With his tachycardic victory on Saturday in the World Series, Los Angeles Dodgers They expanded their reign in the baseball American with all the weapons of a new dynasty, starting with its Japanese aces Shohei Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
The Los Angeles franchise is the first to win two consecutive Major League titles in the last quarter of a century and has reached a total of three trophies of the last six at stake.
Ohtani, installed in the discussion of the best baseball players in history, is the main person responsible for this two-time championship although in the seventh and final game on Saturday against the Toronto Blue Jays he passed the spotlight to the most unexpected heroes.
Yamamoto was recognized with the Most Valuable Player (MVP) award after one of the greatest feats ever remembered by a pitcher in a World Series.
The Japanese, who had thrown 96 pitches as a starter in Friday’s victory, reappeared tirelessly in the final game to blank the Blue Jays in the last two innings.
The Dodgers ended up winning 5-4 with a home run by Will Smith in the eleventh inning, but they would never have gotten there if Venezuelan Miguel Rojas had not hit a home run in the ninth to tie the score.
Rojas and Smith thus rescued a Dodgers surpassed by Toronto in many phases of the tie, vindicating a supporting cast always in the shadow of galacticos like Ohtani.
Ohtani discovers his limits
In these playoffs, the Japanese had to multiply in the face of the declining level of Freddie Freeman and especially Mookie Betts, the other MVP-caliber players of the Dodgers.
Ohtani also did so by playing his dual role as pitcher and hitter for the first time in a postseason.
On the way to his second Fall Classic in two years as a Dodger, Ohtani expanded his legend with feats such as the combination of 10 strikeouts and three home runs he achieved against the Milwaukee Brewers, perhaps the best performance in baseball history.
The problems came when the Dodgers found themselves cornered by Toronto and squeezed Ohtani so much that he ended up finding the limits of his supernatural talent.
Completely exhausted, he only had one hit in the last three games and his two starts as a pitcher were disappointing.
In the first of them he took the mound less than 17 hours after concluding the marathon third game, which lasted a record 18 innings.
The other start was just four days later, in the final game on Saturday, and he ended up being retired after allowing five hits and a three-run homer in 2.1 innings.
Like last year against the Yankees, Ohtani was not voted World Series MVP but he can boast a total of victories in the only two playoff appearances of his entire career.
An inexhaustible checkbook
The Dodgers can also look to the future with confidence by having the contemporary Babe Ruth tied up for another eight seasons, as part of the monumental contract they signed him for a decade and 700 million dollars.
Once the bid for Ohtani, 31, was won, the Californians did not hesitate to recruit Yamamoto, 27, an exchange of 325 million dollars for 12 seasons.
And looking even further to the horizon, the Dodgers acquired Roki Sasaki this season, another 23-year-old Japanese gem who left flashes as a closer in the playoffs.
The Californians’ payroll exceeds $350 million, the largest among the 30 teams in the Major Leagues, and their financial muscle finds no ceiling in a league that does not impose a salary limit, as American football (NFL) and basketball (NBA) do.
The budget has not stopped growing since tycoon Mark Walter took control of the club in 2012, associated with shareholders such as former basketball player Earvin “Magic” Johnson.
Walter has just expanded his sports empire by acquiring the NBA Lakers in the largest transaction in the history of American sports, valued at around $10 billion.
