Well, well, well, this is a little unusual.Clinton Yates, thank you for joining us on ESPN Daily.
Nothing unusual about it.A baseball game.I'm covering it.We're talking about it.That's what we do, Michelle.
No, I know.But normally you're in the host chair.I'm just saying the turntables have turned, Clinton.
This is very true.But that is the life of being on assignment.You know it well.So here we are.
Well, we know that you were not, you know, off in the Bahamas on a beach vacation, although maybe that's where Jazz Chislam Jr.is headed, because he's from there.
But I was listening to the post game and the first question that ran on SportsCenter during Freddie Freeman's press conference, yes, Clinton Yates.Stay there with Clinton.
Freddie, you personally have also had quite the year.What have you learned about yourself this season?
Yeah, I mean, I would say a lot in so many different ways.
You are at all five games in this series.That's why I've been hosting for the last few days.Just paint us a picture.You know, what was, what was the vibe like?What was the energy like throughout?
So the Dodgers are a team that have been in a really tough spot for a long time. Dave Roberts as a manager has been under just an incredible microscope in terms of what that franchise is, in terms of what their expectations are.
And, you know, when the playoffs started and they were playing the Padres, the assumption was that the Padres were a better baseball team. Some people who host this podcast might have actually believed that.And by that, I mean me.
But they beat the Padres.And then they beat, well, another person who produces this podcast favorite team, the Mets.
And so by the time they got to the Yankees, I think there was a feeling of if the Dodgers can't get it done now, then maybe they've got a bigger problem.But guess what?Now they've just got a bigger trophy instead of a bigger problem.
When the league championships were decided and we saw that we were getting a Dodgers-Yankees World Series, well, needless to say, the hype for an all-time classic was real.
You had two of the most iconic franchises in MLB history facing off for the trophy for the 12th time overall, with just their first meeting since 1981.
Add to that that the Dodgers' Shohei Ohtani and the Yankees' Aaron Judge, the two likely league MVPs, battling for the ultimate bragging rights.But in the end, the series was over before it even really got started.
The Dodgers celebrated their eighth world championship on enemy soil. So today, ESPN Daily's own Clinton Yates reports from the heart of New York City to break down what happened in the Bronx and how legacies were defined on 161st Street.
I'm Michelle Steele in for Clinton Yates.It's Friday, November 1st.This is ESPN Daily.
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Like we said, Clinton, you have been covering this World Series, which ended, of course, Wednesday night.The Dodgers winning game five, seven to six, clinching the series in five games, and the Yankees collapsing in really epic fashion.
What was that scene like at Yankee Stadium as this night went on?
Well, there's a couple of things, Michelle.Number one is that game five was a different vibe than game four.And in game four, for whatever reason, the energy was off in the park before the game even started.
And I don't know how to describe it other than everybody was like, it feels weird in here, mainly because most of the Bronx Bomber faithful Thought they were going to get swept.
And you can imagine what it's like after you've paid, I don't know, half a month's rent paycheck if you're rich and you walked into the building and you were looking at a 3-0 deficit.So Wednesday night was a touch different.
And the reason why that matters is because the Yankees came out in a better fashion as well from a baseball standpoint.So, you know, look, Two power squads, the Yankees and the Dodgers, facing off against each other.
By the time it came around to an elimination game that wasn't a sweep game, a lot of people were really anxious, but I think they were ready to cheer on the team.
Other than that, though, I don't know if you've ever been to Yankee Stadium, but the vibe is very, very specific. Business class airport lounge is what it feels like in there at all times.And it's a little weird, but that's what it is.
That's the brand they've built.And that's what it felt like Wednesday night.
Yeah, and I think it affects like how lively that crowd is.And when they just melted down in the fifth inning, it felt like you could hear a pin drop in there.
They got to the Dodgers early.And so there was a bit of an ebb and a flow in terms of how that worked.They were up and even had my cousin, who's a Yankees fan.And this is of no import other than anecdotally.
You kind of got the idea that, oh, are the Yanks sneaking back into the series?Is this what's actually happening?
Here comes the pitch.Swing and a drive.Right field.Way back.On its way out of here.Giancarlo Stanton goes deep the opposite way.And the Yankees add on.It is 5-0.
And I kind of told him to pump his brakes because in my personal belief, you know, one through nine, the Dodgers are a better baseball team.
I don't think that that's in a ton of question, but when you're talking about giving up five runs, sloppiness on the base paths, sloppiness on the infield and general defensive miscues have been an issue for this Yankees team all season.
And what's unfortunate about it, if you're a fan of the pinstripers, is that it It all came to fruition in the same game.
And honestly, I think this team got a little bit exposed because Aaron Boone hasn't necessarily been the kind of guy that gets after guys for the mistakes they make like that.And this is something that's been a little bit ingrained into this team.
And when they needed it, they didn't have it.
Listen, I had the game on last night.It was unreal for me to see the fashion in which that game went from 5-0 to a tie game in one inning.
You never want to say a seven game series comes down to just that handful of minutes.
but did it feel like it did for you?
Yes and no, mainly because the Dodgers are such a good team anyway.
And the Yankees, a lot of people around baseball will tell you this, if they weren't wearing pinstripes and the name of that team weren't the New York Yankees, nobody would have thought they were that good to begin with.
On top of the fact that the path that they took to the World Series featured the least of the opponents from a competition standpoint of any.So it wasn't that outside more largely, but in the moment,
It also is very much representative of the brand of baseball the Yankees have played all season.They were not a very good base running team.They were not a very effective team defensively.They tended to have these kinds of issues on a regular basis.
Swing and a line drive center field.Sink in.Judge charging.Oh and he dropped the ball.Racing for second is Hernandez and he slides in safely. Wow!A sinking liner and Judge went to squeeze it.
It'll go E8.And when pressed by a veteran squad that knows how to get him on, knows how to get him over, and knows how to get him in, it's just not gonna work.
And so, look, do I think Booney is some sort of a bad manager?Not necessarily, but there were a lot of telltale signs of a very undisciplined team. Swing and a little roller to first.Rizzo is there.
He goes to underhand, but nobody covers, and everybody's safe.Cole was walking off the field because he thought Rizzo was gonna take it himself, and instead, it'll go as an infield single to run scores.
And the vibe, not to sort of cast aspersions on things, around Yankee Stadium last night was, ooh, buddy, if the old man was still here, Boone would be gone tonight.
All right, let's dig into this Dodgers roster.The Dodgers seem to have been spending and really building for this moment the last decade plus.What does winning this one mean to the legacy of this team and the players?
There's two separate parts to this. Number one, for the franchise, it means that they finally win one in a full season.Now, that makes a big difference because the last one they won was in 2020, the short season.
June 3rd is when everything started, yada, yada.
And there was some belief that whatever the Dodgers are doing, playing with this Monopoly money, playing fantasy baseball, if you will, that they didn't necessarily have as good of a feel for their players as people thought.
because look, if you can only win one in a short season, only is in air quotes, then maybe you just don't exactly know what you're doing.And as a result, there was a lot of aspersions cast on who?The manager, Dave Roberts.
And Dave Roberts is a guy who at this stage has won four pennants and two rings now and Baker's dozen of NL West titles.I'm being funny there.But the idea was he had only won one commissioner's trophy and therefore they were somehow underachieving.
To win this title against the Yankees, another big market team, a team that people felt was a worthy opponent for one reason or another, and to do it in tidy fashion, if you will, I think it says a lot for what this organization has built for themselves from a talent standpoint and for what Dave Roberts has been able to do managing.
It's not easy to manage a bunch of egos. It's not easy to corral the likes of the Mookie Betzes, the Shohei Otanis, the Freddie Freemans of the world, all these former MVPs.
Look, we got to remember, people said that there were seven Hall of Famers between these two rosters in this series alone.
So for the Daughters to win this particular series, I think it burnishes a lot of their reputation in terms of what they've built in the last era of what Major League Baseball is.
You know, you mentioned some of the star power really on both sides, but let's dig into the L.A.team that they've built up.Mookie Betts, Shohei Ohtani, Teo Oscar Hernandez, and of course, you mentioned him, Freddie Freeman, World Series MVP.
Where does this performance for Freddie Freeman fall for you in the history of the fall classic?
I haven't been covering baseball as long as many of the humans who do cover baseball who are at the World Series have, but I've not seen a greater one.
And it's not just in terms of the performance on the field, but it's in terms of the energy that was provided and the player that it came from.
Swing and a drive!Right field!Gone!A walk-off grand slam!
And so when Freddie did that in game one, he's coming off the ankle, he's been having trouble running, he didn't even play prior.And he hits that ball out, you think to yourself, oh my, we've got something really special here.
And so look, what he's been able to do ever since he came from Atlanta, which was a trip that had some controversy for a lot of Dodgers fans.It was concerned that he didn't ever get over the fact that he left the Braves.
The fact that the team that drafted him was dismissing him for Matt Adams of all people.Great decision out of you, Atlanta.But the idea that this man at this phase of his career wasn't going to be able to kind of
changes stripes, if you will, but he didn't need to do that.He ended up falling into that franchise and being a leader on that team in a way that I think only Freddie can.He's from California.
It's a place where, you know, he obviously came up and people know him.And last night when he came in in the presser, he talked so much about his personal life, what happened with his son Maximus this season from a health standpoint.
And he's one of the best guys in baseball.That's a reputation thing.That's the thing people know.So to see him be able to take home The Willie Mays trophy was really special.
I think not just for people that root for the Dodgers or even for Freddie Freeman, but for people who know, you know, what it's like to have a representative and an ambassador around the game who can also mash when you need them to.
I'm such a softie when it comes to watching videos of like players celebrating and hugging their families and hugging their wives and their kids.I also kind of love fans. also reveling in that achievement.And there were people on the subway.
I mean, this was on my timeline.There were Dodgers fans on the subway at like 2.30 in the morning celebrating.What do you think this parade is going to be like in LA later today?
Well, they didn't get one in 2020.
And that contributed to the idea of this fake championship short season thing, because the idea was that the Los Angeles Faithful never really got to celebrate it, and it never really imprinted, if you will, on the fan base.
There was a lot of talk locally about, we gotta have a parade.We gotta have a parade.Now you can chalk that up to the sort of cultishness of Los Angeles sports fans, which is not entirely unusual, but it does happen at a higher degree.
But it's real, Michelle.People feel that if they don't get a chance to celebrate and touch the team, so to speak, that it never really happened.And look,
I think that there is a very real element to the tangibility of a parade that plays into what this fan base really wanted.And not just the bragging rights of being able to say, oh, guess what?We beat the Yankees.Oh, guess what?We beat the Mets.
Oh, and by the way, the Padres are still the little brother, something that occupies the minds of a lot of people in Southern California.
I think it means a lot. The first parade in Los Angeles for the Dodgers since 1988.So long ago, I don't even think Tommy Lasorda was doing Slim Fast commercials yet.That is a deep cut, kiddos.Coming up, the agony of defeat.
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Let's talk about the errands here, Clinton.There's always second guessing when you lose.I felt very bad for Aaron Judge, given the kind of series and really the kind of post-season that he had had.
And then of course, what can you say about Aaron Boone?I mean, the kind of criticism that he will be getting and that he is getting in New York City is going to be relentless.How do you think the legacies, now they're two separate people,
very different parts of their career.How do you think the legacies of those two errands is gonna be defined by this loss?
I would say big time.I'm gonna show you something for our viewing audience of which there is none.That's Aaron Judge.It's the World Series official program.
When the guy on the front of the program doesn't show up at all, and then the biggest moment that he has is a ball hitting off of his glove in center field, one that wasn't even over his head, you've got problems.
I think Judge is going to have a lot to answer for.I'm not a big legacy Twitter person.I don't necessarily look at everything like that so immediately.
But this was a matchup and a World Series in which you thought to yourself, oh yeah, legacies are going to be changed.
That's the whole reason why we're talking about all of these Hall of Famers that are present on the field, whether they are big time players in the series or not. And Judge didn't have a good time at the plate.
It wasn't just that he wasn't productive.He was barely seeing the ball.The strikeouts were astronomical and they were bad swings at that.I think Judge's legacy takes a big hit here.On the other side, with Aaron Boone, You know, I felt bad for Booney.
They had the clubhouse close extra long, which is not exactly the move, but it was an indication of how emotional things were for that team on Wednesday night after they got eliminated.And Booney came out with a look on his face.
It looked like a guy who'd been crying.And when we got on the podium and was asked about how hard he was taking this, he was crying some more.
Because obviously this is a very difficult moment for us to get to this point. You know, as I said to the guys, you know, this obviously it stings now, but this is just going to sting forever.
Look, George Steinbrenner back in the day was very famous for having a lot of public antics with his manager.He's no longer with us.
And where that where the state of that franchise is, is one thing I would only have joking when I said that if the old man was still here, Booney would have been canned.But you kind of got the feeling that a performance like that
in which you have three errors, nevermind other miscues, all of which were backbreaking at the time, you say to yourself, I'm not sure that guy's made up to be the skipper of the Yanks.
And that's really tough because Aaron Boone comes from a baseball family.He is a baseball lifer.And he also had one of the most famous moments as a player in the history of that franchise with the homer that he hit to go to the World Series.
So there was some personal parts of that. to Booney that I thought were really tough.But as for Aaron judge.Yeah.I mean, everybody says you're the runaway MVP.
Some people who have been on this podcast and you see on your national television, like, I don't know, Jeff Passon said that Aaron judge actually had a better season than showing Otani who went 50 50 by the by.
It's not like Otani had a great series either.But the point is, is that I do think that if you're a fan of the New York Yankees, you can look at this postseason and say, that guy did not have it.And it has forever changed what I think about.
Listen, there's a lot of ballgame left on Aaron Judge's career.But do you think that it remains to be seen whether he'll be considered part of the pantheon of quote unquote, true Yankees if he does not get a ring?
Yeah, I mean, the true Yankees thing is kind of part of that cult nonsense that I'm referring to, but it's very real in the Bronx.And if you don't get at least one rain, I don't know how you enter the discussion as a true Yankee.
Now, I don't say this as somebody that's a fan or somebody that even, you know, sort of even considers that real, but I do understand what it means to other people. I think that it's hard to say that.
I mean, you go down to the metro station, there's ads, wheat boards with him with his shirt off advertising cologne.Don't nobody care about that.People care about whether or not you're going to have anything up in Monument Park.
So there is an element of, have you really made it?
You know to the next level and I don't think you can say you have for the Yankees if you don't have Multiple rings at that point because the people who did that are not only still with us But throwing out first pitches at games I mean like it's impossible to avoid that legacy when the people are all around the franchise at all times if I'm thinking about anybody who's probably taking this the hardest who's a player I think of Aaron judge
You know, one person who is not taking this the hardest is our producer Alex Hyacinth is a hater.
He wants to know how the people reacted to watching a team Clyde and Gray celebrate a championship on the field at Yankee Stadium for the first time Clinton since the Josh Beckett Marlins in 2003.
And let me just give a shout out to how happy David Ortiz looked really all night.
Well, one person who was on the field when the Marlins did that was the manager, Aaron Boone.And he talked about that, how painful that is and how much he empathized with the fans.And look, some fans hung around.They wanted to watch it.
Sort of like that bit where when you lose the Super Bowl, you watch the other team celebrate so that you have that motivation or whatever.And listen, Yankees fans from all over, Long Island, Jersey, anywhere that doesn't seem to be the Bronx.
They've all got their different reasons why they like the team.But I do think there was some level of, by the time it got to Wednesday night, resignation.
That the Dodgers were going to beat them because even with a depleted pitching staff, even with a cobbled together lineup in many ways, with the Keke Hernandez's of the world and the Gavin Lux's of the world, who are not major players by any stretch,
in Major League Baseball, in most minds, doing things and putting together at-bats in games that the Yankees just didn't have any answer for.
I mean, when it came down to fundamental baseball that wins you games in the playoffs versus we're just gonna stick with it and see how it works out, the difference could not have been more stark.
Under pressure, the Yankees put themselves in positions that make it harder to win.That's a brand of baseball discussion that, as a former high school baseball coach, I don't wanna get all into, but was obvious.
And for me, there's a style of play element that you know when it's not going to work for the Yankees, because they have to get hot, they have to heat up, and they pretty much have to hit the ball out of the ballpark.
There's not a lot of small ball is happening.And when things went south in game five, you thought to yourself, oh, no, they're not going to be able to get up off the mat.And they did.
Last thing I'm going to ask you here, Clinton, these are obviously two of baseball's preeminent franchises. I mean, Yankees fans would say number one and two, Dodgers fans would say clearly the opposite.What a fall classic.
There's a reason it's called that, right?And part of it this year was just this matchup.These teams are absolutely loaded, huge firepower on both sides.Does this series go down as sort of an inflection point, maybe a turning point even in baseball's
quest to grow excitement around the sport.
You know, when this series first started, one of the things I was so happy about was that the demographic of people, which is vast, who claim to like Major League Baseball, to claim to like the sport baseball more largely, but really only use that claim as a vehicle to insult everything about the game that they don't like or that used to be better when they were insert age here, when they were sticking baseball cards in their BMX bikes or whatever, there were no complaints to start this series.
Two big markets, Stars people had heard of, and you know, that was the matchup.Unfortunately, the baseball did not exactly provide that kind of competition.
The Dodgers, like I said, even with their cobbled pitching staff, managed to look like just a better baseball team.
So I am always of the opinion that if you don't like the sport, tuning in for the playoffs or the World Series isn't gonna make you like anything more than the playoffs or the World Series. But this one had the star power we wanted.
Unfortunately, we didn't see Shohei get to go yaya on anyone.We didn't see Aaron Judge have a big game.We didn't see some of the people from a New York standpoint that you kind of wanted to really come out onto the Broadway stage, if you will.
But I do think there's something to be said for when spenders make deep runs, it validates a certain idea that spending is worth it in baseball, which gets into a whole other discussion, Michelle.
But I do think that for those that are constantly worrying about the state of the game with every pitch that they watch,
There's got to be something fulfilling about the fact that all right, if you make money, you spend money, you're likely to have more talent that's going to get you farther in terms of what everything about Major League Baseball is from a playoff run.
Those kind of people will take something from this.Otherwise, I think this is a situation where a team that found a way to stay together, never mind put itself together, beat a team that
Well, frankly, probably thought that they were more than they were.Nobody got distracted by the pinstripes.The Dodgers just play baseball and they play better baseball at that.
Clinton, thank you so much for covering this postseason for us and ESPN.And now the Juan Soto sweepstakes can finally begin.Thanks.
Pas de quoi, Michelle.And exactly right.People are very nervous about whether that guy's going to be still there in the Bronx next year.
I'm Michelle Steele.This has been ESPN Daily.Our show is produced by Bruce Baldwin, Ashley Brown, Bradford Craig, Alexander Hyacinth, Ryan Mantel, Mike Philbrick, and Phoebe Unterman.
Special thanks to Preethi Varathan, Gus Navarro, Andrew Han, and Jackson Agelo.We'll talk to you Monday.
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