The Los Angeles Dodgers finally erased a 32-year drought by winning the World Series in 2020, which did not come without its share of adversity.
The Dodgers were the best team in baseball all season but they found themselves one game away from elimination after dropping three of the first four to the Atlanta Braves in the National League Championship Series.
While only a handful of teams have come back from a 3-1 deficit in the postseason, the Dodgers continued to fight and did exactly that against Atlanta before defeating the Tampa Bay Rays in six games in the World Series.
The tide started to turn for the Dodgers in the third inning of Game 5 against the Braves when they caught a huge break thanks to a mistake on the basepaths. Atlanta was leading 2-0 and had a chance to extend the lead with runners at the corners and one out.
Dansby Swanson hit a shallow fly ball to right field off Joe Kelly, and Mookie Betts came in and made a spectacular shoestring catch, staying on his feet in the process. Betts then fired to home plate but was late, and Marcell Ozuna extended Braves’ lead was extended to 3-0.
After some discussion and a review, however, it was determined that Ozuna left third base early and he was called out to end the inning, keeping it a 2-0 game. The Dodgers went on to score a run in the following half-inning and then broke it open in the sixth, earning a 7-3 victory to force a Game 6, where they would eventually go on to win the series.
The sequence gets lost in the Dodgers’ postseason highlight reel considering they had so many incredible plays on both sides of the ball throughout their October run. In an interview with David Vassegh of AM 570 L.A. Sports, Max Muncy made sure to note just how important he and his teammates felt that play was at the time:
“I’m not going to lie, we kind of talked about in the dugout. Before we went on to win that game we kind of said, ‘Hey, that’s going to turn this series around for us,’ was him making that mistake on third base. Sure enough it did. We went on to win the next three games. That was pretty special. … That was one of those things we talked about in the dugout was, ‘Hey, they just gave us the series right there.’ That’s how big that play was.”
Muncy also had an at-bat of his own in that game that often gets overlooked as he worked a two-out walk off Braves lefty reliever Will Smith to put two on in the sixth inning. Dodgers catcher Will Smith then proceeded to hit a go-ahead three-run home run, and L.A. never looked back.
Muncy pokes fun at Manfred with ‘piece of metal’ post
After the Dodgers clinched the World Series, Muncy took to Instagram to poke fun at MLB commissioner Rob Manfred by calling the trophy a ‘piece of metal.’
Manfred, of course, had to apologize after calling it that during Spring Training when he was questioned about why he didn’t vacate the Houston Astros’ 2017 World Series title.
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