It came too late at night for the Letters Blogatory “morning edition,” but congratulations to the world champion LA Dodgers for the 4-1 victory over the New York Yankees in the World Series! I hope some of you European readers who haven’t yet gotten the baseball bug got a chance to see some of these games. There was a lot of great stuff. Sure, there were home runs and even grand slams, including a walk-off grand slam by series MVP Freddie Freeman in Game 1 that will live in Dodgers lore forever. But there was some great dueling bullpen management, some great play in the outfield, particularly from right fielder and former (foolishly traded) Red Sox player Mookie Betts, and some classic small ball. My favorite inning was the top of the fourth in Game 3. The Dodgers were at bat. Leiter walked Lux, and former Red Sox player Kiké Hernández singled to right. Edman came to the plate with Hernández at first and Lux at third, and no outs. Oh my. I looked it up: the last successful squeeze play in a world series was more than twenty years ago.¹OK, Europeans. A “squeeze play” is when there’s a runner at third and the batter bunts, intending to be thrown out at first, so that the runner has a chance to score. A “bunt” is when you tap the ball with the bat instead of swinging. Edman laid down the bunt. Lux slid in to home. Leiter fielded the bunt and threw to the catcher. Lux was called out. The replay seemed to me to show him safe. “Fraud!” cried the maddened Dodgers fans, and Echo answered “Fraud!” But one look from the replay official, and the multitude was awed. (I am not a fan of the replay rules. This is not football). Here is the play at home; decide for yourselves:

Another great thing about this series was that the two biggest superstars, Shohei Otani and Aaron Judge, didn’t do very much, Otani probably due to a shoulder injury sliding into second in Game 1, and Judge because he was in a bit of a slump. Baseball is a game of failure, and even the biggest hitters in the game fail most of the time. No one should doubt where I stand when it comes to the New York Yankees, but I was happy for Judge when he came out of his slump in Game 4 and hit a home run in the eighth. And I am not going to dunk on the team for its one really bad inning in game 5.

One unhappy but also funny moment was in Game 4, when Betts made a great catch over the wall, and two fans, who apparently had a plan for what to do in that situation, grabbed him and tried to wrest the ball from his glove. I know people sometimes get mugged in the Bronx, but really! What was funny was that the fans, who of course were ejected, wanted to argue with the umps. Look at the fan gesturing, as if to say, “The ball was already over the wall!” As though this were football and there was something magical about the ball “breaking the plane.”

Maybe the most fun I had during the series was watching Game 1 with some friends in a room full of Yankees fans. You know how they are. The suddenly silenced trash talk and sad tears when Freeman walked it off were priceless to me.

Anyway, congratulations to the Dodgers on their win, and even to the Yankees for giving us a great fall classic!

Photo credit: All-Pro Reels (CC-BY-SA)

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  OK, Europeans. A “squeeze play” is when there’s a runner at third and the batter bunts, intending to be thrown out at first, so that the runner has a chance to score. A “bunt” is when you tap the ball with the bat instead of swinging.