Well… it finally happened.
After 32 years of trying and trying, the Los Angeles Dodgers have FINALLY won the World Series.
The 2020 season (and all of 2020 in general) was a bizarre one, culminating with Game 6, which was played 1,400 miles away at a neutral stadium. Although the fans weren’t there to celebrate with them in person, it is said that the entire city of Los Angeles stayed up well into the wee hours of the night celebrating this historic victory.
“We’ve heard it a lot, and we’ve seen a lot of highlights, and it’s fantastic,” Dave Roberts, the Dodgers’ fifth-year manager, said. “But we wanna make our own mark on Dodgers history.”
On Tuesday night, the Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays 3-1 in Game 6, giving the Dodgers their first championship since 1988 and a little over two weeks since the Lakers won their first championship in a decade. And for those wondering if Los Angeles has any plans to celebrate both with a parade during a pandemic, Mayor Eric Garcetti is up for it—as long as it’s safe.
On the other side of the coin, for Tampa the elephant in the room is Rays manager Kevin Cash’s decision to pull Snell after five scoreless innings. Cash caught some serious flack for doing so—up until that point, Snell had struck out nine Dodgers hitters and gave up two hits—and after the game definitely had his regrets.
“I regret the decision because it didn’t work out,” Cash said after the loss. “But you know, I feel like the thought process was right. If we had to do it over again, I would have the utmost confidence in Nick Anderson to get through that inning.”
That “utmost confidence” lead to Anderson giving up a double, hurling a curveball into the dirt that allowed Austin Barnes to score, and an RBI groundout and spelled the Rays doom.
“Once Austin got that hit and they went to the ‘pen, I think that Mookie looked at me with a little smile,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts admitted after the game. “We were just all kind of excited that Snell was out of the game.”
I am all for analytics, but if you coach entirely by analytics, you’re leaving out human spirit and emotion. Cash made the call that the numbers dictated. But one can’t help but feel if he had been more open-minded, there may have been a game 7. We’ll never know for sure, but one can certainly speculate. Had another, more experienced manager been at the helm, perhaps they would have played that a little differently?
But, what’s done is done. The Dodgers are the champs. Congratulations to them on their amazing season!
P.S.
Fun fact: In 2020 the Dodgers and the Lakers both are champions. There has only been one other instance of the same city winning in both sports. That was in 1988, when it was achieved by… The Lakers and Dodgers!
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