Okay.
So thanks to an insane fifth inning, the Los Angeles Dodgers gentlemanly swept the New York Yankees on their home turf, 7 to 6, to win their eighth World Series title.
This is the first time I followed a baseball team from the regular season to the playoffs... and I am going to go to Shopee and ask my guy if he can custom-made the jerseys of Tommy Edman, Will Smith, Kike Hernandez, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Michael Kopech, and Landon Knack.
Just like Caitlin Clark, I got my MLB fix with Shohei Ohtani. Before that, I wanted to re-learn about baseball because I had grown fat during the pandemic and the baseball jerseys were proving comfortable. My first baseball jersey is the Los Angeles Angels away jersey of Shohei, and then I have had a bunch of jerseys afterward. I have a stack of Ichiro Suzuki jerseys, as well as Derek Jeter and Randy Johnson. I was a Yankees fan during the 2000s, and I was torn between Jeter and Johnson when they faced off in 2001. I have Mike Trout, Jose Altuve, Austin Riley, and Fernando Tatis in the current landscape.
And then I became a fan of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
I was outside the house and I missed out on the action. Coincidentally, this was the first game I ever saw live. If I had seen this live, I would have been superbly distraught at all the mishaps of the Yankees in that game-changing fifth inning.
Needless to say, their defense was HORRIBLE.
Aaron Judge should have taken out Tommy Edman if he wasn’t looking at Kike Hernandez. Meanwhile, Anthony Volpe and Jazz Chisholm made an error that also sent Hernandez to third base. Gerrit Cole tried to stop the hitters by outing Gavin Lux and Shohei but got stung when Anthony Rizzo was nowhere near the first base because he thought he could contain Mookie Betts.
And then, Freddie Freeman went head-hunting to drive a hit to help Edman and Will Smith score.
And then, Teoscar Hernandez sent an almost-home run to Judge that helped Betts and Freeman score.
That fifth inning was so insane that Kike Hernandez, the man that started it all in that inning, was back for another crack.
Cole started the inning with 49 pitches and finished it with 87.
It was a nightmare of a time for the Yankees.
Even Austin Wells had a moment that led to that two-run eighth inning that wrecked the chances of New York.
It was like everything was going against the Yankees, and this is to think that they started the game with runs from Aaron Judge and Jazz Chisholm.
Freddie Freeman deserves the Finals MVP win. His ankle was questionable throughout the series and not only did he deliver, he MESSED UP the Yankees. We’re hating on the SMC and the MVP teams in the PBA for talent hoarding but more than the Dodgers, the Yankees have been getting hall of famers after hall of famers from over a century ago. There is a reason why they are the only team that virtually kept their pre-war traditions of no names in their uniforms, and 22 retired jerseys. This team has been so unfair for almost their entire duration that being called The Evil Empire has been a good thing.
And yet, the fifth inning was a team effort to expose the Yankees’ defense. I can’t blame the media when they called the fifth inning one of the biggest choke jobs in MLB World Series history. I hardly watch baseball up until this moment and I just don’t get why Cole asked Rizzo to get the ball without going to the first base, or how Aaron Judge failed to catch the ball, and most importantly, anticipate where the Teoscar hit was going to land.
Is this a one-time bandwagon thing? I don’t know, but I am looking for another team to root aside from the Dodgers. The series got me acquainted with the Yankees but my sister who lives in Texas has given me an original Corey Seager jersey, so I think I will also go with the Texas Rangers. The New York Mets is another team I want to root for.
I hope that the Dodgers will remain intact in the next season. Shohei, Yamamoto, Edman, Lux, Kopech, and Blake Treinen are fresh signees, and hopefully, they get the healthy versions of Tyler Glasnow and Clayton Kershaw in time.