A unicorn led off the game with a single and then trotted out to the mound to pitch the bottom of the first. Another pitcher won Games 2, 6, and 7 of the World Series, throwing 17.2 innings along the way. A catcher set a record, squatting behind the plate for 74 Fall Classic frames and ultimately ended the series by hitting the final go-ahead home run.
Just as everyone feared or sneered, the Los Angeles Dodgers are champions. Again. In what some forecasted as a harbinger of doom, the sinister strategy of employing the best baseball player on the planet along with a generous number of his nearly equal peers proved effective. It’s not fair, some people will say in the coming months about the fact that the team broadly believed to be the best ultimately won it all.
But, for now, there is terrible news for the “Dodgers are bad for baseball” crowd: The 2025 World Series was fantastic. The 11-inning Game 7 instantly rocketed to the upper echelons of all-time sporting events. Alongside the 18-inning Game 3. And the Ohtani Game from the Championship Series. An epic October. This is why we watch baseball. This is why we love baseball. A decade from now, there will be diehard fans who will say they got hooked on the sport this autumn.
The sense of awe would be the same if the Blue Jays had prevailed instead – they supplied half the drama and half the highlights. Ultimately, the series crowned a credible champ not just because the Dodgers were favored for months, but because, in the end, they had to scratch and claw their way to the top. Just because their victory was projected doesn’t mean it was easy or predictable. The many jaw-dropping moments when the entire series seemed to hinge on a single swing or a swipe of the glove or mere centimeters (both because it was so close and because it was in Canada): Don’t tell me you saw those coming.
If this is what a broken sport feels like, don’t fix it.
To be a little less sanctimonious and a lot less poetic: People take issue with Dodgers because of their payroll. Including the penalties for blowing past the various tax thresholds, the Dodgers paid more than half a billion dollars for their rings this season. Small market owners would tell you the Dodgers should be cheaper. If the Dodgers didn’t try so hard at roster construction it would be easier to keep up. Is that how competition works?
The Dodgers won the World Series because they’re the most expensive team. And because they are good at spending money – which, as the New York Mets demonstrated this season, is not always a given. Even the fans and defenders would have to agree. It’s impossible to separate the strength of the club – an All-Star squad of nine-figure free agents – from the success. It costs a lot to be the premier destination in the sport. To pay Mookie Betts what the Red Sox wouldn’t. To pay Freddie Freeman what the Braves wouldn’t. To pay for practically an entire ballot of Cy Young contenders, something that means it’s not too much of a problem if some of them have to spend the bulk of the regular season on the injured list.
And then there’s Ohtani. For six seasons the second coming of Babe Ruth languished on LA’s other team. Even alongside the unassuming greatness of Mike Trout, Ohtani on the Angels never made it to the national stage of the postseason. That’s a problem with baseball; it takes more than one or two elite players to build a winning club.
Baseball fans loved Ohtani when he was an Angel. But now they love him and they get to watch him start Game 7 of the World Series. Ever since he joined the Dodgers, he’s played till the last day of the last series of the season every season. Isn’t that better for baseball? Last year, he could only hit and still he was a revelation. This year, fans watched the full breadth of his abilities pushed to new heights by the stakes of October. Maybe it will get boring eventually, but that’s not the case just yet.
In the same offseason that the Dodgers agreed to pay Ohtani $700m, they also made Yoshinobu Yamamoto the highest-paid pitcher of all time. Truly, an embarrassment of riches. Ohtani’s contract is famously deferred such that its present day value is significantly lower than the eye-popping number associated with it. It’s a concession he made for the explicit reason of affording the Dodgers enough financial flexibility to spend on other top talent. That’s what championship-winning teams do with financial flexibility: they flex it.
Some people assumed Yamamoto, who came to LA from Japan, picked the Dodgers because his countryman, Ohtani, was there. In his opening press conference, Yamamoto clarified: He wanted to win. And the Dodgers seemed like the best place to do that.
But, of course, that perception and the eventual reality is inexorable from their willingness to sign both Ohtani and Yamamoto just a few weeks apart. A billion dollars worth of baseball talent, one of whom started Game 7 and the other who finished it. Yamamoto thought he could win with the Dodgers. Turns out, the Dodgers won because of his heroics. Is it a flaw in the system that the guy who was capable of winning three games in a seven-game series ended up not only on the team that was willing to pay him the most to do so, but one that also had enough other high-priced players to wind up in that situation? Is it a crisis that the Dodgers were willing to out-bid everyone else to ensure Yamamoto was on the biggest stage and not sitting at home receiving slightly smaller checks from another club?
Baseball will spend the offseason, and the next 18 months, debating those very much not rhetorical questions. The Dodgers’ trophy will shine a spotlight on a payroll disparity that has proven meaningful if not actually predictive. A reckoning awaits, tiresome as it may be.
So here’s two more questions to take into winter: Is it fair that the team that tried the hardest to assemble the most talent ultimately won? I think so. And was it fun? Oh, absolutely.
