TORONTO – The boys and girls in Dodger gear rolled around in the silver, blue and gold confetti on the outfield turf, playfully tossing that metallic material at each other, not far from the temporary stage that had been erected after midnight Sunday morning to celebrate Los Angeles’ traveling triumph.
On the other side of the padded blue outfield wall, in the unadorned bowels of Rogers Centre, there were the red-eyed friends and family of the feisty, resilient Blue Jays team that had fallen just two outs shy of taking down the defending champs and capping the first Canadian crown in a generation.
This wall, these short steps separated the two worlds of a World Series Game 7 that will go down as one of the greatest in history.
Behind a stunning, game-tying swat from Miguel Rojas in the top of the ninth, a first-of-its-kind, go-ahead blast from Will Smith in the top of the 11th and the absurd extra work World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto provided on zero days’ rest, the Dodgers broke Toronto hearts with their comeback 5-4 victory in a game that merited its own month on the MLB calendar.
The Dodgers are MLB’s first repeat champs since the 1998-2000 Yankees, and the four-hour, seven-minute, extra-innings affair it took to decide that was a fitting end to a true Fall Classic in which these two clubs exhausted each other – not just in the 18-inning epic at Dodger Stadium in Game 3 but throughout a Series in which they both had to empty the tank.
“I'm just speechless, I really am,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “It’s going to go down as one for the ages.”
So, too, will this Dodgers team, which has now won three titles in six years (and nine overall) in a sport with an expanded postseason pool that makes consistent postseason success more difficult than ever to achieve.
L.A. entered 2025 – and this World Series – as heavy favorites to do what it just did.
But the path to get here saw the Dodgers sleepwalk through the regular season and turn on the jets in October, only to run into a Blue Jays team whose toughness and togetherness pushed the loaded NL champs to the brink.
“We have set a new expectation and a new standard here and did it with a lot of hard work, did it with a lot of cohesiveness,” said Toronto skipper John Schneider. “And man, it's tough to say bye to this group.”
In just the sixth World Series Game 7 to go to extra innings – and the first since the Cleveland-Cubs classic in 2016 – someone was going to go home hurting.
But considering it had been 32 years since Joe Carter’s walk-off winner sent this building into hysterics, there was particularly cruel irony to both Rojas and Smith hitting their homers to virtually the same spot.
“It was supposed to end differently,” said Toronto closer Jeff Hoffman, who served up the Rojas blast. “Just one pitch, and, uh, yeah.”
And as if the previous four hours of baseball hadn’t been nail-biting enough, the Jays had their franchise face, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., just 90 feet from tying this tilt in the 11th before Alejandro Kirk grounded into the game-ending double play that set off the Dodgers’ celebration near the mound.
It can be a thin line between winning and losing.
Thinner than that outfield wall.
It was true for 18 innings in Game 3, it was true when Addison Barger’s potentially game-changing extra-base hit lodged at the base of that wall in Game 6, and it was true throughout a Game 7 in which the Dodgers had to pull out all the stops – and all their postseason starters – to overcome the Jays.
“We just never gave up, kept fighting, pitching our [butts] off, hitting, taking great at-bats, finally punched through there,” Smith said. “Man, that was a fight for seven games.”
Toronto had been in control of this Game 7 fight from the time Bo Bichette took Shohei Ohtani deep for a three-run blast in the third. The two-way Ohtani, pitching on short rest, threw a first-pitch slider, and Bichette, playing hurt on a compromised left knee, smoked it to left-center.
At 442 feet, it was the third-longest home run of Bichette’s career and the second-longest homer allowed in Ohtani’s career.
And at the time, it appeared it would be a blast that might stand with Carter’s as one of the biggest swings in franchise history.
Staked to that huge homer, the 41-year-old Max Scherzer – the oldest pitcher to start a World Series Game 7 – bent but didn’t break while pitching into the fifth. The Blue Jays showcased their MLB-best defense behind him. Daulton Varsho made a sensational diving grab of a Teoscar Hernández liner to hold the Dodgers to a sacrifice fly on what could have been extra bases in the fourth, and Guerrero made a great pick of a Tommy Edman liner in foul territory near first to end that inning, with the Jays ahead 3-1.
Things got testy in the bottom of the fourth, when Dodgers reliever Justin Wrobleski threw up and in on three consecutive pitches to Andrés Giménez. When the last one plunked Giménez, he and Wrobleski jawed at each other, and both benches cleared. Warnings were issued to both teams.
Though the Dodgers would keep pressing by manufacturing another run off Chris Bassitt on a sacrifice fly in the top of the sixth, Giménez, perhaps channeling his emotion from earlier, gave the Jays some needed separation in the bottom of the inning.
After Ernie Clement, who would go on to set a new single postseason hits record (30), led off with a single off Tyler Glasnow and stole second, Giménez smacked a line-drive double to right, and Clement lost his helmet as he hustled home and slid in safely to make it 4-2.
The Jays turned to their rookie wonder, Trey Yesavage, to protect that lead in the seventh, and he got the help of more great defense when Guerrero fielded a Freddie Freeman grounder and gamely initiated a 3-6-3 double play to end the inning. But in the eighth, Max Muncy pounded a Yesavage splitter out to right to cut the Dodger deficit down to 4-3.
Toronto turned to Hoffman for the four-out save opportunity. Though he got the last out of the eighth and first of the ninth, things fell apart against a surprising source.
The 36-year-old Rojas, a part-timer in the middle infield, is far from the most feared hitter on this Dodgers roster. But after he worked the count full against Hoffman, he was able to connect on a slider down and in for the solo shot to left that elicited groans from the home crowd.
Just like that, it was 4-4.
In the bottom of the ninth, the Jays put two on against Blake Snell in his rare relief turn. Then Roberts went to Yamamoto, who had already picked up the win in Games 2 and 6 and even warmed up near the end of Game 3 but still made himself available for the finale. He plunked Kirk with a pitch to load the bases but got Varsho to ground to Rojas, who fired home in time for a forceout. Then, Clement’s deep fly to left-center was run down by center fielder Andy Pages, who made the catch for the third out while colliding with teammate Kiké Hernández.
Off we went to extras.
Toronto reliever Seranthony Domínguez escaped a bases-loaded jam in the top of the 10th, fielding a Guerrero flip on a Kiké Hernández grounder and getting his foot on the bag just in time for the final out.
But after Yamamoto kept the Jays quiet in the bottom of the 10th, Toronto turned to starter Shane Bieber in the 11th. Bieber got the first two outs, but he hung a slider over the middle to Smith, who swung hard and forever etched his name into October lore with the first extra-inning home run in a winner-take-all in World Series history.
“You dream of those moments,” Smith said. “Extra innings, put your team ahead? Yeah, I’ll remember that one forever.”
The Jays tried to make their own lasting memory in the bottom of the 11th. Guerrero doubled and advanced to third on a sac bunt. Barger walked. With one out, Toronto had runners on the corners, fans on their feet and a chance to end this Series with an exclamation mark.
But Yamamoto didn’t blink. He calmly got Kirk to ground to Mookie Betts at short, and the likely future Hall of Famer and converted shortstop stepped on the second-base bag for one, threw to first for two, and just like that, it was a double play to complete the Dodgers’ double dose of glory.
“We knew it was gonna be a tough game, but that’s the beauty of our team,” Betts said. “Like, it doesn’t really matter. We don’t care about tough games, we know how to win tough games. We know how to win blowouts. We know how to win, and we did today.”
The winning team was covered in confetti, the losing team wrecked with regret. That’s true in every World Series, but rarely do we see one this tight, this tense, this long and this legendary.
When it was over, the Dodgers and Blue Jays were separated by a wall. And not much else.