier then made it a five-run lead in the third inning.
Meanwhile, Gerrit Cole was doing exactly what the Yankees paid him to do. He threw four hitless innings to open the game, and then, well, the fifth inning happened.
A series of three major defensive miscues tied the game, with the Dodgers scoring five unearned runs as Yankee Stadium went from raucous to stunned. First was Judge dropping an easy fly ball. Second was Anthony Volpe bouncing a throw to third while trying to get the lead runner. Third was Gerrit Cole declining to cover first base on a routine grounder.
The Yankees took the lead back in the sixth inning on a Stanton sacrifice fly, but the Dodgers took it back in the seventh after Tommy Kahnle loaded the bases with no outs. Another miscue followed when Austin Wells gave Shohei Ohtani a free base on a catcher’s interference, and a pair of sacrifice flies then supplied the deciding runs.
After being down five runs, the Dodgers moved into World Series-winning position, and it was almost entirely thanks to the Yankees. Blake Treinen threw 2 1/3 scoreless innings to push the lead into the ninth, and then Walker Buehler, the Dodgers’ likely Game 7 starter, finished a game that should make Yankees fans vomit for years to come.
New York had a chance to make history just by sending the series back to Los Angeles and instead got to watch MLB’s other juggernaut celebrate a World Series in the Bronx.
Here’s how it all went down on Yahoo Sports:
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