Blake Treinen glanced toward his dugout, saw manager Dave Roberts emerge from it and, for a moment, felt demoralized. There were two runners on with one out in the eighth inning. The Los Angeles Dodgers clung to a one-run lead, a Yankee Stadium crowd of close to 50,000 people had sprung back into life, and Treinen, navigating his third inning, was exhausted. But a title was only five outs away. Giancarlo Stanton, the man due up, was supposed to be his primary matchup. Treinen didn’t want to leave — and Roberts didn’t intend to intervene.

He arrived to encourage. To comfort.

Roberts, near the end of his ninth tension-filled October as the Dodgers’ manager, placed both of his hands on Treinen’s chest to calm his nerves.

“Focus up,” Treinen recalled hearing. “This is your last guy.”

Roberts looked on from the dugout as Treinen induced a harmless popup to Stanton on the first pitch. When he saw Freddie Freeman wave him off out of the corner of his eye, he trusted his first baseman’s instincts and let Treinen stay for another hitter, Anthony Rizzo, and roared when it resulted in an inning-ending strikeout. In the ninth, with no legitimate reliever options left, he turned to Walker Buehler — a starter who hadn’t pitched out of the bullpen since 2018 — and watched as he retired three consecutive New York Yankees with ease.

The Dodgers had clinched a championship, the culmination of a month in which Roberts seemed to push every correct button. He trusted when it felt right, interceded when he needed to, went off script when moments demanded and navigated October with a keen sense for the pulse of his team. It was most obvious at the very end, in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night — 24 hours after a bullpen game, with his starting pitcher recording only four outs, while using a record seven relievers in a title clincher.

“That’s one of the best games I’ve ever seen managed,” said Freeman, the World Series MVP. “That was special.”

For close to a decade, Roberts has been the most front-facing member of an organization that continually excelled during the regular season and came up short in the playoffs. Every dominant summer was credited to a star-laden roster and an astute front office, leaving Roberts to absorb the blame when things went wrong in the fall.

This October, though, served as Roberts’ stage for vindication — and might have cemented his place in the Hall of Fame. His maneuvering mitigated a short-handed starting rotation. His optimism anchored a team in desperate need of it.

“To be honest, Dave is the real reason why we’re here,” Mookie Betts said amid a raucous champagne celebration inside Yankee Stadium’s visiting clubhouse. “I know there’s a lot of talk about Doc, but Doc is the best, man. Doc loves each and every person in here, Doc has confidence in each and every person in here, Doc never lost confidence in anybody in here. And no matter what we went through, he was always positive.”

The defining moment, many of his players have said, actually came in September — specifically, Sept. 15 in Atlanta.

Tyler Glasnow was among the headliners of the Dodgers’ $1 billion offseason, brought in to anchor a rotation that underwhelmed in recent Octobers. But Glasnow’s elbow wasn’t responding. On Sept. 14, scans revealed he had suffered a sprain that would end his season, the latest in a string of devastating pitching injuries that would befall the team.

The Dodgers proceeded to suffer another listless loss to the Atlanta Braves that night, their seventh defeat in 12 games. The Arizona Diamondbacks and San Diego Padres were nipping at their heels for the top of the division, and the Dodgers didn’t know if they’d have enough pitching to get through October.

“It just felt like the entire year we kept getting dealt blow after blow,” third baseman Max Muncy said. “And then guys would come back, and then another blow, and guys would come back. It finally felt like we were turning the page and starting to see more guys come back than go down. Then your big pitcher gets told he can’t pitch the rest of the year, and that was kind of like, ‘Man, not again.’ It was just a big kick in the gut.”

Roberts isn’t one for team meetings; he prefers individual conversations with players. But on the afternoon of Sept. 15, it felt appropriate. That it was Roberto Clemente Day provided an ideal entry. He presented it as an opportunity to educate players on Clemente’s legacy, but mostly used it to offer them an important reminder: that so many All-Stars, MVPs and future Hall of Famers still dotted their clubhouse. That they still possessed more talent than any other team in the sport, regardless of who might no longer be available. That they were still good enough to win it all. That night, the Dodgers handily beat the Braves while on their way to winning 11 of their final 14 regular season games.

Roberts’ positivity has defined his managerial career, and this team might have needed it more than any other.

“He is an eternal optimist, the way he breathes that into our guys,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “This year we had more adversity and different guys and guys feeling the weight of that. And for them to continue to breathe that optimism, talk about how many good players we still have in here, I think was a meaningful part of us finishing strong and doing what we did in October.”

Roberts navigated the Ippei Mizuhara betting scandal, which prompted the firing of Shohei Ohtani’s longtime interpreter. He supported Freeman while his young son fought through a temporary bout of paralysis. On the field, he massaged a delicate situation around another superstar, Betts, who transitioned from second base to shortstop and later had to accept a return to right field and a move out of the leadoff spot. He maneuvered through a jarring string of injuries — from Betts to Muncy, Yoshinobu Yamamoto to Glasnow, Treinen to Brusdar Graterol. And he got the Dodgers through October while routinely staging bullpen games.

“It’s gratifying,” Roberts said. “The players performed, and yeah, I put them in positions that I felt were the right positions and the decisions worked out. But a lot of it is the trust that my guys have in me. And that’s everything. I believe in them. And this is the first team that I felt really like the trust went both ways. And that regardless of whatever decision I made, they were going to support me 100 percent.”

The full buy-in this year, Roberts said, came because the likes of Freeman, Betts, Muncy and Hernandez “were my biggest supporters.”

“I just think that from there, everyone sort of really, really had full trust.”

Since Roberts took over for the 2016 season, the Dodgers have posted a .627 regular-season winning percentage — the all-time highest for any manager (minimum 250 games). That stretch included only one championship, captured amid the pandemic-shortened 2020 season. Leading the Dodgers to another, giving them their first full-season title since 1988, put him alongside Walter Alston and Tommy Lasorda as the only Dodgers managers to win multiple rings.

“It should mean everything to him,” Dodgers first-base coach Clayton McCullough said. “It should mean for all those that ever doubted, ever criticized, to never do it again — to trust in what this guy is doing.”

A championship is the culmination of every aspect of an organization. It was ownership that green-lit the massive financial commitments over the winter. It was the front office that made critical additions at midseason. It was the training staff that worked diligently to navigate Freeman through his string of injuries in October. It was the scouting department that spent weeks finding holes for the Dodgers to expose in the World Series. And it was the players who, in the midst of adversity, rallied together.

But Roberts’ fingerprints were everywhere.

“I’m proud of it,” Roberts said, his uniform soaked in champagne as he left the interview room inside an emptying Yankee Stadium after the World Series win. “Legacy is something that I’m proud of. I’m a baseball fan. I think I do right by the game. I love players; I think I do right by the players — players that play for me, players that compete against us. I think that my loyalty to the Dodgers, the fan base, the organization, are my priorities. To win another championship, I guess I’ll let people talk about my legacy. But I’m just very proud of this group of men.”

NEW YORK — Two days before the Los Angeles Dodgers‘ postseason began, Freddie Freeman felt a twinge in his rib cage when he took a swing during a simulated game. He vowed to ignore it. It’s not as if he wasn’t already in pain. Over the previous week, Freeman had nursed a sprained right ankle sustained trying to avoid a tag while running to first base. He needed no more impediments. The Dodgers had a World Series to win.

A day later, Oct. 4, after Freeman finished a news conference in which he declared himself ready to play despite the ankle injury, he retreated to the batting cage at Dodger Stadium. He wanted to take some swings in preparation for a live batting-practice session. His side tingled with each of his first dozen swings. On the 13th swing, Freeman felt a jolt through his body and crumpled to the ground.

Unable to even pick himself off the floor, Freeman was helped into the X-ray room next to Los Angeles’ dugout. The results were inconclusive, and around 9:30 p.m., he received a call. The Dodgers wanted him to drive to Santa Monica for more imaging. He hopped in the car, then in an MRI tube. Around 11:30 p.m., the results arrived: Freeman had broken the costal cartilage in his sixth rib, an injury that typically sidelines players for months.

Devastation set in. Walking hurt. Breathing stung. Swinging a bat felt like an impossibility.

Freeman’s father, Fred, worried about his youngest son, whom he raised after Freeman’s mother, Rosemary, died of melanoma when Freddie was 10. He saw the anguish in every minuscule movement. Considering the injuries to his rib and ankle and the lasting soreness from a middle finger he fractured in August, surely Freeman was too beaten up to keep playing. Surely there would be more postseasons, more opportunities.

“I actually told him to stop,” Fred said. “I said, ‘Freddie, this is not worth it. I know you love baseball. I love baseball. But it’s not worth what you’re going through.’ And he looked at me like I was crazy, and he said, ‘Dad, I’m never going to stop.'”

NOT ONLY DID Freeman never stop, he put on one of the Dodgers’ greatest Fall Classic performances in history and readied the franchise for its first victory parade in 36 years.

The championship was won in a Game 5 that saw the Dodgers stake the New York Yankees a five-run lead, claw back for a 7-6 victory thanks to one of the most horrific half-innings in the Yankees’ storied history, and seal the championship with bravura performances from their bullpen and manager.

Los Angeles never got to fete the Dodgers for their World Series victory in 2020. Beyond the lack of a celebration, the title had been demeaned and denigrated by those who regarded it as a lesser championship, the product of a 60-game season played in front of no fans and a postseason run inside a pseudo-bubble. To the Dodgers, that always registered as unfair, and they used the slight as fuel.

“Twenty-nine other teams wanted to win the last game, too, regardless of the circumstances,” said right-hander Walker Buehler, who pitched the ninth inning of Game 5 to close the series for the Dodgers. “Like, everyone that talks about it, fine. … But 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won the last one. And we did.”

Los Angeles’ fortunes in recent postseasons have belied its evolution into the best organization in baseball. This season, the Dodgers won a major-leagues-best 98 games and their 11th National League West division title in 12 years. Their only championship in that time came in 2020. The Dodgers felt as if they had a World Series stolen from them in 2017 by a Houston Astros team later found to have used a sign-stealing scheme. A juggernaut Boston Red Sox team bulldozed them in five games a year later. The past two years, Los Angeles flamed out in first-round division series.

The Dodgers wanted this championship for so many reasons beyond the obvious. Regardless of a baseball team’s talent or payroll — both areas in which this team finds itself at the game’s apex — October is a baseball funhouse mirror. A team fat on ability can look waifish in a hurry. The short series, the odd schedule, the capacity for a lesser team to beat a better one simply because it gets hot at the right time — all of it conspires to render April through September inert. Teams built for the six-month marathon that is the regular season aren’t necessarily well-constructed for the postseason’s one-month sprint. A team’s ability to code-switch is its greatest quality.

This year, Los Angeles craved validation for its regular-season dominance. Something to silence those who malign its 2020 championship and chalk up its success not to sound decision-making processes and elite player development but an endless flow of cash. The Dodgers cannot deny the power of the dollar after guaranteeing $700 million in free agency to star designated hitter Shohei Ohtani and another $325 million to Japanese right-hander Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Ohtani hit 54 home runs and stole 59 bases during the regular season. Yamamoto threw six brilliant innings in his first World Series game. Money plays.

“World Series champions come in all different sizes and shapes and forms,” Dodgers president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman said. “And there are different strengths that help you win a World Series.”

Their lineup was an obvious one. Even a hobbled Freeman is still an eight-time All-Star — and a former MVP, just like the two men ahead of him in the lineup, Ohtani and Mookie Betts. The Dodgers led major league baseball in home runs and slugging percentage while finishing second in runs scored and on-base percentage . For all the depth the Dodgers’ lineup featured, though, the pitching staff was threadbare on account of a mess of injuries. With just three starting pitchers and a half-dozen trusted relievers — not to mention the necessity of throwing bullpen games, further taxing arms — Los Angeles required a deft touch with its pitching.

Championships take luck and timing and depth and open-mindedness and savvy. World Series are won as much on the margins as they are in the core. And every championship team features something beyond that, a separator, a je ne sais quoi. Like, say, a starter suffering through his worst season emerging to close out a World Series game. Or someone who refuses to let his broken body impede a quest so meaningful to those who rely on him.

IN 2005, WHEN Freddie Freeman was 15 years old, he was hit by a pitch that broke his wrist. Freeman was scheduled to play for Team USA’s 16-and-under national team, and he couldn’t let the opportunity pass. So he simply didn’t tell anyone about his wrist injury and gritted through the agony.

Almost two decades later, Freeman started Game 1 of the division series against San Diego without publicly divulging his broken rib cartilage. Even the slightest competitive advantage can separate win from loss, and Freeman understood the sort of challenge the Padres posed. They had constructed their roster for postseason baseball: heavy on power hitters and front-line bullpen arms, light on offensive swing-and-miss. San Diego ousted the Dodgers from the postseason in 2022 and was prepared to do the same in 2024.

The Dodgers cherished Freeman’s presence, even if he was playing at far less than 100 percent. Their manager, Dave Roberts, told Freeman that simply standing in the batter’s box imputed a particular sort of value: the fear of the unknown. If Freeman were healthy enough to play, opponents would figure, surely he could contribute, too. What San Diego didn’t know was that every time Freeman strode to fire his compact, powerful left-handed swing, his right ankle felt as if it was about to buckle. And when he whiffed on a pitch, his side screamed silently.

“It only hurts when I miss,” Freeman told his father. “So I’m just going to have to stop missing.”

In the first game of the series, with his midsection bound by kinesiology tape to stabilize it, Freeman laced a pair of singles. The limp in his running drew attention away from the rib. When he winced after swing-and-misses — Freeman did so four times in Game 1 of the NLDS — the ankle served as an ideal cover for the actual nerve center of the pain: his rib. After winning the first game, Los Angeles dropped the next two to the Padres, and his symptoms worsened.

“Every day,” Dodgers hitting coach Aaron Bates said, “I would ask: ‘How’s your ankle? How’s your rib? How’s your finger? How’s your brain?'”

The 2024 season already had strained Freeman’s psyche. In late July, his 3-year-old son, Maximus, was diagnosed with Guillain-Barré syndrome, a neurological disorder that necessitated the use of a ventilator and left him unable to walk for a period. Freeman left the Dodgers during the final week of July to take care of Max. Although Freeman returned in early August, when Max was discharged from the hospital and started his recovery, the detritus of the episode remained.

Freeman and his wife, Chelsea, carved days into pieces. Wake up. Get to the afternoon. Then the evening. Then the morning. And repeat.

“It was more just breaking things up, all those small things just to get yourself through,” Chelsea said.

“Never think big picture,” Fred said.

“And then you look back,” Chelsea said, “and you’re like, ‘Oh, my gosh, we can’t believe we went through all that.'”

The perspective helped when the pain in Freeman’s rib would not relent. After Game 3, Freeman listened to Fred. No matter how much treatment he received, how much doctors and trainers did to mask the pain, he needed a break. But to require it in an elimination game — he was despondent. Freeman had signed with the Dodgers on a six-year, $162 million free agent contract in 2022 after a protracted free agency. He joined them following a World Series-winning season with the Atlanta Braves, where he spent the first 12 years of his career. Losing in the division series for the third straight year was not an option. Losing to the Padres again was unthinkable.

When his teammates learned Freeman would sit out Game 4, they rallied around him in the team’s group chat. Kiké Hernández, Miguel Rojas, Max Muncy, Betts — they were in awe of Freeman and what he had done already and offered their appreciation. He had rescued them so many times. They would resuscitate the Dodgers’ season in his absence. The offense scored eight runs, and eight Dodgers relievers combined to shut San Diego out. Two days later, with Freeman back in the lineup, Yamamoto threw five scoreless innings, the bullpen added four more and the Dodgers surged into the NL Championship Series against the New York Mets.

Once there, Freeman struggled, mustering only three singles in 18 at-bats and sitting out Game 4 again. The rest of the Dodgers thrived. Ohtani and Betts each whacked a pair of home runs. Muncy, a remnant of the 2020 team, set a postseason record by reaching base in 12 consecutive at-bats. Tommy Edman hit .407, drove in 11 runs and won NLCS MVP as the Dodgers bounced the Mets in six games. They were off to another World Series, another opportunity to substantiate their belief in themselves, where they would face their American League analog in prestige and might: the New York Yankees.

“Freddie doesn’t complain about really anything,” Chelsea said. “He was getting over four hours of treatment a day, even on days that they weren’t playing, just to be able to hope to play in the postseason. So going into the World Series, we had no expectations. We just were hoping he’d be able to play.”

HAD THE DODGERS deposed the Mets in five games, the World Series would have started Oct. 22, two days after the conclusion of the NLCS. Instead, the Dodgers had four days off, and in that time something happened. On Oct. 21, the day after Los Angeles celebrated its NL pennant, Freeman rested. On Oct. 22, he went through his usual treatment routine and felt noticeably better. By Oct. 23, the respite and therapy felt as if they were making a demonstrable difference in his recovery. On Oct. 24, the day before Game 1 of the most anticipated World Series in years, Freeman and the Dodgers’ staff had identified a cue to unlock the power that had gone missing in the first two rounds of the playoffs.

Freeman would tell himself to stride more toward first base. In actuality, he was not doing so; it would leave him vulnerable to outside pitches, which he had made a Hall of Fame career shooting to the opposite field. The idea of doing so, though, prevented Freeman from hunching over as he swung. A more vertical stance, in theory, would allow Freeman to drive the fastballs that had eaten him up in the NLCS, when he went 2-for-13 against them.

“Dad,” Freeman told Fred, “my swing is back. It’s as good as it’s been all year.”

Fred had heard this plenty of times before. Sometimes his son was right; sometimes he wasn’t. Fred wanted to be optimistic. He needed to see it to believe it.

In the first inning of Game 1, against Yankees ace Gerrit Cole, Freeman sliced a curveball down the left-field line and motored toward second base. New York left fielder Alex Verdugo misplayed the ball, an early sign of the state of the Yankees’ defense, and Freeman kept running. He chugged into third base, slid, popped up, stared into the Dodgers’ dugout, lifted his arms and shook side to side — the original version of what has become known as the Freddie Dance, a celebration adopted by all the Dodgers for big hits.

At the end of the inning, Freeman was left stranded on third base, his ankle throbbing. While the tenderness in his rib area had abated somewhat and his finger felt good enough to throw the ball normally, the 270 feet of running from home to third reminded Freeman that Humpty Dumpty hadn’t been put back together entirely. He tried to joke about it — Freeman occasionally asked Dodgers assistant general manager Alex Slater: “Can we trade ankles?” — but his hobbling was a serious reminder that the between-series break was over.

What unfolded that night constituted one of the best opening games in World Series history. Cole and Dodgers starter Jack Flaherty traded scoreless frames until the Dodgers scored a run in the fifth. The Yankees answered with two in the sixth. Los Angeles tied the score in the eighth. And on to extra innings it went, with New York scratching across a run in the top of the 10th. In the bottom of the inning, Gavin Lux walked with one out. Edman — like Flaherty a trade-deadline acquisition — singled. Yankees manager Aaron Boone called on left-hander Nestor Cortes, who hadn’t pitched in more than five weeks due to an arm injury, to face Ohtani. He induced a flyout.

Boone then intentionally walked Betts to load the bases and face Freeman. Cortes challenged him with a 93 mph fastball on the inside corner, the sort for which his cue was made. He swung, took two steps and lifted his bat with his right hand, Los Angeles’ version of Lady Liberty. The ball flew seven rows into the right-field bleachers. Dodger Stadium shook. Roberts was so giddy reveling in the moment that he bumped into the right arm of Gavin Stone, the young right-hander who two weeks earlier had undergone major shoulder surgery.

In the 119 previous years of World Series games, 695 in all, never had a player hit a walk-off grand slam. Freeman doing so in Game 1, then shambling around the bases invoking memories of Kirk Gibson 36 years earlier — the last time Los Angeles won a full-season World Series — added a poetic touch to the night, one of the most memorable in Dodgers postseason history.

“Game 1, when he hit the grand slam, felt like we won the World Series,” Chelsea said. “Like we were going to win.”

While Chelsea knows baseball well enough to understand it’s never that easy, in the next few games, Freddie continued to make it look so. He blasted another home run off a fastball in a Game 2 win. His two-run, first-inning shot on a high inside 93 mph Clarke Schmidt cutter in Game 3 gave the Dodgers a lead they held for their second consecutive 4-2 victory. For the series’ first three games, Freeman was single-handedly carrying the Dodgers’ offense, just the way it had collectively carried him through the NLCS. Muncy was hitless. Betts cooled down. And Ohtani partially dislocated his shoulder sliding into second base during Game 2 and was never a factor in the series.

The presence of Ohtani, who had absconded from the Los Angeles Angels in pursuit of a championship, as well as that of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge, had turned this World Series into a supersized event — but Freeman was the one owning it. He hit another two-run shot in the first inning of Game 4, marking an MLB-record sixth consecutive World Series game with a home run, his streak dating back to 2021 with Atlanta. The Dodgers’ attempt at a sweep fizzled with a third-inning grand slam by Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe and eventually turned into an 11-4 blowout, not exactly a surprise considering Roberts stayed away from using his best relievers in hopes of keeping them fresh for a potential Game 5.

Game 4 marked the Dodgers’ fourth all-bullpen effort of the postseason, a staggering number for a team with as much talent as Los Angeles. Consider the names on L.A.’s injured list come October. Longtime ace and future Hall of Famer Clayton Kershaw made only seven starts before a toe injury ended his season. Tyler Glasnow, acquired to help anchor the rotation over the winter, never returned from a mid-August elbow injury. Stone, the Dodgers’ best starter this season, was out. So was Dustin May after an esophageal tear. Emmet Sheehan, River Ryan and Tony Gonsolin all were on the shelf following Tommy John surgery, and the Dodgers had signed Ohtani, MLB’s first two-way player in nearly a century, knowing he wouldn’t pitch in 2024 because of elbow reconstruction.

Losing a rotation-and-a-half worth of starting pitchers would have torpedoed any other team. Los Angeles had figured out how to weather the deficiency, with Roberts and pitching coach Mark Prior puppeteering their 13-man pitching staff without excessive fatigue or overexposure to Yankees hitters. It was a delicate balance, one they feared could collapse if Game 5 went the wrong way.

AROUND 3 P.M. on Wednesday, Walker Buehler boarded the Dodgers’ team bus to Yankee Stadium, looked at general manager Brandon Gomes and said: “I’m good tonight if you need me.” Two nights earlier, Buehler had spun magic in Game 3, shutting down New York in five scoreless innings. He was scheduled to throw a between-starts bullpen session; if he needed to forgo it to instead throw in a World Series game, he was ready.

Buehler is 30 and coming off the worst regular season of his career, winning just one of his 16 starts and posting a 5.38 ERA. He missed all of 2023 after undergoing his second Tommy John surgery and returned a much lesser version of the cocksure right-hander whose postseason badassery earned him a reputation as one of baseball’s finest big-game pitchers. His fastball lacked life and his breaking balls sharpness, and with free agency beckoning, Buehler had looked positively ordinary.

This was October, though, and the month has always brought out something different in him. He dotted his fastball in all four quadrants of the strike zone in Game 3, flummoxing Yankees hitters. It revved past them with the sort of carry he displayed over four shutout innings against the Mets in the NLCS. Back, too, was Buehler’s self-assuredness. Just in case Gomes and the rest of the Dodgers’ staff didn’t understand what he meant, Buehler reiterated at the stadium: “If things get a little squirrelly, then I’ll be ready.”

The game was all Yankees to start. Judge hit his first home run of the series in the first inning. Jazz Chisholm Jr. followed with another. An RBI single from Verdugo in the second inning chased Flaherty after he had recorded just four outs. For the second consecutive night, Roberts would need to lean on his bullpen. He went into break-glass-in-case-of-emergency mode. Left-hander Anthony Banda escaped a bases-loaded jam in the second. Ryan Brasier allowed a third-inning leadoff home run to Giancarlo Stanton. Michael Kopech pitched the fourth and wriggled out of a first-and-second-with-one-out situation.

In the meantime, Cole was cruising. He held the Dodgers hitless through four innings. Hernández broke that streak with a leadoff single in the fifth. Edman lined a ball to center that clanked off Judge’s glove, his first error on a fly ball since 2017. After Volpe fielded a ground ball and tried to nab the lead runner at third, Hernández almost Eurostepped into his throwing lane, a brilliant bit of baserunning that illustrated the difference between Los Angeles’ and New York’s fundamentals. Volpe bounced the throw for a second error in the inning, loading the bases.

Cole bore down, striking out Lux and Ohtani, and Betts squibbed a ball at 49.8 mph toward Yankees first baseman Anthony Rizzo. Even with the English spinning the ball away from the first-base bag, Rizzo likely could have tagged first to end the inning. He expected to flip the ball to Cole, who anticipated Rizzo would take the out himself. Once Rizzo realized Cole had not covered the bag, he shuffled toward first. Betts beat him there, and the mental blunder gave the Dodgers their first run of the day.

Freeman served a single on an inner-third, two-strike, 99.5 mph fastball — the hardest pitch Cole threw all season — to center for two more runs. And on another 1-2 pitch that caught too much of the plate, Teoscar Hernandez drove the ball 404 feet to center field. Because it hopped against the wall instead of over it, Freeman hauled all the way from first to home. Just like that, a 5-0 advantage had evaporated into a 5-5 tie.

Yankee Stadium, minutes earlier a madhouse, flatlined. Buehler had adjourned to the weight room, loosening his arm with a yellow plyometric ball. He saw Slater, who works out during the game to calm his nerves.

“Is it squirrelly yet?” Buehler asked.

It was squirrelly, all right. Friedman had come downstairs to consult with the rest of the front office about the logistics of finding a lie-flat airplane seat to fly Yamamoto back to Los Angeles ahead of the team for a potential Game 6. Now, instead of expending energy on that, they focused on how the Dodgers would possibly secure the final 15 outs of the game if they could steal a lead.

Inside the dugout, Roberts and Prior were doing the same. They were counting on left-hander Alex Vesia for more than one inning. With his pitch count run to 23 after weathering a bases-loaded situation by getting Gleyber Torres to fly out to right field, Vesia was done after the fifth. Buehler had returned to the dugout, and Prior asked whether he had thrown all day. No, Buehler said. He offered his services to Roberts, who told him to head to the bullpen, which he did at 10:08 p.m. When Buehler arrived, he saw Brent Honeywell, whose 7⅔ innings in the NLCS had helped keep the Dodgers’ bullpen fresh, and Joe Kelly, the veteran not on the roster because of an injury.

“What the f— are you doing here?” Honeywell said.

“I just came out here to hang with you and Joe,” Buehler said.

Brusdar Graterol, the Dodgers’ sixth pitcher of the night, walked the first two hitters in the sixth and allowed the Yankees to take a 6-5 lead on a Stanton sacrifice fly. After a third walk left runners on first and second, Roberts summoned Blake Treinen, the Dodgers’ best reliever, to face Volpe, who grounded out to second on a full count.

“I owed it to them to exhaust every possible resource to give them the best chance to win the game,” Roberts said. “At that point, I’m just counting outs.”

The math was not in his favor. Left in the bullpen were the Game 4 starter, rookie Ben Casparius, and Honeywell, who had gotten tagged for four runs the previous night, along with veteran Daniel Hudson, who had surrendered Volpe’s grand slam. Treinen took care of the seventh in order, and the Dodgers greeted Yankees reliever Tommy Kahnle rudely, loading the bases with two singles and a four-pitch walk. Boone signaled for closer Luke Weaver, who had pitched in Games 3 and 4, and he worked the count full before Lux lofted a sacrifice fly to center field. Ohtani reloaded the bases on another error via catcher’s interference before the second sac fly of the inning, from Betts, gave Los Angeles a 7-6 advantage.

Roberts was ready. About 20 minutes earlier, Buehler had thrown five balls to the bullpen catcher to ensure his arm would be ready. It felt fresh. Hudson began warming up as well, and Buehler later rejoined him. Roberts wanted to stick with Treinen as long as he could, and the decision looked fateful after Judge doubled and Chisholm walked. Roberts, not Prior, walked to the mound. A pitching change seemed imminent. He considered putting Hudson into the game to face Stanton, whose seven home runs this October set a Yankees postseason record.

Roberts did not realize that Hudson’s forearm was screaming as he warmed up. Hudson had fashioned a 15-year major league career despite two Tommy John surgeries within one calendar year from 2012 to 2013, typically a career ender for pitchers. Forearm tightness is a telltale sign of elbow troubles, and Hudson foresaw catastrophe if Roberts called on him to pitch.

“If Doc brought me in,” Hudson said, “I was going to blow out again.”

When Roberts arrived at the mound, he put his hands on Treinen’s chest.

“I just wanted to feel his heartbeat and just kind of look him in the eye and say, ‘What do you got?'” Roberts said. “And he said, ‘I want him.’ And so I said, ‘All right, you got this hitter.’ Because my intention was for him to get one hitter.”

On a middle-middle first-pitch sinker, Stanton sent a lazy fly ball to short right field. Roberts planned to hook Treinen there. Treinen avoided eye contact with Roberts. Out of the corner of his eye, Roberts saw Freeman.

“I give Freddie credit,” Roberts said. “Freddie was waving me off. He kind of subtly kind of said, ‘Hey, let him stay in.’ So then I trusted the players, and Blake made a pitch.”

He struck out Rizzo on a backfoot slider, his 42nd pitch of the night, and bounded off the mound and into the dugout, lead secure. Roberts knew his next move. He was going to use his projected Game 7 starter as his Game 5 closer and win the damn World Series.

When the bullpen door swung open in the ninth inning and Buehler jogged to the mound, his wife, McKenzie, sitting in the stands, started to sob. Their baby daughter, Finley, was asleep on McKenzie’s shoulder, and the tension of the moment was eating at her, and the tears didn’t stop — not after Volpe grounded out to third, not after Austin Wells swung over a full-count curveball and not after Verdugo flailed at a 77.5 mph curveball in the dirt that won the Dodgers a World Series that 29 other professional, billion-dollar organizations would’ve liked to have won.

Buehler exulted. His teammates swarmed him. Every time the Dodgers win a series, Buehler fetches his phone, opens Instagram and captions a triumphant photo with the same two words, all caps: WHO ELSE. He means the Dodgers, yes, but there’s more to it, this manifestation of the best version of himself in October, something with which Freeman and his fellow champions are familiar.

“That’s how I feel about myself,” Buehler said. “Who else is going to do it? Who else is going to be out there? Who else is supposed to do this? We’ve got 30 guys that believe that same way. And I was just the one in the spot to do it.”

ADRENALINE STILL FLOWING, booze serving as a mighty analgesic, Freddie Freeman walked around the Dodgers’ clubhouse around 2 a.m. with only a slight limp and little sign of pain in his side. He sheathed his middle finger because the Dodgers had given theirs to all of those who called 2020 a Mickey Mouse title and suggested they couldn’t win a real one.

“He couldn’t even walk two days ago,” Chelsea said. “Getting out of bed, literally yesterday, he looked like he was 100 years old.”

On Wednesday night, into Thursday morning, onto the plane ride back to Los Angeles, Freeman felt like a kid. Like Ohtani, Freeman came to Los Angeles for this. To win. To feel greatness. If the price of that is the return of pain that eventually will subside, he gladly paid it.

“I gave myself to the game, to the field,” Freeman said. “I did everything I could to get onto that field. And that’s why this is really, really sweet. I’m proud of the fact that I gave everything I could to this team and I left it all out there. That’s all I try to do every single night. When I go home and put my head on that pillow, I ask if I gave everything I had that night. And usually it’s a yes. One hundred percent of the time it’s a yes. But this one was a little bit sweeter because I went through a lot. My teammates appreciated it. The organization appreciated it. And to end it with a championship makes all the trying times before games, what I put myself through to get on the field, worth it.”

He did it for Buehler, who walked around shirtless inside the clubhouse and on the field, trying and failing to avoid champagne-and-beer showers, including one from Ohtani that doused the cigar in Buehler’s mouth. “Shohei,” he said. “This is a Cuban!” Buehler beamed at what he had done — what they had done — to fortify the external validation the Dodgers had held internally for four years.

“I still very much see this as the second one. I don’t see them very differently,” Buehler said. “But do it on the road, in New York, against the Yankees. It’s emphatic.”

He did it for Kiké Hernández, who, with the flag of Puerto Rico wrapped around his shoulders, said: “What are they going to say now? That this one doesn’t count?” And for Ohtani, who knows how hard baseball is more than anyone and still had the temerity to say: “Let’s do this nine more times.” And for everyone else in the organization, including Kershaw, who at 36 has been with the Dodgers organization for half his life.

Just after the presentation of the commissioner’s trophy on the field, Kershaw looked at his 9-year-old daughter, Cali, and tried to explain that they were finally going to get their parade, the one COVID-19 stole from them.

“All the people get to celebrate,” Kershaw said. “Isn’t that awesome?”

“Are you crying?” Cali said.

“No, I’m not crying,” Kershaw said. “Happy tears. Happy tears. OK. I’m done crying. I’m done crying.”

He stopped and looked around. Kershaw wants to pitch again, for the Dodgers, because however others view the organization, it represents home.

“I stopped caring about what other people that weren’t a part of it thought a long time ago,” Kershaw said. “It felt real to me. So I’m going to always have that one. But we get to have a parade. We’re going to get to do a parade in L.A. on Friday. Basically a culmination of those two championships. It’s going to be incredible. I’ve always wanted to have a parade. I’ve always wanted to do that. I feel like I missed out on it in 2020. So I think it’s going to be pretty awesome.”

Freeman did it for himself, too. For him, this is just the beginning. Some of the injured starters will return next season, and the Dodgers will enter the season as favorites to become the first back-to-back World Series winners since the Yankees won three straight championships from 1998 to 2000. Brian Cashman was the general manager of those teams, and he walked through the bowels of Yankee Stadium to the Dodgers’ clubhouse to congratulate Friedman. While he was waiting, Freeman walked by.

“Congrats, man,” Cashman said. “Hell of a series.”

It was. Maybe not the dream series of seven games or even the last one in which the Dodgers and Yankees met for a title. That one, in 1981, lasted six games, with the first five all decided by three or fewer runs, and was also won by the Dodgers. It included a Game 3 started by Fernando Valenzuela, the Dodgers legend who died last week. His presence will be felt on Friday — what would have been his 64th birthday — along the 45-minute parade route, a celebration of all things Dodgers.

The merriment Wednesday stretched deep into the night. On the clubhouse speakers, Kendrick Lamar’s “Not Like Us” played, an appropriate soundtrack. The Padres weren’t. The Mets weren’t. The Yankees weren’t.

Nobody is like these Dodgers, champions of the baseball world.

LOS ANGELES — The Dodgers, including Shohei Ohtani and his dog, celebrated their eighth World Series championship with a downtown parade Friday.

Seven double-decker buses filled with players, their families and the coaching staff rolled through streets packed on both sides with blue-clad fans. The Los Angeles Police Department estimated the crowd to be 150,000.

A jubilant manager Dave Roberts hoisted the Commissioner’s Trophy.

“This is incredible,” World Series MVP Freddie Freeman said. “L.A. really showed out today.”

Several players smoked cigars and drank beer on the sun-splashed day.

“It’s the best thing I’ve ever been part of,” pitcher Clayton Kershaw said. “I’ve never seen this many people in my life. They’re all Dodger fans.”

A shirtless Kiké Hernández hung over the front of a bus with a beer in his hand. Ohtani — with his wife, Mamiko, nearby — held his dog, Decoy, in his arms.

“I’m totally overwhelmed with the amount of fans who are here,” Ohtani said through an interpreter as the bus rolled along. “It’s been an incredible year. I’m so happy that I was able to contribute. The fans and everybody has been so welcoming.”

Asked whether he would take his shirt off like Hernández, a smiling Ohtani shook his head and replied in English, “No, never.”

Walker Buehler, who pitched the ninth inning in the World Series finale, did a beer bong while wearing Orel Hershiser’s jersey from the team’s 1988 World Series championship.

“This is crazy, man. I love this,” outfielder Teoscar Hernandez said.

Fans cheered and waved at their heroes. The parade occurred on what would have been the 64th birthday of Fernando Valenzuela, the 1981 National League Cy Young Award and Rookie of the Year winner who died days before the World Series began.

The Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in five games, clinching the title with a 7-6 victory in the Bronx on Wednesday.

The parade began at Gloria Molina Grand Park as part of a 45-minute route that culminated at the intersection of 5th and Flower streets. The celebration was to continue at Dodger Stadium, where thousands of fans were waiting and watching the parade on the videoboards ahead of the team’s arrival.

The team said that because of logistics, traffic and timing, fans wouldn’t be able to attend both events.

A portion of the proceeds from the ticketed stadium event will be donated to the Los Angeles Dodgers Foundation.