On the Dodgers, Postseason Baseball, and Growing Up

090413-N-9706M-124.LOS ANGELES (April 14, 2009) Sailors and Marines unfurl a football field-sized American flag at Dodger Stadium during the pre-game activities before a Major League Baseball game between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 1st Class David McKee/Released)

It seems to me, for the first time in years, that it’s truly October. The temperatures have dropped, and autumn is descending. But sharper than the brisk nights, and sharper than the nipping daytime winds, is the thrill of playoff baseball. And the Los Angeles Dodgers driving towards the World Series. For the first time in years, it feels as if they might just make it.

For those who don’t bleed Blue, I should elaborate. As a 10-year-old — as a fan of any team (besides, perhaps, the Cubs) — every season begins uncynically — with limitless possibility, uncut joy and wonder, and the unsullied excitement of sheer hope. If your team falls in the playoffs — or falls short of them altogether — the motto of the Brooklyn Dodgers is an optimistic fact of your emotional consciousness. Wait until next year. Each Opening Day begins Year Zero.

Then you grow up. Baseball slips from its place as the most important part of your life. As a boy, I tuned father’s 5-pound AM radio to hear the voices of Vin Scully, Charley Steiner, and Rick Monday — I didn’t pay Sling TV an inordinate sum from my paycheck each October for playoff access. And I certainly didn’t mute the game in intervals between innings, and during pitching changes, to work or write. Life has changed, but baseball remains constant.

Outside the capacious city limits of Los Angeles, complaints about Dodgers baseball may ring ungrateful or churlish. The Boys in Blue have won more games than any other club over the past decade, won their division each year (save one) since 2013, reached the Fall Classic three times, and, although it feels hollow, won the crown in 2020’s Covid-shortened season. They’ve bred many stars — e.g., Clayton Kershaw — and bought still more — Manny Ramirez, Adrian Gonzalez, Hanley Ramirez, Manny Machado, Trey Turner, Zach Greinke, Max Scherzer, Mookie Betts, David Price, Freddie Freeman, and, of course, the indomitable Shohei Ohtani. But no profligacy, no hired guns, no rented superstars, could secure clutch hitting or a dependable pitching in the deep waters following game 162.

After years of falling short, these riches seemed little more than so much bloat. They are golden chains weighing the franchise down, towards mediocrity. As the Dodgers postseason ventures shorten from falling in Championship Series or World Series to falling in Division Series — most bitterly in 2023, to the Padres — “wait until next year” becomes a burden, an inevitability that next year will bring further disappointment. Like a high-school overachiever washing out in his freshman year of university, Dodgers fans feel their playoff flailing more stingingly than other fans might. The playoffs become Groundhog’s Day, and it breeds numbness and apathy.

But this year, it feels different. For one, watching this team, the Dodgers seem like what all boys fervently wish — and fervently believe — their players to be — good men. Beyond Betts and Ohtani, Miguel Rojas, Teoscar Hernandez, and the rest have melded into a band of brothers — and become good friends. This squad has no Manny Machados.

And for all the cash and the flash — the Sho-Time! — the 2024 Dodgers have battled setbacks. Many players — including stars, and seemingly the entire bullpen — have languished on the injured list. The starters have rotated in and out of action. Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Walker Buehler have delivered workmanlike performances; but consider what could have been, unburdened by mishap. Sans injury and (egregious) wrongdoing, the Dodgers rotation could include: Buehler, Yamamoto, Kershaw, Jack Flaherty, Bobby Miller, Tony Gonsolin, Gavin Stone, Dustin May, Julio Urias, and Trevor Bauer. Holy…wow. As is, the bullpen has pitched miraculously, buoying a team that, on paper, lacks the arms to compete in October. Add thereto a host of nagging injuries that dog the position players, including Freddie Freeman’s ankle, intermittently keeping him from action.

The buoying forces have included not just the bullpen, but non-household names such as Gavin Lux and Tommy Edman, whose clutch hitting has found RBIs as stars such as Betts and even Ohtani stumble. The effort has been whole-of-team, something to which Dodgers fans have been unaccustomed in seasons past. Past years have seen star sluggers whiff, and star flamethrowers allow run after run. Not in 2024. Clutch hitting, clutch pitching, and few mishaps and misplays — this feels like a team set on winning, and maybe one able to do it.

This postseason makes me feel more like a boy again, but on further thought, I suspect one of the chief virtues of baseball — and sports, generally — is that it makes boys more like men. From baseball springs forth joy and hope but also anxiety, sadness, and crushing hopelessness — life’s ups and downs. Playing Little League — an extended exercise in copycatting your big-league idols — teaches a young man to work hard, find new reserves of dedication and strength, and to behave honorably when failure nonetheless comes. It teaches young men patience, perseverance, sportsmanship, friendship, loyalty, and a host of the other virtues that make up a mature adulthood. In short, it teaches a young man live well, to live the good life, the right way. (I’d argue further that the Little League experience is inextricably intertwined with MLB fandom, but that deserves its own treatment elsewhere.)

So, this year, October has finally returned. I feel the high once more, knowing full well that the low might well this moment be rounding third base in a Yankees uniform. But the ecstasy and agony are the vivid colors that make baseball beautiful — and make life beautiful; and I am deeply grateful to be taking them at the ballpark in once again.

As Teddy Roosevelt put it:

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.

That is baseball well played. That is life lived well.

And perhaps, just perhaps, there is a night approaching on which joy will return to Chavez Ravine. Perhaps, in a short time, we might say, as American hero Vin Scully did in 1955, “the [Los Angeles] Dodgers are the champions of the world.”

For any baseball fan, that’s as good as it gets.