The Los Angeles Dodgers surround pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto as they celebrate their win in Game 7 of baseball’s World Series against the Toronto Blue Jays, Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025, in Toronto. (AP Photo/Ashley Landis)
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It’s become an oft-used cliche in this day and age – the “instant classic”. The term is thrown around way too often on any sporting event that makes the heart race a little more than the norm. Well, in the case of the 2025 World Series, it more than applies. Superlatives simply aren’t enough to describe what fans of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays – and baseball fans in general, for that matter – have been through over the last week-plus.
This series had it all and then some, and has been heralded as – dare we say – perhaps the greatest World Series of all time. That’s a pretty strong statement, and though it’s impossible to prove, we simply need to put it up against some subjective measures to see if the hypothesis holds up.
TEST #1: A STRONG PRE-SERIES NARRATIVE
This one is the easiest to pass, and in the grand scheme of things, means the least. But boy, did this series clear this hurdle.
This was basically put out there as good vs. evil, with the intermediate-term future of baseball, threatened by a potential 2027 lockout, hanging in the balance. On one side, the Dodgers, Goliath among Goliaths, with their pricey superstars and oodles of deferred money, and on the other, the cute, cuddly Blue Jays, who did things the “right”, everyman way.
Never mind that this narrative is a heap of schlock. The Blue Jays spend a ton of money in their own right, and have tried to spend substantially more in recent years, only to be spurned at the altar by multiple superstars, most notably Dodger icon Shohei Ohtani. No, the Blue Jays didn’t have a rotation of superstars to shuttle into the game at will like the Dodgers, but they had their own highly compensated superstar in Vladimir Guerrero Jr. and a more than competent and financially flush supporting cast.
TEST #2: THE STARS CAME TO PLAY
Check. Ohtani didn’t dominate EVERY night, but man was he special. He, you know, reached base NINE times in Game 3. His foil, young Vladdy, more than held his own, unfurling a .333-.474-.600 line that at least approached Ohtani’s .333-.500-.778. And plenty of the top-tier stars on both clubs – the Dodgers’ Will Smith and the Jays’ Bo Bichette, Alejandro Kirk and George Springer chief among them, all had their moments.
The series MVP, Dodgers’ starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto, unleashed a performance for the ages, winning Games 2, 6 and 7, coming back on zero days rest to get eight huge outs and buy his mates time to plate the winning run. It was parts Mickey Lolich, parts Randy Johnson and parts that belong solely to Yamamoto.
TEST #3: UNEXPECTED HEROES IN THE SUPPORTING CAST
This might set this Fall Classic apart from most of the others. The Blue Jays’ Trey Yesavage spent about 10 minutes in the majors before this postseason, and he put on a show. Teammate Ernie Clement’s 30 base hits established a new postseason standard. How about Jays’ RF Addison Barger, a fearsome lefty power presence who hit a lusty .480-.536-.680 for the series and could well have been the MVP is his club had prevailed.
You have to dig a little deeper into the roster to find the Dodgers’ unsung heroes. Miguel Rojas had been securely fastened to the bench for most of the series before the club finally tired of CF Andy Pages’ extended postseason slump, did a bunch of positional adjusting and inserted Rojas at second base. The baseball continuously found Rojas in the field and he met every challenge. The lineup found him in the 9th inning of Game 7 with the Dodgers two outs from defeat, and all he did was lash a game-tying homer. He hit five of those all season. Baseball.
And let’s not forget Pages. Immediately after entering Game 7 as a defensive replacement, he tracked down a long, potentially series-ending fly ball in the left center field gap, keeping his club alive.
TEST #4: LIONS IN WINTER. SHIPS PASSING AT NIGHT, ETC..
Basically the Hollywood Factor, and this series passes the test like none before it. Two surefire Hall of Famers who have dominated their era, Max Scherzer and Clayton Kershaw, played vital roles. Scherzer started two games and competed viciously, and Kershaw got a huge out in the 18-inning marathon that was Game 3 (more on that in a minute). Were any of them Grover Cleveland Alexander at age 39 in 1926, closing out the World Series on a Babe Ruth caught stealing? Maybe not, but they’re in the conversation.
An added bonus was the spectre of those two old dogs competing in the same arena as Blue Jay rookie Yesavage. I love looking back at players with huge age differences who were teammates or competed against each other on big stages. Such scenarios can easily be forgotten. Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio overlapped each other in the Yankee outfield. Warren Spahn was a Met. Johnny Podres was a Padre. Personally, I know I won’t forget this Scherzer-Kershaw-Yesavage triangle.
TEST #5: NOT JUST A CLOSE SERIES, BUT CLOSE, MEMORABLE INDIVIDUAL GAMES
Check. Games 3, 6 and 7 – all won by the Dodgers – simply defy description. The Dodgers, contrary to popular belief, were not an inevitable juggernaut. Their bullpen legitimately was a massive Achilles heel. But not in Game 3.
That will heretofore be known as The Will Klein Game. The last man in the Dodger pen gave them four shutout innings, buying them just enough time for Freddie Freeman to save them with a walk-off homer.
The 9th inning of Game 6 will be lamented by Jays’ fans forever. Barger’s ringing double was “wedged” under the fence and ruled a ground-rule double. There is plenty of precedent for a different ruling that would have much more favorable to the home team. Three pitches later, another Dodger ace-turned-reliever, Tyler Glasnow was out of the inning.
And then there was Game 7. It was right there on a tee for the Blue Jays, but Rojas got their closer, Jeff Hoffman, and the home team simply couldn’t buy a clutch hit – or even a clutch productive out – afterward.
The mark of a truly classic World Series game is the abundance of defining moments that inevitably cause some of them to be forgotten. Like Hal Smith’s 8th inning homer in 1960 that temporarily gave the Pirates a lead before Bill Mazeroski’s shot an inning later. Like Bernie Carbo’s homer in 1975 for the Red Sox that was one-upped by Carlton Fisk’s more telegenic extra-inning shot a few innings later. And Rajai Davis’ homer for the Indians in 2016 that was erased by a Cub comeback. Unfortunately for the Jays’, Bo Bichette’s three-run shot early in Game 7 can now be added to that list.
TEST #6: CONTROVERSY?
Early in Game 3. home plate umpire Mark Wegner made an awful ball-strike call that basically created two outs to save Dodger starter Tyler Glasnow. Sure, a lot happened afterward to move the needle in both clubs’ directions, but it sure does feel like the Jays got screwed there.
And maybe they did again with the whole “wedged ball” situation in the 9th inning of Game 6, though there really wasn’t much of an argument put up by any uniformed personnel in the moment. It did feel like an awful lot of things had to happen in a very specific way for the mighty, mighty Dodgers to actually win this thing.
And much scrutiny of the Blue Jays’ Isiah Kiner-Falefa failing to score on the bases-loaded grounder to Rojas late in Game 7 due to a bad jump/short secondary lead/slide rather than stand up/some combo thereof has dominated the bitter series aftermath for Jay supporters. The border between heaven and hell is so narrow and blurry.
TEST #7: MANAGER IMPACT
I thought both managers acquitted themselves quite well in this series. The Blue Jays’ John Schneider certainly did nothing to lose it.
But kudos must be given to Dodger skipper Dave Roberts for his contributions to winning it. Sure, he’s got a massive amount of talent at his disposal, but he has infinite options as to how to use it, and has to know which buttons need to be pushed, and when to push them.
The Andy Pages Slump Dilemma played on for much of the postseason, and Roberts had to know when to plug in the aging, limited Rojas. Obviously, he knew the player, knew he wouldn’t be intimidated, and the club was rewarded. He also had to keep Pages engaged and in the moment, in case he was needed. He was, and he too delivered. Sure, Roberts had infinite resources at this disposal, but it came down to good, old fashioned people management when push came to shove.
So was it the best World Series ever? It was the best I’ve ever seen live. Better than Yankees-Diamondbacks, Twins-Braves, Cubs-Indians. I know a lot about the 1960 Pirates-Yankees series, a bit before my time, and have seen a screening of Game 7. All of the weird stuff within that series (the Yankee blowouts, the Pirate one-run wins, the seminal Game 7, perhaps the greatest game ever played) just might give it the edge. But second place, as painful as it might seem, isn’t so bad.