We are borrowing, with permission, from brilliant writer Steve Rushin, the lede from his game story in Sports Illustrated from the 1991 World Series between the Twins and Braves. The truth is inelastic when it comes to the 88th World Series. It is impossible to stretch. It isn’t necessary to appraise the nine days just past from some distant horizon of historical perspective. Let us call this World Series what it is, now, while its seven games still ring in our ears: the greatest that was ever played.

With apologies to 1991, the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays just finished the greatest World Series. Not because all the games were great — some weren’t. All were flawed, but all were marvelously fun, interesting and entertaining. It was the greatest World Series because of its compelling storylines, some of which were impossible to believe: an 18-inning game, a historic pitching performance by a 22-year-old, the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history, the first World Series game to begin with back-to-back home runs, the first game-ending, 7-4 double play in World Series history. It featured a bizarre, three-pitch opera from a pitcher who hadn’t worked in relief in seven years, the final major league game for the greatest pitcher of this era and a Game 7 for the ages, for all ages, a masterpiece featuring an unforgettable, ironman pitching performance that we might never see again.

The Blue Jays, who finished last in the American League East in 2024, were in the World Series for the first time since repeating as world champions in 1992 and 1993. The Dodgers were trying to become the first team to repeat as world champions since the New York Yankees from 1998 to 2000. In Game 7, Toronto started Max Scherzer, 41, the oldest pitcher to start a Game 7, the man who also started the last Game 7 — in 2019 for the Washington Nationals. The Dodgers started the most remarkable player in the history of baseball, Shohei Ohtani, who was working on three days’ rest. Toronto’s Vladimir Guerrero Jr., so dominant in this postseason, called it “the biggest day of my life in baseball.”

Game 7 was epic, one of only six Game 7s of the World Series to go extra innings. The Dodgers fell behind 3-0 but won 5-4 in 11 breathtaking innings, in part because Dodgers manager Dave Roberts used all four of his aces, Ohtani, Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and the World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Yamamoto threw 96 pitches the day before in winning Game 6, then miraculously pitched the final 2⅔ innings of Game 7, throwing 34 pitches, to become the fourth pitcher to win Game 6 and Game 7 of the World Series. It was one of the greatest pitching performances in World Series history.

“He is one of the greatest pitchers on the planet,” Dodgers catcher Will Smith said. “What he did tonight was amazing.”

It was Smith’s home run off Shane Bieber in the 11th inning that provided the winning run, and made it six years in a row that a player named Will Smith has been a part of a World Series-winning team. And yet Smith’s game-winning homer wasn’t the biggest homer of the night for the Dodgers. Second baseman and No. 9 hitter Miguel Rojas, who helped win Game 6 with four terrific defensive plays, stunningly homered with one out in the ninth inning off Blue Jays closer Jeff Hoffman to tie the score, Rojas’ first extra-base hit of the postseason. Rojas joined Hall of Famer Bill Mazeroski in 1960 as the only players in World Series history to hit a game-winning or game-tying home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7.

It was a devastating loss for the Blue Jays, who played so exceptionally well in the first five games. They scored the most runs (105) in a single postseason of any team in history, but when they needed to get a big hit, they didn’t: In Game 6, they went 1-for-9 with runners in scoring position; in Game 7, they went 3-for-17. Don’t blame infielder Ernie Clement, whose 30 hits were the most hits ever by any player in one postseason. In the ninth inning, he was robbed of a World Series-winning hit when center fielder Andy Pages, a defensive replacement, made a spectacular leaping catch in left-center field with two outs and the bases loaded. An inning later, Clement, a brilliant defensive infielder who uses a Mizuno glove that he bought from an elderly Japanese woman on eBay, put his arm around Blue Jays dugout reporter Hazel Mae when he noticed that her head was down in disappointment when the Blue Jays didn’t win in the ninth.

“Are you OK?” Clement asked her. “You’re going to be OK. Don’t worry. We’re going to be OK, too. Don’t worry.”

This series was full of worry. The only way to try to make sense of these stressful seven games is to view them chronologically. In Game 1, the Blue Jays started Trey Yesavage, who made his major league debut Sept. 15. Yesavage pitched four innings in an 11-4 victory in Game 1, which featured Bo Bichette‘s first game since Sept. 6 — he singled in his first at-bat on a 3-0 pitch. Bichette, Toronto’s primary shortstop, played second base for the first time in his major league career, marking the first time since 1931 that an infielder started a World Series game at a position he had never played in the big leagues.

The game was broken open in the sixth on a pinch-hit grand slam — a first in World Series history — by Addison Barger, who slept the night before on a pullout couch in the hotel room of teammate Davis Schneider. “I woke up on my friend’s couch the morning of the game, and after the game, the Hall of Fame asked me for my spikes,” Barger said.

The aptly named Barger, one of several Toronto players who became folk heroes in October, was asked why he swings so hard on every pitch.

“I was the smallest kid on our team — I was 4-foot-10 as a freshman, I was 5-feet, 90 pounds as a sophomore,” he said. “My dad had me play up. I was a small 13-year-old playing against 18-year-olds. My only hope was to swing as hard as I could.”

Game 2 featured the remarkable Yamamoto, who, among other preparations for his constant chase of the perfect pitch, throws a javelin before games and does an insane stretching routine that is painful just to watch. He silenced the relentless Blue Jays lineup on four hits to become the first pitcher since Curt Schilling in 2001 to throw back-to-back complete games in one postseason. “He is hard to hit because he has elite command, his delivery is deceptive, everything comes out of the same arm slot and he is short [5-foot-10],” said Blue Jays infielder Isiah Kiner-Falefa. “With Justin Verlander [who is tall and has a high release point], you can see his fastball coming out of the sky. With [Yamamoto], you can’t see it because he is short.”

Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw said, “If I could do it over again, I would throw a javelin in between starts.”

Kershaw, the greatest pitcher of his generation, pitched in Game 3. He was one of 19 pitchers, 10 of them Dodgers (a record number for a World Series game), to work the 18-inning game, which lasted 6 hours, 39 minutes and included 609 pitches. It is tied (in innings) for the longest World Series game, matching 2018’s Game 3 between the Boston Red Sox and Dodgers, also at Dodger Stadium. In 2018, Max Muncy won the game with a walk-off homer in the 18th. Freddie Freeman won this one — becoming the first player in major league history to hit two walk-off home runs in the World Series.

“If Freddie didn’t end with a homer, I would have,” Muncy said, laughing, the next day. “So amazing. A first baseman leads off the 18th with a walk-off homer on a 3-2 pitch. Same as I did [in 2018].”

Muncy agreed that if he had hit another 18th-inning, walk-off homer seven years later, “your head would have exploded.”

And yet, Freeman wasn’t the biggest star of the game. Ohtani had nine plate appearances and reached base nine times: No one in World Series history had reached seven times in one game. Only four others in major league history had reached base nine times in a game, regular or postseason. Ohtani hit two doubles and two home runs in his first four at-bats — the second player with four extra-base hits in a World Series game — and walked his final five plate appearances, four of them intentionally, another World Series record. Until that game, only Albert Pujols in 2011 had been walked intentionally with the bases empty in a World Series game. And Ohtani did it three times, including twice in a three-inning span.

“I mean, really, 9-for-9? Are you kidding me?” Freeman said in amazement. “Only Shohei could do that.”

And yet Ohtani wasn’t the best story of the game, either. Will Klein, who had thrown 22 innings in his major league career, pitched the final four scoreless innings to get the victory.

“I looked around in the 14th inning and realized I was the only one left in the pen,” he said.

Klein spent the first three rounds of the playoffs in the Get Hot Camp in Arizona, where Dodger players train just in case they need to be added to the roster because of an injury. He threw a simulated game at Dodger Stadium before the World Series and threw strikes. “[The Dodgers] called me and told me to go to Toronto,” Klein said. “I didn’t think there was any chance I’d be activated; I thought I was just a taxi squad guy. Then, they told me that I was going to be activated for the World Series. I thought . . . sweet!”

Klein threw 72 pitches, twice as many as he had thrown in a major league game, in Game 3.

“I got hundreds and hundreds of text messages after the game, some from people I didn’t know,” Klein said. Sandy Koufax, the legendary Dodger pitcher, came into the clubhouse after the game to congratulate him.

“I didn’t know what to say, I could barely speak,” Klein said. “I mean. . .he is Sandy Koufax!”

Game 4 featured — again — the greatness of Vladimir Guerrero Jr. In the third inning, he gave the Blue Jays a 2-1 lead with a two-run homer off Ohtani, a marvelous at-bat for the growth of the game. It was two of the biggest stars in baseball — one from the Dominican Republic, but born in Canada, the other from Japan — going head-to-head on the biggest stage in baseball. Guerrero won this confrontation, as he won most matchups in the postseason: He hit .397 with 8 home runs, 15 RBIs and only 7 strikeouts, astounding in this strikeout era. And now, the world knows that Guerrero, 26, isn’t some lumbering, unathletic first baseman. He has a great instinct for the game. He has won a Gold Glove at first base, he is a finalist for another this year and he made two great defensive plays in Game 7. He also is a well-above-average runner.

“Sometime in July, I went to Vladdy with a bar chart that I put together about great players and their running speed, and the way they run the bases,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “The graph had [Aaron] Judge, [Manny] Machado and Vladdy. I asked him, ‘Who is the fastest of these three?’ He didn’t know. I said, ‘Vladdy, you are.”’

Guerrero’s homer off Ohtani gave the Blue Jays the lead for good, but they tacked on four runs in the seventh to seal the win. The biggest hit was provided by Clement, who personifies the gritty Blue Jays. He was released by the A’s in 2022 after going 1-for-18. He made a swing change in 2023, and that has resulted in him becoming a quality every-day player in the major leagues.

“Ernie shoots 65 in golf,” Davis Schneider said. “He’s one of those guys who is good at everything. Hockey. pingpong. Everything.”

Davis Schneider, who was nearly released three times in the minor leagues, also personifies the gutsy Blue Jays. “All the guys on this team took a different path to get here,” he said. “It’s one reason we are here.”

Schneider, hitting leadoff in Game 5 due to the intercostal injury to DH George Springer, led off the game with a homer off Snell, who had allowed one homer in his previous 50 innings. Guerrero followed with another homer, marking the first time in history that the first two hitters homered in a World Series game.

That was plenty for Yesavage, who was making his eighth major league start, five in the postseason, to join Joe Black (1952) as the only pitchers in history to start more games in the postseason than they had in their regular-season careers. Yesavage was unhittable for seven innings. He became the first rookie to strike out 12 in a World Series game. He became the first pitcher to strike out 12 and not walk a batter in a Series game. He joined Koufax as the only pitchers with 10 strikeouts in the first five innings of a World Series game.

“I never met him until he got here [Sept. 15]. I might have met him in spring training, but if I did, I don’t remember,” Davis Schneider said. “Now, he’s doing amazing things. He is such a modest dude walking around the clubhouse. He has made the best hitters in the world look like they’ve never swung a bat before.”

Game 6 was a classic — not on the Game 6 level of Buckner in 1986, Puckett in 1991, Freese in 2011, Fisk in 1975 or Carter in 1993, but its finish was jarring. Yamamoto started. One Blue Jay said before the game, “We know he is on a 1,000-pitch count tonight.” Instead, Yamamoto was taken out after six innings and 96 pitches with a 3-1 lead. Roki Sasaki had a shaky eighth inning, then hit Alejandro Kirk to start the ninth. Barger followed with a ringing line drive to left-center field. The ball impossibly lodged between the padding on the outfield wall and the warning track. Dodgers center fielder Justin Dean, cued by left fielder Enrique Hernandez, threw up his hands in hopes the umpires would rule it an automatic two bases, which they did.

“I have never seen a ball get lodged in there,” John Schneider said.

“I’ve tried to wedge a ball in there,” Davis Schneider said. “And I couldn’t do it.”

“I walk every stadium before every series to see what might come up,” Dodgers third-base coach Dino Ebel said. “I walked that outfield area, and I said, ‘This is clean. Nothing can get stuck in there.’ Then, it did.”

It was a bad break for the Blue Jays, who might have scored a run on that play, and Barger might have made it to third with no outs if the ball had caromed instead of plugged. In came Glasnow, who was supposed to start Game 7, but instead was summoned for his first relief appearance since 2018. He got Clement to pop out to first base on the first pitch. Two pitches later, Andres Gimenez hit a soft liner to left.

“I thought, ‘Please don’t drop, please don’t drop,”’ Glasnow said.

Hernandez, a natural infielder, charged the ball like an infielder, caught it in the air on the run and made a quick throw to Rojas, who made a terrific catch. Barger was doubled off second base, one of the biggest baserunning mistakes in World Series history: It is the only postseason game to end on a 7-4 double play. Thanks to Hernandez and Rojas, Glasnow got three outs on three pitches for his first career save.

“The [defensive metric] card had me playing shallow on that play, but I then moved in seven feet,” Hernandez. “If he hits it over my head, I will live with the consequences. I was not going to let a ball land in front of me. I trust my instincts over a computer any day.”

“It was a bad read by me,” Barger said.

The bad read set up one of the greatest Game 7s in World Series history, one that cemented the Dodgers’ dynasty. They won their third World Series in this decade and became the first team since the Yankees in 1953-58 to win three World Series and have a winning percentage of .630 in a six-year span. The Blue Jays did something equally important in this postseason: They showed the world how the game can be played, with elite defense, putting balls in play, treating every at-bat like a fistfight, valuing the hit, not just the home run, and taking the game to the opponent. They also showed that character, chemistry and camaraderie in the clubhouse, and on the field, are greatly valued.

“I just played a season with my 30 best friends,” Clement said after losing Game 7. “I just finished crying for about an hour. This is the closest team I have ever been on. I just love coming to work with these guys.”

There has never been a bad read by my friend Steve Rushin, from whom I borrowed the lede to his epic story from the epic 1991 World Series. He had watched this postseason from afar, and like so many people across the country, across the globe, he marveled at Ohtani, Yamamoto, Yesavage, Glasnow, Vladdy, Ernie, and all the other stars, storylines and sensational plays that produced the greatest World Series ever.

He texted me before Game 7.

Speaking for all baseball fans, it read: “What a time to be alive.”