The Los Angeles Dodgers finally broke through and won the World Series to end the franchise’s drought, although it certainly did not come easy.
The Dodgers cruised to the best record in baseball during the regular season and then swept the first two rounds of the postseason, setting up a showdown with the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series.
In what Kiké Hernandez called the first time they faced adversity all season, the Dodgers dropped three of the first four games to the Braves, putting them one game loss from elimination.
The Dodgers remained confident and took things one game at a time though, erasing the 3-1 deficit by winning three straight games to advance to the World Series, where they would go on to defeat the Tampa Bay Rays in six games.
In order to stay focused and motivated, it was revealed that the Dodgers’ group text chat was very active after the Game 4 loss to Atlanta. Hernandez said that it was actually Clayton Kershaw, who suffered the loss in Game 4, that got the conversation started, via Jorge Castillo of the L.A. Times:
“We told ourselves we had to forget about it and that we had to turn the page. But we did it mostly through text messages. We have a group chat with all the players that started during the shutdown in March. We used it during the season but not like we used it in the playoffs. That’s another thing I would say that was different from other years: our team unity. It was a lot stronger than in other years. I loved that chat.
“And the first person to write something in it after the game was [Clayton] Kershaw. He wrote that we can’t let this ruin our season. We have to remember that we’re still the best team in the world and that hasn’t changed. Everyone then started sending messages, and that’s how we picked each other up.”
Kershaw is the longest-tenured Dodger and has been one of their vocal leaders for a long time, so it doesn’t come as much of a surprise that he was willing to speak up to get things back rolling in the right direction.
Kershaw’s postseason history is well-documented, but thanks to the performance of him and his teammates this October, he will now be considered a champion forever, putting the exclamation mark on his Hall of Fame career.
Hernandez believes lack of off days helped Dodgers
One aspect of the postseason this year that was different than normal was there weren’t off days in the middle of series until the World Series. With games being played in a bubble in Texas, teams did not have to travel, so the Dodgers and Braves played seven games in seven days in the NLCS.
While that may seem difficult, Hernandez believes it actually helped the Dodgers when they went down 3-1 as they did not have time to sulk and think about their losses.
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