Rays meet Dodgers in clash of coasts and contrasts
ARLINGTON, TEXAS— The shortest and strangest season in Major League Baseball history will finish with a clash of coasts and contrasts. The Los Angeles Dodgers and the Tampa Bay Rays — big spenders and bargain hunters — will crown one region with an unofficial title no one saw coming: inter-sports champion of the pandemic era.
The 116th World Series, to be played at Globe Life Field starting Tuesday, will be the third championship series for a big four North American sports league to be decided this fall. The Tampa Bay Lightning won the Stanley Cup on Sept. 30 and the Los Angeles Lakers took the NBA finals 12 days later. Now, Tampa Bay or Los Angeles will add another trophy.
For the baseball teams themselves, though, a championship would be a long time coming. The Dodgers have not won the
World Series since 1988, a decade before the Rays started play as the American League’s most recent expansion franchise. They dropped their original name, the Devil Rays, before the 2008 season, when they reached their only World Series, a five-game loss to the Philadelphia Phillies.
The Dodgers have reigned over the National League West for eight consecutive seasons — they were baseball’s best team this year, at 43-17, three games better than the Rays — but have always fallen short in the end. They lost the World Series in 2017 and 2018 and return now after rallying to beat the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series after losing three of the first four games.
“From the moment that we were able to put a season together once they figured out the COVID thing, everybody was expecting us to get to the World Series,” said Dodgers utility man Enrique Hernandez, who tied Game 7 with a pinch-hit homer in the sixth inning. “We were expecting to get to the World Series.
“Up to the point where we went down 3-1 in this series, we hadn’t really gone through any adversity at all during this season. So that was the one thing: It was time to get it done.”
Did they ever. The Dodgers had faced a three-games-to-one deficit seven times in their postseason history but had never managed to force a Game 7. This time, they won the pennant with a modern twist on a well-worn formula: pitching, defence and timely home runs.
The Rays followed their own distinctive trail to the World Series with a best-of-seven path never taken before: win, win, win, loss, loss, loss, win.
To do so, they used the veteran moxie of starter Charlie Morton and the daily magic of outfielder Randy Arozarena. Morton worked 52⁄
3 steely innings in Game 7, and a firstinning homer by Arozarena — his seventh home run of the post-season — gave the Rays a lead they never lost.
Arozarena, the ALCS most valuable player, hit .321 in the series while the rest of the Rays hit .183.
“Randy Arozarena, I don’t have any words to describe what he’s done, what he’s meant to us this post-season,” Rays manager Kevin Cash said