Dodgers on Betts: ‘So lucky to have him’
ARLINGTON, Texas – To be clear, the Dodgers brought Mookie Betts to Los Angeles – and ensured he’d stay by guaranteeing him $365 million – to win a World Series. Singular, for now.
After all, it’s been 32 years since the Dodgers won the last game of the MLB season, and for a club that won its division eight consecutive years but seemed to miss a certain something to get it over the top, importing Betts from Boston seemed the closest thing to buying October certainty.
First things first, right?
Yet after his return to the World Series with his new club, the notion of the Dodgers taking semi-permanent residence in the Fall Classic has an appeal that extends beyond Los Angeles.
Simply, baseball’s biggest stage is better with Betts on it.
In a two-inning stretch of Tuesday night, Betts wreaked enough havoc on the Rays to set a new standard of power and speed in World Series history.
In a game that fans from almost every worldview agree has gotten too stationary, too static, too reliant on the impressive but motionless act of hitting the ball over the fence, Betts showed he can play any kind of game you want.
And, most important to him, Betts proved the difference in winning a ballgame – a crucial ballgame– by hitting Tampa Bay with a 1-2 punch of his skill set, turning a one-run game into an 8-3 Dodgers romp in Game 1.
It moved Betts a step closer to his second championship in three years – his Red Sox beat the Dodgers in 2018 – and his teammates, save for reliever Joe Kelly, toward their first World Series title ever.
This two-way street between Betts and his new teammates practically floods with gratitude when he uplifts them all.
“We’re so lucky to have him on our team,” said center fielder Cody Bellinger, who snapped a scoreless tie with a home run and later robbed the Rays of a homer. “Superstar guy, superstar talent, but he continues to do the little things right, which you can always learn from.”
Game 1 brought little and big things alike from No. 50.
With the Dodgers clinging to a 2-1 lead in the fifth, Betts drew a leadoff walk against starter Tyler Glasnow and stole second, prompting Glasnow to walk National League Championship Series MVP Corey Seager.
The havoc was just beginning. Twice, Betts prompted Glasnow to spin toward second to keep him honest.
Betts and Seager staged a double steal anyway, the second time in these playoffs they teamed up on such a heist to key a big inning.
The Rays brought the infield in, and third baseman Joey Wendle stayed close to the bag, crimping Betts’ primary lead.
But in a perfect bit of baserunning, he grabbed several feet of real estate with his secondary lead and burst toward the plate on Max Muncy’s routine grounder to first. Yandy Diaz made a quick and adequate throw home, but Betts was already past catcher Mike Zunino with a headfirst slide.
Six pitches later, Will Smith’s single scored Seager, Glasnow was driven from the game, all of it stemming from four isolated acts of verve and athleticism.
And in an era when stolen bases are frowned upon, lest they infringe on sluggers’ rights to strike out with impunity, it was an increasingly rare sequence of derring-do.
“Stolen bases are a thing for me,” says Betts, who stole a career-high 30 in his 2018 MVP year. “It’s how I create runs, create havoc on the bases. When I get on base, I’m just trying to touch home. And how I get there is how I get there.” His next trip was a little smoother. The beauty of Betts is, he can exhibit patience and work a walk and bedevil a pitcher one inning, then ambush the next by driving the first pitch the opposite way, into the seats. And so he jumped reliever Josh Fleming leading off the sixth, taking Fleming’s first pitch out to right field, sparking a two-run rally that pushed the Dodgers’ lead to 8-1.
Tear up the record books: Betts became the first player in World Series history to hit a home run, steal two bases and score two runs in a game.
“Mookie’s pretty special,” said Game 1 starter and winner Clayton Kershaw. “He does things on a baseball field that a lot of other people can’t do, and he does it consistently, which separates him from a lot of people.”
his Teammates and Betts himself revel in the mundane. See the grind and appreciate, they say.
Betts says he reached that conclusion in 2016, when he hit 31 home runs and led the American League in total bases but finished runner-up to Mike Trout in the MVP race. He figured the ceiling wasn’t much higher.
So trying to match it, over and over again, was the mindset.
“Be good at all aspects of the game all the time,” Betts said.
And lo, he did get better, leading the AL in batting, slugging and runs scored in his 2018 MVP season. The pandemic shortened his Dodgers debut to 55 games, but at 28, he’s still firmly in his prime.
Betts has not let his guard down this offseason, relatively taciturn amid the Dodgers’ exuberance, save for a giddy reaction to one of his NLCS defensive robberies.
So when he was asked which of his game-turning trips around the bases he liked, whether he preferred scoring runs or driving them in, his response was appropriate.
“I like winning,” he said. “You can’t do just one. You have to do both.”
Or, better yet, everything.