October 2024: CHAMPIONS
Image by Nick M.W. (FFP)
Christmas arrived two months early.
“I bleed Dodger blue and when I die, I’m going to the big Dodger in the sky.”
- Tommy Lasorda
This month was really only about one thing: Los Angeles Dodgers baseball. The NFL season was chugging along, and the new NBA season recently tipped off, but the Dodgers owned October. What started out as a postseason run with speculation about the starting pitch being the team’s biggest weakness and whether their limp bats from postseasons past would find some juice this time around ended with a phenomenal Game 5 win against the Yankees in the World Series.
NLDS
Round one of the playoffs for the Dodgers began in L.A. versus the San Diego Padres. For baseball fans, this was a highly anticipated matchup between division rivals. For me, it was a nightmare scenario. Despite an injury bug that wiped out the rotation like the Plague, the Dodgers somehow finished the season with the best record in baseball. The Padres started their season off a bit lukewarm, but then caught fire in the second half of the season. They were the best team in baseball down the stretch, but the Dodgers held them off to win the division.
A week later, they were back at it in a rematch of the 2022 NLDS. The Padres smoked the Dodgers back then. I hated baseball for a few months after that, until Spring Training. It was a bad way to end another great season of Dodgers baseball. In 2023, they followed it up with another first-round exit at the hands of a different NL West rival: the Arizona Diamondbacks.
History did not repeat itself this year. Even though the Padres were the hotter team with the better roster coming into the playoffs, they choked away a 2-1 series lead in a best-of-five and went home from school early. The Dodgers pitching, especially the bullpen, held the Padres scoreless for two and a half games. They were dominated by the Dodgers “suspect” pitching.
Series highlight: Shohei’s game-tying home run in Game 1.
NLCS
The second hottest team during baseball’s second half was the New York Mets. They were something like eleven games below five hundred before the All-Star break and managed to snag a Wild Card spot. After smacking around the Phillies in the NLDS, the Mets were hyped off of what they believed to be some sort of miracle run to the World Series. It was like 1969 all over again, except it wasn’t meant to be.
As it turned out, beating the Padres did something to the Dodgers. They are a major-market team that spent a billion dollars in the offseason to bring in a couple of top pitchers, one bad ass Dominican baller, and the best baseball player in the world. These guys joined a team that already had Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and the artists formerly known as Clayton Kershaw and Walker Buehler. This team was stacked, and all of the talent and excellent trades kept them at the top of the heap all season long. When the going got tough against San Diego, the Dodgers dug in and got scrappy. They earned grit. True grit. Playing the Mets in the second round seemed like a downgrade in talent.
The Dodgers won this series in six games. All four of their wins were blowouts, as were both of their losses. It never felt competitive.
Series highlight: Tommy Edman doing it all.
World Series
This was a dream matchup for not only MLB fans but also for fans of the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. These two teams have squared off in the World Series more than any other two teams in MLB. Each team featured an MVP candidate and a few other baseball superstars. Every talking head glizzed out on calling this a “heavyweight matchup,” and it sounded stupid, but they were right. Sort of. Everyone was hyped to see these teams go head-to-head again, but Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani slumped. Shohei hurt his shoulder in Game 2, which didn’t improve his hitting. In this regard, the series didn’t resemble a heavyweight matchup. The Dodgers went up 3-0 in the series before getting smacked around 11-4 in Game 4, giving Yankees fans a false sense of hope. They were doomed.
Game 5 didn’t initially give off that vibe. The Yankees went up 5-0 really quickly before they choked on a hog in the top of the fifth inning and let the Dodgers have a little shred of hope. That hope snowballed into the outright will to win it all, and that is exactly what the 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers did.
Go Blue!
Series highlight: Freddie Freeman’s Game 1 walk-off grand slam.
Dodgers 2024 Championship Run Playlist
As the section heading suggests, I made a playlist in honor of the Los Angeles Dodgers playoff run. I picked a song for each win the Dodgers needed to capture the World Series this season. That’s 11 song for 11 wins. Every song is by an L.A. artist/band or is about the City of Angels, and each song was picked for a reason. Check it.
“Welcome To The Jungle” (Guns N’ Roses) - Shohei’s game-tying home run in Game 1 of the NLDS was electric and set the tone for the series and the playoffs. This team wasn’t going down queitly.
“Nuthin’ But A ‘G’ Thang” (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg) - The Dodgers were down 2 games to 1 in Game 4 of the best-of-five NLDS. The Padres thought they had the Dodgers beat once again, but the Dodgers bullpen shut down the Padres like a bunch of G’s.
“The Next Episode" (Dr. Dre, Snoop Dogg) - In the deciding Game 5, the two Hernandez’s (Kiké and Teoscar) smacked solo dingers while Yoshinobu Yamamoto and the bullpen shutout the Padres to send them packing and the Dodgers on to the next roud.
“Nobody Does It Better” (Warren G, Nate Dogg) - Jack Flaherty went seven scoreless innings and struck out six Mets in this dominating 9-0 win in Game 1 of the NLCS.
“California Love” (2Pac, Roger, Dr. Dre) - With the NLCS tied, the Dodgers went to Queens and held the Mets scoreless for the seocnd time in the series while putting up eight runs in the win.
“Not Like Us” (Kendrick Lamar) - Yoshi returned to the mound in Game 4 and struck out eight Mets as the Dodgers put up double-digits in a butt-kikcing.
“New York, New York” (The Dogg Pound, Snoop Dogg) - After getting smacked by the Mets in Game 5, the Dodger put one New York team to rest back in L.A. and got ready to welcome the other New York team, the Yankees, to Dodger Stadium for the World Series.
“Baila Conmigo” (Dayvi, Victor Cardenas, Kelly Ruiz) - Not since 1981 had the two biggest franchises in baseball met in the Fall Classic. Game 1 had a Hollywood ending when Freddie Freeman blasted a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 10th, channeling Kirk Gibson ‘88 in one of the greates moments in team history.
“Bow Down” (Westside Connection) - Ice Cube perfomred this song and the next one before Game 2 in L.A., and the Dodgers went on to beat the Yankees.
“It Was A Good Day” (Ice Cube) - If not for a meaningless 2-run home run by Alex Verdugo in the bottom of the ninth inning, the Dodgers would have shutout the Yankees in Game 3. They still got the win and held an insurmountable 3-0 series lead.
“I Love L.A.” (Randy Newman) - The Yankees offense game to life in Game 4, and they avoided the sweep. It looked bad for the Dodgers early in Game 5, but you can never underestimate the heart of a champion. Dodgers in five!
Saturday Night Special
I started making 5-minute videos on YouTube. It ain’t much, but it’s an honest few minutes of “work”. Here’s the latest video.
