Tomorrow night. Game 1 of the 2024 World Series. Los Angeles Dodgers (98-64) vs. New York Yankees (94-68) at Dodger Stadium.
The Boroughs of New York: A poster from 1943, when three MLB teams played in New York.
There are five boroughs in the city. Other than Staten Island, each has hosted an MLB team:
Brooklyn – Brooklyn Dodgers (moved from Ebbets Field to LA in 1958)
Manhattan – NY Giants (moved from the Polo Grounds to SF in 1958)
The Bronx – NY Yankees
Queens – NY Mets (expansion team founded in 1962)
Three of those franchises were in the final four of this year’s postseason.
ALCS – Yankees over Guardians: The Yankees took early leads and won the first two games at Yankee Stadium, 5-2 and 6-3. Not much excitement for those of us rooting for Cleveland.
Game 3 was at Progressive Field in Cleveland. This was an epic battle that Cleveland fans (and baseball junkies like me) will long remember. I’ll even recall where I was.
The game started at 4:08 KC time. Rita and I watched the first few innings on TV before heading out to dinner at Story with Molly Ellison. The Guardians held a 3-1 lead as we arrived at the restaurant. When next I checked, the Yankees had taken a 4-3 lead (Judge and Stanton homers). Damn Yankees. The Yankees added a run in the 9th to make it 5-3. Our dinner was good, the score was not. But then it got better. The Guardians scored two in the 9th (5-5) to take the game into extra innings. About the time we were eating our donut dessert, the Guardians won it in the 10th (7-5).
What I did not appreciate from just checking scores on my phone was how dramatic the finish had been. Behind 5-3, with one on and two outs in the bottom of the 9th, Jhonkensy Noel hit a 2-run homer to tie the game. In the 10th, again with one on and two outs, David Fry hit a walk-off 2-run homer (below). Video here.
The Guardians kept it exciting in Games 4 and 5, but the Yankees won in the 9th and 10th in the two games. The final blow came when Yankee star Juan Soto gave a clinic on how to wait out a pitcher. After fouling off several pitches, he got one he liked and hit a 3-run homer. Video of his full at bat here. Cleveland put up a good fight, but lost the ALCS, four games to one.
The big two of the Yankee lineup delivered five homers (Judge – 2 and Soto – 3). But the leader in home runs (4) and RBIs (7) was Giancarlo Stanton who was also the nemesis of the Royals in the ALDS. He deservedly took home the MVP trophy.
NLCS – Dodgers over Mets: If you Google the “Mets” and “disappointment,” you find articles like “The 12 Most Tragic Moments in Mets History,” “The 50 Biggest Fails in New York Mets History,” “The Mets Are a Historical Disaster,” etc.
And the 2024 season started that way. But the Mets kept roaring back, and on the last day of the season, they squeezed into a Wild Card slot. This prompted me to contact Simon Marciano, a lawyer I know from my working days. Simon is a die-hard Mets fan, and we both well remember the 2015 World Series when the Mets lost to the Royals. He was of course happy about the Mets making the Wild Card round, but noted that his wife told him, “Now you get to drag out your disappointment even longer.”
But the 2024 Mets surprised everyone. They beat the Brewers in the Wild Card round and then the Phillies in the NLDS. Not disappointing at all. Then came the NLCS with the Dodgers…
The games were almost all blowouts. The scores for the Dodgers four victories: 9-0, 8-0, 10-2 and 10-5. For the Mets: 7-3, 12-6. Little drama.
The 46 runs scored by the Dodgers are the most for any postseason series, even those that lasted seven games.
Shohei Ohtani, Mookie Betts and Max Muncy of the Dodgers all had a great series, but the MVP surprise was Tommy Edman. At the beginning of the season, Edman was on the injured list with the Cardinals and had not yet played when he was traded to the Dodgers in July. He appeared in only 37 regular season games for the Dodgers. In the NLCS, because of team injuries, Edman took on cleanup duties in the lineup and responded with key hits game-after-game.
Mets fans were pleasantly surprised with the overall results. The team had been 11 games below .500 in early June and played into the third round of the playoffs. A heartfelt “thank you” video was posted by Mets radio broadcaster Howie Rose (click here). Simon Marciano agreed, “Howie Rose is truly great, and he got that exactly right. This year was house money and great. Who knows what next year will bring.”
Sportswriter George Vecsey covered the Mets for many years and likewise appreciated their 2024 postseason run. George is a friend of Hot Stove through our mutual friend Bill Wakefield who pitched for the Mets in 1964. In a blog post titled “Metsies: Agita and Glory,” George wrote of watching a Wild Card game “more fatalistically than fanatically” – a nod to the Mets sometimes “disappointing” history.
George’s post is here, and I admit a little ego trip in providing the link. In discussing fandom in baseball cities, George wrote, “I also love the Kansas City posts from Lonnie Shalton, lawyer and music buff and fan of the Royals as well as Negro League history. For a glimpse into the heart of a fan: [Hot Stove archives link]”
Thank you, George.
World Series Matchup: The teams with the best records in the AL and NL. Huge payrolls. The likely MVP for each league. Suspect pitching (so should see a lot of runs). And big TV ratings (Fox Network and MLB ecstatic).
This will be the twelfth World Series between the Dodgers and Yankees, the most for any pair of teams. Next in line are the Yankees/Giants with seven and the Yankees/Cardinals with five.
A little history on the first 11…
Yankee Stadium (in the Bronx) and Ebbets Field (in Brooklyn): Before the Dodgers moved to L.A. in 1958, the Yankees and the Dodgers met seven times in a cross-borough World Series.
1941, 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953. The first five times did not go well for the Dodgers. They lost every time, leading the long-suffering fans to adopt the slogan “Wait Till Next Year.”
1955. This turned out to be “next year.” “Dem Bums” finally won. One of the big moments was Jackie Robinson’s steal of home (and Yogi Berra’s reaction; classic video here).
1956. The Dodgers returned to losing the Series, highlighted by Don Larsen’s perfect game. The Series featured the home run leaders of both leagues, Mickey Mantle (52) and Duke Snider (43).
That was the last time the AL/NL homer leaders met in the World Series until 2024…
The 1940s and 1950s were golden years for the two teams. The Yankees were a true dynasty with players like DiMaggio, Rizzuto, Berra, Mantle, Ford etc.
The Dodgers countered with Robinson, Snider, Furillo, Campanella, Newcomb, Hodges, Reese, etc. who would become known as the “Boys of Summer,” the title of Roger Kahn’s classic 1972 book.
Another great book about those years is from Dodger fan and presidential historian Doris Kearns Goodwin who kept score as a young girl listening to the games on the radio. The old slogan “Wait Till Next Year” was adopted for the title of her 1997 book. Goodwin gave up her Dodger fandom when the team moved to Los Angeles.
My favorite Yankee book about that era is The Last Boy: Mickey Mantle by Jane Leavy (2010).
Yankee Stadium (still in the Bronx) and Dodger Stadium (in Chavez Ravine): The teams have met four times since the Dodgers relocated to Los Angeles.
1963. Dodgers won. Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax were a tough duo to beat. Another superb Jane Leavy book is Sandy Koufax: A Lefty’s Legacy (2002).
1977. Yankees won. Reggie Jackson becomes “Mr. October.”
1978. Yankees won. The Yankees were lucky to be in the Series, needing a fluke home run by Bucky “F—-g” Dent to beat the Red Sox in a one-game AL East playoff. The Yankees then beat the Royals in the ALCS and the Dodgers in the Series.
1981. Dodgers won. The big baseball story of the year was Fernandomania. Fernando Valenzuela, a 20-year-old Dodger rookie from Mexico, became a fan favorite and won both the NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Awards. After his playing days, he was a long-time Spanish-language radio broadcaster for the Dodgers. Sadly, he died this week at the age of 63.
Click here for the opening TV commentary by Howard Cosell at the 1981 World Series (NY and LA are “pulsating”). After that Series, 43 years went by without any Dodger/Yankee postseason play. But now…
2024. Batter up.
[Stadium Trivia: This will be the first Series between these teams to be played in the new Yankee Stadium (opened in 2009).]
Japan and Ohtani: The impact of Ohtani moving from the Angels to the Dodgers has been amazing. And the $700 million contract for Ohtani is working out well. Dodgers are first in attendance and jersey sales. Ad buys are way up.
Maybe the most impressive bonus is the sizable added base of fans in Japan. For the NLDS game on a Friday night between the Dodgers and Padres, the viewership in the U.S. was 7.5 million. In Japan, where it was Saturday morning, the viewership was 12.9 million. I’m guessing the World Series number in Japan will be staggering.
MLB has promoted Ohtani in Japan with 131 billboards to feature each of his homers (54) and steals (59). All 131 can be seen in this slide show.
The emphasis on Japan will continue into next year when the Dodgers start their regular season against the Cubs with two games in Tokyo.
Kansas City Connection: I was rooting for Cleveland in the ALCS. Not just because of the Damn Yankees, but because Cleveland has not won a World Series since 1948 (76 years and counting). They have been in the World Series five other times, winning in 1920 and losing in 1954, 1995, 1997 and 2016.
That 2016 Series had a local connection. In August of that season, Kansas Citian John Sherman became a minority owner of the Guardians (then the Indians). Good timing. Cleveland won the pennant that year, losing to the Cubs in the World Series (the first Cubs World Series win since 1908, an even longer drought than Cleveland’s).
Below, John Sherman with Cleveland’s trophy for the 2016 AL pennant. In 2019, Sherman became majority owner of the Royals, and I’m looking forward to a similar photo when the Royals head to their fifth World Series.
Lonnie’s Jukebox – Temptations Edition: Francisco Lindor of the Mets will likely be the runner-up to Shohei Ohtani for the NL MVP. Lindor’s walkup song this year has been “My Girl” by the Temptations, generating fan sing-a-longs when he comes to the plate (click here).
The song was a #1 hit in 1965, almost six decades ago. The only surviving Temptations member from that recording is Otis Williams, and he continues to tour with the current version of the group. With an open date on their schedule, they performed at Citi Field prior to Game 5 of the NLCS. They sang the “Star Spangled Banner” (clip here) and then donned Mets jerseys to sing “My Girl” (clip here). Otis Williams revealed in an interview that he is a Dodger fan.
The Temptations were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1969. Among their 80 songs that made Billboard’s Pop Singles Chart:
“My Girl” (1965). Smokey Robinson wrote this song for his fellow Motown artists. This is one of those songs you know as soon as you hear the beginning guitar riff by Robert White of the Funk Brothers.
“Get Ready” (1966).
“Cloud Nine” (1968).
“I’m Gonna Make You Love Me” (1968). With Diana Ross and the Supremes.
“I Can’t Get Next to You” (1969). Their second #1 hit.
“Just My Imagination (Running Away with Me)” (1971). Their third #1 hit.
“Papa Was a Rollin’ Stone” (1972). Their fourth #1 hit.
Walk-Off Photo: The 2024 postseason introduced the latest in MLB uniform advertising – “Strauss” on the batting helmet. Strauss is a German company that produces workwear (protective clothing and shoes). It operates internationally and entered the U.S. market last year. The company chose baseball to popularize their name and their “iconic ostrich logo” (“strauss” is German for ostrich).
