Dodgers celebrate winning it all

10/31/2024 02:57 PM

A cornucopia of reaction from the Dodgers winning Game 5 of the World Series, and returning to Los Angeles with a championship in hand

Perhaps you've heard that the Dodgers won the World Series with a win in Game 5 on Wednesday night. The comeback from down five runs to the Yankees in the fifth inning set a record for largest deficit overcome in a clinching game in the Fall Classic.

The first run of that fateful fifth-inning feast came when Mookie Betts beat out a grounder to a vacant first base. The game ended with Walker Buehler earning the save, just two days after he earned the win in Game 3.

On Wednesday night we already captured some of the immediate reaction from the Dodgers celebrating their second World Series win in five years. Now let's look at some other stories surrounding the game.

Here are the various calls of the last out of Game 5 on Wednesday night, all in one place.

Manager Dave Roberts talked about the fight of the 2024 Dodgers, telling Ken Rosenthal at The Athletic, "In years past, we would have lost this game. This team, look what they did."

Andy McCullough wrote about Roberts' path to the Hall of Fame. If you want supporting data, only 24 managers in NL/AL history have won four pennants, and 22 of them are in the Hall of Fame, with the still-active Roberts and Bruce Bochy the only exceptions. Of those 22 already in Cooperstown, only 10 have more World Series wins than Roberts' two.

Freddie Freeman, the World Series MVP, was not only playing on a badly sprained ankle, but also dealt with an intercostal injury into the NLCS, wrote Chelsea Janes of the Washington Post.

Freeman's father Fred talked to Rowan Kavner of Fox Sports after Game 5:

"It was beyond what any human should do," Freeman's father said from the field at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday, where he celebrated with his son. "I don't know any other person that could have done that. Maybe Shohei, what he's been doing right now. Shohei's a warrior, also."

Speaking of Ohtani's left shoulder subluxation:

"Rather than regroup after each untimely and abrupt exit in October," wrote Hannah Keyser at The Guardian, "The Dodgers have repeatedly doubled down, somehow equally adroit at getting their money's worth on players who had already won MVPs elsewhere as they are at upcycling undervalued reclamation projects."

Lakers legend and Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson talked to Bill Shaikin of the Los Angeles Times:

"It's been crazy. You think about, yes, I'm a Laker, but I'm a true blue Dodger, too. Hopefully, one day they will win it again, but right now the city is owned, today, by the Dodgers."

Said Bill Plaschke of the LA Times: "The team that chokes swallowed swords. The team that crumbles spit fire. The most teeth-grinding great team in baseball chomped through a legacy of frustration on the sort of October night that, while once forgettable, now will live forever."

Buehler insisted on the bus ride to the stadium before Game 5 that he would be available out of the bullpen, Daniel Hudson told Emma Baccelieri of Sports Illustrated:

"As soon as he said that," Hudson says, "I was just like, Walker's pitching tonight."

He could not possibly have guessed then what it would take for that situation to come to pass.

Mookie Betts on the Dodgers' comeback from down five runs in Game 5, to Alden González at ESPN: "Crazy. That's the definition of the 2024 Dodgers."

"This game was no different than our entire season," Max Muncy told Juan Toribio of MLB.com. "Get dealt a couple blows, come back from it. Get dealt some blows, come back from it. This game was literally our season in a nutshell. And it was special."

There were many Dodgers items from this World Series that will now be seen at the National Baseball Hall of Fame:

Dylan Hernández at the LA Times wrote about how Shohei Ohtani drove himself to become a World Series champion.

Catcher Will Smith made sure Buehler got the ball from the final out of the World Series, a strikeout of old friend Alex Verdugo, wrote David Adler at MLB.com.

Jacob Burch and I talked about the Dodgers winning the World Series on the Three-Inning Save podcast.