It’s Friday, October 25, Game 1 of the 2024 World Series. The New York Yankees are facing off against the Los Angeles Dodgers at Dodger Stadium in Elysian Park, Los Angeles, and as a die-hard Yankees fan, I am excited but careful not to be overly confident.
My love for baseball began in 2009 when the Yankees secured their 27th World Series championship after defeating the Philadelphia Phillies. Since then, I have remained loyal to the team, enduring postseasons that seemed promising but ended in disappointment. With each year, I have learned to be cautiously optimistic when the Yankees appear in the postseason.
The 2024 regular season felt like a turning point. Sure, there were the usual ups and downs, but the Yankees ended with the best record in the American League, finishing with 94 wins to 68 losses. They defeated the Kansas City Royals in the AL Division Series, three games to one. Then, they defeated the Cleveland Guardians in the AL Championship Series, four games to one, securing their slot in the World Series for the first time in 15 years.
In Game 1, the Yankees and Dodgers seemed evenly matched as they went four innings without either side scoring a run. After the Dodgers earned a run off of a sacrifice fly by Will Smith, the Yankees responded with a momentous two-run homerun by Giancarlo Stanton. With the Yankees leading 2-1, it was still anyone’s game.
In the seventh inning, Teoscar Hernández led off with a single. Yankees manager Aaron Boone took the long walk from the dugout and signaled the ace pitcher, Gerrit Cole, off the mound. Cole had thrown only 88 pitches and given up just four hits and one run.
From then on, the game became a battle of the bullpens, and I began to dread that Cole’s stellar performance – holding the powerful Dodgers offense to just one run – would go to waste.
In the eighth inning, Shohei Ohtani scored a triple after a throw from right field went past second baseman Gleyber Torres. These fielding mishaps became a recurring nightmare for the Yankees throughout the series, with the Dodgers eagerly exploiting every opportunity to put the ball in play. After a sac fly from Mookie Betts sent Ohtani to home plate, the game was tied 2-2.
After Yankees closer Luke Weaver shut out the Dodgers in the bottom of the ninth, Game 1 went into extra innings. In the top of the tenth, Jazz Chisholm stole second and third base after hitting a single. Chisholm raced home on a ground ball hit by Anthony Volpe, and the Yankees ended the inning with a promising 3-2 lead.
In the bottom of the tenth, after the Dodgers put two runners on base against reliever Jake Cousins, the Yankees manager made a baffling decision. Boone called on Nestor Cortes, a starter who had not pitched in a month due to an elbow injury, to protect the one-run lead. Fans watched in shock as the clearly rusty Cortes took the mound under immense pressure to secure victory.
After left fielder Alex Verdugo flipped into the bleachers to snag a fly ball from Ohtani, the Yankees were one out away from winning the first game of the series. In another head-scratching decision, the Yankees opted to intentionally walk Betts, loading the bases for Dodgers power hitter Freddie Freeman.
On the first pitch of the at-bat, Freeman sent Cortes’s four-seam fastball deep into right field, propelling the Dodgers to a 6-3 win with a walk-off grand slam.
For Yankees fans, the Dodgers last-minute victory in Game 1 was a gut punch that foreshadowed what was to come in the remainder of the 2024 World Series.
While many fans will point to the disastrous fifth inning in Game 5 of the World Series, when the Yankees gave up five unearned runs, as the moment when things fell apart, the collapse of the team’s morale began with Cole’s premature exit in Game 1.
I’m not the only one who feels this way. As per The Sporting News, Yankees legend and former shortstop Derek Jeter said, “Gerrit Cole was dominating this game. And if you take him out after 88 pitches for, I don’t know what reason, it’s a domino effect on not only this game tonight, but tomorrow’s game and the rest of the series.”
I don’t believe in being a sore loser. The Dodgers played well and deserved their 2024 World Series title. What’s frustrating is that the Yankees squandered scoring opportunities while handing the Dodgers extra runs due to sloppy fielding throughout the series.
Game 1 was winnable and could have set a completely different tone for the series. Going into 2025, I hope the Yankees can learn from their mistakes. If they can make better bullpen calls, clean up their defense, and focus on putting the ball in play like Dodgers did, a 28th championship is well within their reach.
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