When Joe Torre was the manager of the last major league team to win back-to-back championships and the New York Yankees faced moments like the Los Angeles Dodgers face now, at the precipice of elimination, he would remind the players how great they were.

“It was always one of the biggest parts of Joe Torre’s speeches,” recalled Paul O’Neill, the right fielder for the Yankees at that time. “He’d say, ‘The talent in this room is good enough to win this.’ When he said it, you believed it.”

The accomplishments of those Yankees teams are presented neatly in the record book, like perfectly boxed museum relics: Those Yankees won the World Series in 1998, 1999 and 2000 — three consecutive seasons, the heart of a dynasty bookended by the 1996 championship and a Game 7 loss in the 2001 World Series. Four championships in the span of five years; five World Series appearances in six years.

But in building that legacy, the Yankees were repeatedly pushed to the brink, and through the long regular seasons and the short intense rounds of playoffs, they intermittently looked older or tired or vulnerable — as the Dodgers have to some rival evaluators over the past 72 hours.

In conversation last week, Torre recounted how the Yankees won 114 games in the regular season in 1998, and suddenly played very tight in the American League Championship Series. As they dropped two of the first three games to Cleveland in the best-of-seven series, he sensed they were more focused on validating their summerlong accomplishment than on the postseason business at hand. Torre called a meeting and remembers saying, “Guys, you got to have some fun. You’re trying to prove the 114 wins are not a fluke.'” After the meeting was over, O’Neill found Torre and said, “Skip, it’s not fun unless you win.”

In 1999, Torre left the team to be treated for cancer and the Yankees played listlessly in his absence, drifting into second place before rebounding. At the end of the 2000 regular season, the Yankees lost 15 of their last 18 games and each of their last five games, clinching only because the Boston Red Sox had lost a game — and Torre had to remind them to celebrate, to recognize an accomplishment built over the long season. In the division series against Oakland, the Yankees lost Game 4 in Yankee Stadium and flew across the country overnight to play a winner-take-all Game 5. They won, barely surviving an A’s team that seemed younger, faster, better. In the end, there was another championship parade, another foundational piece in a legacy.

Whether the Dodgers can respond similarly and become the first team in a quarter century to win back-to-back titles will be decided in the next two days. Like those Yankees teams, they are loaded with stars, some future Hall of Famers, and so much postseason experience that its impact is tangible. O’Neill explained that through the dynasty, Yankees players learned to trust each other and believe that in tough moments, they would respond, individually, collectively. “You just come to believe everybody will do their part,” said Darryl Strawberry, part of the Yankees’ championships in 1996, 1998 and 1999.

David Cone was a leader on those teams and believes that the pitching was a separator for the Yankees, a backbone of the success. “Overall pitching, and Mariano [Rivera] at the back end of games,” he wrote in a text. “We really had four No. 1 starters, similar to the Dodgers’ rotation.”

Roger Clemens, part of that rotation in 1999 and 2000, noted the inherent good fortune required to repeat as champions, avoiding the injuries that can take down a team. “Throughout the season, you use 50-plus players just to get through the marathon of the year,” he texted. “Once you have the pieces like the Dodgers have, it’s about executing and taking advantage of opportunities that arise in each game.”

Strawberry said, “You’ve just got to keep your focus. That’s not always easy.

“Joe always reminded us how good we were, and to keep a foot on the gas.”

Dodgers manager Dave Roberts has a long-standing friendship with Torre, who reaches out to him from time to time, checking on him, encouraging him. Under the circumstances, it’s possible that Roberts’ words to his team before Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes the mound for Game 6 of the World Series will echo a lot of what Torre said in his years as the Yankees manager.

In Torre’s first year as Yankees manager, he told the players, “I don’t want to win one World Series. I want to win three in a row.”

Torre recalled, “I said that just to let them know, ‘Once you win, that’s fine. But you have more work to do. I don’t care what line of work you’re in: Once you stop to admire what you’ve accomplished, you stop doing it.”

The 2025 Dodgers may have reached that crossroads, and as Torre did, Roberts could remind the Dodgers how extraordinary they’ve been and how they have more to do. Heritage construction can be — and must be, at times — a messy business.

No driver won more NASCAR Cup Series races than Richard Petty. The King won 200 Cup Series checkered flags over his 34-year career. Petty won a record-tying seven Cup Series championships (1964, 1967, 1971, 1972, 1974, 1975, 1979). Jimmie Johnson (2006, 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010, 2013, 2016) and Dale Earnhardt (1980, 1986, 1987, 1990, 1991, 1993, 1994) also won seven. Johnson is the only driver to win five titles in a row.

NASCAR has crowned a Cup Series champion every year since 1949. Joey Logano took home the title in 2024. Here’s a look at all-time Cup Series winners:

2024: Joey Logano

2023: Ryan Blaney

2022: Joey Logano

2021: Kyle Larson

2020: Chase Elliott

2019: Kyle Busch

2018: Joey Logano

2017: Martin Truex Jr.

2016: Jimmie Johnson

2015: Kyle Busch

2014: Kevin Harvick

2013: Jimmie Johnson

2012: Brad Keselowski

2011: Tony Stewart

2010: Jimmie Johnson

2009: Jimmie Johnson

2008: Jimmie Johnson

2007: Jimmie Johnson

2006: Jimmie Johnson

2005: Tony Stewart

2004: Kurt Busch

2003: Matt Kenseth

2002: Tony Stewart

2001: Jeff Gordon

2000: Bobby Labonte

1999: Dale Jarrett

1998: Jeff Gordon

1997: Jeff Gordon

1996: Terry Labonte

1995: Jeff Gordon

1994: Dale Earnhardt

1993: Dale Earnhardt

1992: Alan Kulwicki

1991: Dale Earnhardt

1990: Dale Earnhardt

1989: Rusty Wallace

1988: Bill Elliott

1987: Dale Earnhardt

1986: Dale Earnhardt

1985: Darrell Waltrip

1984: Terry Labonte

1983: Bobby Allison

1982: Darrell Waltrip

1981: Darrell Waltrip

1980: Dale Earnhardt

1979: Richard Petty

1978: Cale Yarborough

1977: Cale Yarborough

1976: Cale Yarborough

1975: Richard Petty

1974: Richard Petty

1973: Benny Parsons

1972: Richard Petty

1971: Richard Petty

1970: Bobby Isaac

1969: David Pearson

1968: David Pearson

1967: Richard Petty

1966: David Pearson

1965: Ned Jarrett

1964: Richard Petty

1963: Joe Weatherly

1962: Joe Weatherly

1961: Ned Jarrett

1960: Rex White

1959: Lee Petty

1958: Lee Petty

1957: Buck Baker

1956: Buck Baker

1955: Tim Flock

1954: Lee Petty

1953: Herb Thomas

1952: Tim Flock

1951: Herb Thomas

1950: Bill Rexford

1949: Red Byron

Check out the ESPN NASCAR hub page for the latest news, schedule, results and more.

LSU interim athletic director Verge Ausberry will have full authority to hire the Tigers’ next football coach, and he told reporters Friday that a search committee has already been formed to identify Brian Kelly’s replacement.

Ausberry, a former LSU linebacker who has been connected to the university for more than 30 years, is now leading the athletics department after former athletics director Scott Woodward and the school mutually agreed to part ways Thursday.

“We’re going to hire the best football coach there is,” Ausberry said in a news conference Friday in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. “That’s our job. We are not going to let this program fail. LSU has to be in the playoffs every year in football. There’s 12 teams that make it. It’s going to expand here. We have to be one of those teams at LSU. No substitute.”

Woodward’s departure came a day after Louisiana Gov. Jeff Landry told reporters that Woodward wouldn’t be involved in hiring Kelly’s replacement, saying he’d rather let President Donald Trump do it.

The Tigers fired Kelly on Sunday, a day after they lost to Texas A&M 49-25 at home to drop to 5-3.

While some have suggested that the political controversy surrounding the LSU athletics department shakeup might scare away some potential candidates, Ausberry was confident the Tigers will find the right coach.

“We’re LSU,” Ausberry said. “This place is not broken. The athletic department is not broken. We win.”

Ausberry, the executive deputy athletic director under Woodward, is a member of the search committee, along with LSU Board of Supervisors chairman Scott Ballard and other board members and donors.

The Board of Supervisors is scheduled to select the next LSU president on Tuesday, but Ballard told reporters that wouldn’t affect the search for a new football coach.

McNeese State President Wade Rousse, University of Alabama Provost James Dalton and former University of Arizona President Robert Robbins are finalists for the position.

“We’re not slowing down for that,” Ballard said. “Verge is going to move forward and knows what he needs to do. But, depending on how that works out and when the new president starts, the new president will absolutely have input and hopefully hit the ground running.”

Landry criticized Woodward for agreeing to a 10-year, $95 million contract with Kelly that included incentives and which left LSU on the hook for a $54 million buyout under the terms of the deal.

In a statement Monday, Woodward said the school would “continue to negotiate his separation and will work toward a path that is better for both parties.”

Landry held a meeting at the governor’s mansion Sunday night to discuss the legalities of firing Kelly and who would pay his hefty buyout.

In his news conference at the state capitol in Baton Rouge on Wednesday, Landry suggested that LSU’s new football coach would have a merit-based contract that wouldn’t include a massive buyout. Ausberry said he was told to find the best coach and not worry about the contract’s parameters.

Woodward, who had been LSU’s athletics director since 2019, is owed a buyout of more than $6 million, sources told ESPN.

“The governor had a right to be concerned and we’re working towards solutions,” Board of Supervisors member John Carmouche told reporters Friday. “Everything’s on the table. But let me make it clear: The state has never, and taxpayers have never paid for a coach and never will.”

More than anything, Ausberry said LSU has to get its football program back on track. He walked the field during the third and fourth quarters of last week’s game and saw that Tiger Stadium was half empty.

“It’s not a good thing,” Ausberry said. “[Former Ohio State football coach] Woody Hayes always said the worst word in the dictionary was ‘apathy.’ This program cannot have apathy, in no way or means. We have to win. We have to be successful.”