Los Angeles is known for celebrities, movie stars and for having to wait in traffic for 13 hours just to get home from work. The city is also known for its baseball, specifically the Dodgers, who have shown the baseball world once again that they are the team to beat.<\/p>\n
After sweeping the Milwaukee Brewers in this year\u2019s National League Championship Series, L.A. is headed back to the World Series for the second year in a row, despite having only the fifth best regular season record in baseball at 93-69.<\/p>\n
What stands out so much about this year\u2019s NLCS is what happened during game four. For the last few seasons, Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese baseball prodigy, has pretty much been the face of Japan, the MLB, universe and seemingly everything in between. Even his dog named Decoy is famous. The world simply can\u2019t get enough of Shohei.<\/p>\n
Anyways, Ohtani put on a two-way clinic during game four. For those unfamiliar with the term, a player is considered \u201ctwo-way\u201d if they can pitch and hit.<\/p>\n
Ohtani did both during game four, tallying 10 strikeouts through six innings and hitting three home runs in the same game. This historic effort gave the Dodgers a 5-1 win.<\/p>\n
My dad referred to this performance as \u201clittle league stuff.\u201d<\/p>\n
Let\u2019s pause. Pitchers are dedicated to pitching and hitters are dedicated to hitting. In theory, you shouldn\u2019t be able to do both professionally, unless, to reference my dad, you\u2019re in little league.<\/p>\n
How is it possible that one player dominated both sides of the game during a championship series?<\/p>\n
I\u2019m pretty sure it\u2019s supposed to be a challenge for both teams, so Shohei needs to make next year\u2019s NLCS a little more competitive so Manfred can get more television ratings. Also, the Brewers making fun of Chicago by holding up the \u201cL\u201d flag after their NLDS win really aged well, didn\u2019t it?<\/p>\n
Even though he\u2019s the best player of my generation, Ohtani isn\u2019t the only special thing surrounding this team. The Dodgers\u2019 franchise ace, Clayton Kershaw, will be retiring after this season and has already dug up the pitching mound from Dodger Stadium with his family for him to take as a momento of his career. This was a powerful moment for baseball.<\/p>\n
Back in July, Kershaw became the 20th pitcher in MLB history to reach 3,000 career strikeouts and has a career ERA of 2.53 as of right now.<\/p>\n
What also makes Kershaw special is his faith, which he displays openly. In mid-June of this season, the Dodgers hosted a pride night at Dodger Stadium and made all the players wear the classic blue Dodgers cap with an altered, rainbow L.A. logo on the front.<\/p>\n
Kershaw wore the hat but wrote \u201cGenesis 9:12-16\u201d on the front of his hat. For context, this Bible passage is God explaining the meaning of the rainbow, which is supposed to be a sign of his covenant with the whole world that He will never flood the earth again.<\/p>\n
The day after this year\u2019s pride night game, Fox News recalled one of Kershaw\u2019s previous quotes from 2023 that called out the Sisters of Indulgence group, who was a part of that season\u2019s pride night game.<\/p>\n
Fox News also reported that Kershaw\u2019s \u201copposition was based solely on the group\u2019s (Sisters of Indulgence) mockery of Christianity.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t agree with making fun of other people\u2019s religions,\u201d Kershaw said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regardless of your political stance on the issue, nothing can touch the legacy that Kershaw has left on the league and him showing his true character through his faith only adds to this legacy, just in a different way.<\/p>\n
Now, let\u2019s look at previous Dodger teams. One of their worst groups played in 1992, finishing the regular season with a 63-99 regular season record. On a larger scale, from 1975 to 2016, L.A. never won 100 games in a season.<\/p>\n
During this roughly 40 year period, the team won the World Series twice but lost in the playoffs and world series a combined 14 times. In 2020, L.A. hadn\u2019t won a world series since 1988, which again feels impossible, considering we\u2019re talking about the world famous Dodgers.<\/p>\n
However, the World Series trophy returned to the team during the COVID-19 season, ending the championship drought.\u00a0<\/p>\n
This year\u2019s team feels different, packed with red-hot arms from the States and Japan. Also, they have the hitting abilities of a custom team I would make on MLB The Show.<\/p>\n
Taylor sophomore and Dodgers fan Nathan Meister highlighted the strong performance of Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Ohtani in their pitching and he is confident in his team heading into the World Series.<\/p>\n
If I\u2019m being honest, I don\u2019t know if there\u2019s ever been a team quite like the 2025 Dodgers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Los Angeles is known for celebrities, movie stars and for having to wait in traffic for 13 hours…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":270647,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[65],"tags":[363,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-270646","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-mlb","9":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=270646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/270646\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/270647"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=270646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=270646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=270646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}