“Strike 3! Dodgers win it all in 2020!!!” – Joe Buck
I’ve been on an emotional high for the past couple of days. On Tuesday, my beloved Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3-1 to win the 2020 World Series in 6 games. Corey Seager was named the World Series MVP. For the Dodgers, it’s their 1st championship since 1988…the 2nd in my fandom and the 1st I’ve actually been coherent to understand the game of baseball. Hoisting the Commissioner’s Trophy was a fitting end to a season in which the team was the best wire-to-wire.
The 2020 Major League Baseball season will definitely go down in history because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the way that the season was reduced to 60 regular-season games, all played in each team’s geographic region—in the case of the Dodgers, they played all National League West teams as normal and all American League West teams as well. The team only lost 1 series all season…a 3-game set to the Rockies. They breezed past the Brewers, winning the inaugural NL Wild Card series 2-0. They swept the upstart Padres in the NL Division Series before getting off the mat in the NL Championship Series, coming back to win the pennant after being down 3-1 to the Braves.
This championship is sweet to me. It atones for the heartbreaking losses in 2017 and 20218 to the Astros and Red Sox, respectively…although those particular World Series matchups may have been tainted by the cheating scandal. This World Series championship definitely eases the sting of the NLCS losses in 2008, 2009, 2013, and 2016. It erases the depression that came with losses to the Cardinals, Mets, and Nationals in the 2014, 2015, and 2019 NLDS, respectively. This championship validates Dave Roberts as the right man for the job. Sure, he makes some questionable decisions with the bullpen and the defensive alignments but he’s head and shoulders better than the other contender for the job, Gabe Kapler…and he’s definitely better than punk-ass Don Mattingly.
I’m so happy with this championship win. For guys like Clayton Kershaw, Kenley Jansen, Pedro Báez, and Justin Turner, this was sweet. Even for guys like Julio Urías, Seager, Kike Hernandez, Joc Pederson, and Chris Taylor, this title was fantastic. Those guys have been in the trenches during this current run of dominance and they deserve all of the accolades. Of course, there were guys who didn’t get to enjoy this moment. Yasiel Puig comes to mind. As does Adrian Gonzalez, Andre Ethier, Kenta Maeda, and my dude Hyun-jin Ryu. It would’ve been so fantastic to see them as players on this team but the business of baseball is just that: the business of baseball.
The bottom line though is that the Dodgers are the champs. Nobody can ever take that away from me. The Urías called third strike of Willy Adames to clinch the title is my Best Moment as a fan of the Dodgers. We the champs, baby!!!
