History surrounds these Los Angeles Dodgers. You don’t craft a roster with this many Hall of Famers without acknowledging it. You don’t establish a golden era of franchise history without seeking it. You don’t spend this much money on payroll without craving it.
You don’t get this far — back to the World Series — without embracing it.
The desire to become baseball’s first repeat champions in a quarter century, to bring home the Commissioner’s Trophy for the third time in the past six years, is an unspoken part of everything.
In fact, manager Dave Roberts avoids talking about legacy and dynasty.
“A lot of that I feel is meant for other people that aren’t playing,” Roberts said. “Let them have those debates. It’s our job to kind of put those topics on the table and we have an opportunity to do that.”
Sometimes, the Dodgers just had to say it out loud, anyway. Every once in a while, over the course of a season that has felt long, someone would send a message in the team’s player group text thread with a reminder of the stakes of this whole endeavor.
Infielder Miguel Rojas this week recalled one such text: “We got a really good opportunity to do something really big. Not just for us, but for the city, and for the organization, for baseball.”
Max Muncy and Freddie Freeman are among the familiar October faces who appreciate the significance of what Freeman called ‘a modern-day dynasty.’ (Ronald Martinez / Getty Images)
This is the guiding light for it all. Four wins over the Toronto Blue Jays would put the Dodgers in rarified air.
“I think that’s one of the things that kept us going and motivated,” Rojas said. “Now, it’s here. We have it in front of us. We’re gonna give it everything we have. And I know everybody in this clubhouse is looking for the same thing.”
Rojas pointed to the scene that followed the Dodgers’ clinch of the National League pennant against the Brewers. There was no pile of bodies waiting to bust out of the dugout as the final out landed in Andy Pages’ glove. Will Smith did not rush Roki Sasaki in elation. Shohei Ohtani, whose performance in the clincher was perhaps the finest single-game performance ever, commemorated the moment with a series of high fives by the mound that mirrored what he might’ve done after a win in June.
“The celebration wasn’t even there, because everybody is consumed with winning a World Series,” Rojas said. “That’s the only celebration that we want to really have.”
They want to write the word dynasty in Dodger blue script by adding another unassailable run of October success.
“Just winning one is hard,” Freddie Freeman said.
To keep tacking on?
“I think if you can get three in the matter of five or six years, I guess you could say it is one,” Freeman continued. “But I think the sustained winning the Dodgers have done for so long, and then just cemented with some championships, yeah, I guess you can call this, if we do do it, a modern-day dynasty.”
They are the team of a decade that isn’t even halfway over, hoping to join a short list of teams this quarter-century that even dared to consider themselves a dynasty.
The Houston Astros appear to be on the tail end of an era that can go blow-for-blow with what the Dodgers have accomplished. The Astros reached the Championship Series in eight consecutive seasons from 2017 to 2023. They claimed World Series titles in 2017 and 2022 while losing the Fall Classic in 2019 and 2021. The Astros won 100 games or more four times and won the AL West crown seven times in eight seasons, despite constant turmoil, a cheating scandal and a complicated legacy.
The Boston Red Sox broke their 86-year title drought in 2004 en route to four World Series titles in the span of 18 seasons. That stretch of success ended, in many ways, with the Red Sox trading Mookie Betts to these Dodgers.
The San Francisco Giants remain the only team since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees to win three titles in a six-year span, but any consideration of the Giants’ credentials comes with the caveat. Despite winning in 2010, 2012 and 2014, they missed the postseason in 2009, 2011, 2013 and 2015.
The Dodgers’ case is only increasing by the round amid their 13th consecutive postseason run, one shy of the postseason record set by the 1991-2005 Atlanta Braves (which excludes the ’94 strike season). The Dodgers’ five pennants have thrust Roberts into a company that only 16 other managers have ever reached — none in as few seasons as the 10 that Roberts has had in his current post. Not even Walter Alston, perhaps the most accomplished manager in Dodgers history, reached that in his first 10 seasons like Roberts did.
Over 23 seasons, Alston led Dodger teams to seven pennants and four World Series titles.
“Those are names that you never imagine yourself in that same conversation,” Roberts said.
The Dodgers have littered their roster with historic figures, for whom adding another title could only burnish their legacy.
“It would mean everything to me,” Betts said. “Obviously, we play the game to win a World Series. That’s doing pretty well if you can win three titles in six years. My end goal, probably the end goal of everyone, is to be in the Hall of Fame one day. So I definitely think that helps the case.
“If you’re talking about going to the postseason every year, having a chance to win the World Series year after year — that would qualify as some type of dynasty.”
The Dodgers have dominated the NL West, with 12 titles in those 13 seasons, while seemingly having no end to this run in sight. That level of excellence, Roberts said, “puts us on a Mt. Rushmore of sports organizations.”
The Dodgers have continued to downplay discussions about their place in history with a World Series still ahead. But with them being this close to history, they might as well accomplish it.
“I think everyone’s locked and loaded, ready to go, ready to see some history and we’re ready to make it,” Betts said.