TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Baseball could be in the midst of a Dodgers dynasty, a much-debated word reserved for teams achieving\u2026<\/p>\n
TORONTO (AP) \u2014 Baseball could be in the midst of a Dodgers<\/a> dynasty, a much-debated word reserved for teams achieving sweeping success.<\/p>\n By beating Toronto in the World Series<\/a> that starts Friday night, Los Angeles would capture its third title in six years.<\/p>\n \u201cJust winning one is hard,\u201d Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said. \u201cIf you can get three in a matter of five, six years, I guess you could say it is one. But I think it\u2019s the sustained winning that the Dodgers have done for so long and then obviously to cement it with some championships, I think, yeah, I guess you can call this if we do it a modern-day dynasty.\u201d<\/p>\n Baseball has no widely accepted definition.<\/p>\n Most give pantheon status to the 1949-53 New York Yankees (five straight titles), the 1936-39 Yankees (four), the 1972-74 Oakland Athletics (three) and the 1998-2000 Yankees (three) \u2014 the last team to win consecutive championships. The Dodgers are the first defending champion to reach the World Series since the 2009 Philadelphia Phillies.<\/p>\n \u201cIf I was broadcasting, I would not refer to them as a dynasty,\u201d Emmy-winning commentator<\/a> Bob Costas said. \u201cYou can compare them to the Braves who won 14 divisions in a row but got to the World Series five times and lost it four of those five times.\u201d<\/p>\n Yet he is willing to consider using the word because times have changed. The Dodgers have won 12 of the last 13 NL West titles and had 106 victories the year they finished second.<\/p>\n \u201cThere has to be lines of demarcation once you go to wild cards and then especially once you expand the playoffs as they\u2019ve now been expanded,\u201d Costas said. \u201cIf you were really the best team over 162 or 154 (games) back in the day and you proved you were the best team, now you just got to win four out of seven.\u201d<\/p>\n Mookie Betts, who has been with the Dodgers since 2020, said he\u2019s more concerned about preparing for games than contemplating the team\u2019s historical place.<\/p>\n \u201cIf you\u2019re thinking about going to the postseason and obviously having a chance to win World Serieses year after year, I guess that would kind of qualify as some type of dynasty, but I don\u2019t know what it takes to call it that,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Since the expansion era started, the only consecutive titles have been won by the 1961-62 Yankees, the mid-70s A\u2019s, the 1975-76 Cincinnati Reds, the 1977-78 Yankees, the 1992-93 Toronto Blue Jays and the late-century Yankees.<\/p>\n Earlier back-to-back titles also were won by the 1907-08 Chicago Cubs, 1910-11 Philadelphia A\u2019s, 1915-16 Red Sox, 1921-22 New York Giants, 1927-28 Yankees and 1929-30 A\u2019s.<\/p>\n John Thorn, Major League Baseball\u2019s official historian, thinks sustained success is sufficient to earn the dynasty honorific, even if every year didn\u2019t result in a title.<\/p>\n \u201cI think a dynasty is today defined by consecutive pennants or division titles won, not by World Series championships,\u201d he wrote in an email. \u201cSo I think the Atlanta Braves of recent years, the Detroit Tigers of 1907-09, or the Giants of 1911-1913, are in. Three straight WS appearances, rather than three straight titles, does it for me.\u201d<\/p>\n