Touch ‘Em All: 3 Men Who Ensured Good (Dodgers) Triumphed Over Evil (Yankees) In The World Series

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Am I Going To Use “Touch ‘Em All” To Absolutely Trash On The Yankees? You Bet I Am

Do you hear that? That’s the sound of MLB fans everywhere rejoicing that justice has won the day.

The Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees faced off in this year’s World Series. While most people probably have a hard time rooting for the Dodgers, even more could never bring themselves to vote for the Yankees. They are the embodiment of evil and an abomination on the sports landscape of North America. You can hear the “Imperial March” theme playing whenever the Yankees take the field.

They buy the league’s best players, assemble super teams, act like they’re going to win a title every year, and then cry when their plan doesn’t work. The only way that I would root for the Yankees to win a game is if Joseph Stalin fielded a team of communists to play against them. Nothing else would bring me to root for those pinstripe jerk heads.

What was your favorite moment of the Series? Let me know: john.simmons@outkick.com.

Heading into the series, I was afraid that New York was going to win their 28th title (I shivered in disgust over that thought). I was afraid that evil would once again triumph, since the Bronx Bombers certainly had the offensive potential and better starting pitching than LA. However, the Dodgers played the role of savior and won the day, preventing baseball fans across the country from having to deal with the Evil Empire reigning supreme yet again.

(Also, does a fan base that does this to opposing players deserve to celebrate a victory?).

In those five games, many heroes emerged. As such, I decided to pick the three men most responsible for ensuring that good triumphed over evil in this seven-game series.

No. 1 – Freddie Freeman

Insert your favorite adjective here: electrifying, historic, unprecedented, insane. Freeman’s World Series performance was all that and then some.

The first baseman was playing on an ankle that he sprained at the end of September. For those of you doing the math at home, he was playing for a title barely four weeks after the injury. That’s a sign of a winner.

You might think that the Dodgers – with their already loaded lineup – could have gotten by without him. But Freeman proved that the exact opposite was true – Los Angeles would most certainly not have won a title without him.

In Game 1 with the bases loaded and two outs in the bottom of the tenth, Nestor Cortes stepped up to the plate after not pitching in more than a month (more on that later). Heading into the series, the Dodgers had a weakness facing left-handed pitching, so this seemed like an advantage for New York.

But with one swing of his bat, Freeman said “Frick that advantage” (probably). On the first pitch he saw, he jacked a 92-mph fastball into the right field stands to become the first man to hit a walk-off grand slam in World Series history.

When I say my jaw dropped after watching that, I think it may have actually touched the floor. I had almost gone to bed right before that happened, but man am I glad I tuned in just in time.

If all that Freddie Freeman did in this series was hit a grand slam in Game 1 that man would have left an indelible mark on the series. But holy crap, that guy was far from done.

Whether by drinking some magic potion or just being incredibly locked in, Freeman would go on a one-man rampage through the rest of the series. He homered in every game but Game 5 (setting a record for most consecutive World Series games played while hitting a homerun), drove in 12 runs and finished with a .300 batting average.

Take a bow, Freddie! Not only was Freeman a fiend at the plate, he’s also one of the nicest guys in baseball too. Good guys do get rewarded!

Obviously, a guy like this tops the list of guys who saved the day from another reign of the Evil Empire. But that doesn’t mean the key players were all wearing Dodger blue. In fact, the next two on this list were wearing pinstripes.

No. 2 – Aaron Boone 

They say that there are seven wonders of the world. The eighth should be how in the ever-living heck Boone still has a job as a manager of the New York Yankees.

I can’t think of a more underwhelming personality behind the bench than him, or a guy who has accomplished so little with so much talent. Granted, he’s not in charge of constructing the Yankees lineup (which relies on home runs as its only form of offense), but a manager still has to do his part and piece together wins. He just hasn’t.

Oh, and let’s not forget that he put on a clinic of managerial mistakes this series, particularly in Game 1.

His first massive mistake was pulling Garritt Cole after 88 pitches in six innings of Game 1. Not only should Cole have pitched at least two more innings, he surrendered just one run to a fearsome Dodgers lineup through that outing. Spare me those arguments that rely on analytics. If a starting pitcher is wheeling and dealing like that, leave them alone and let him work!

But, ever anxious to get to his bullpen, Boone pulled Cole. His relievers made up for his stupidity for the next 3 ⅔ innings – and then the manager went into moron mode again.

With two men on, one out, a one-run lead in the 10th, and the top of the Dodgers lineup due up Boone handed the ball to Cortes. Mind you, Cortes was coming off of an elbow injury and hadn’t pitched in over a month. So this guy was coming in cold, in the highest of high leverage situations possible. What could possibly go wrong?

He almost got away with it! With his first pitch of the outing, Cortes got Shohei Ohtani to fly out to left field, where Alex Verdugo made a phenomenal catch. After intentionally walking Mookie Betts to get a lefty-lefty matchup, Cortes had to face Freddie Freeman.

We all know how that went.

Why, oh why, did Boone roll the dice with a guy that hadn’t pitched since September?

I’m sorry Boone, but that’s pathetic. Cortes wasn’t the only lefty in the bullpen at that time, and the guys had actually pitched in recent memory. That alone is a fireable offense, but because the Yankees like mediocrity, they’ll probably let him keep his job.

No. 3 – Gerrit Cole

In 2020, the New York Yankees paid Cole a record contract for a pitcher – nine years, $324 million – with the hope he would show up in big games. I think they’d like their money back. 

To be fair, for the two games that Cole pitched in the fall classic, he did do pretty well, posting a 0.71 ERA, striking out 10 batters and giving up just one earned run. But his excellence on the mound will be forgotten because of a massive mental miscue.

In Game 5, the Yankees had a 5-0 lead heading into the fifth inning. Through a wild series of errors, and the Dodgers offense finally waking up, Los Angeles loaded the bases with no outs.

However, Cole battled back to strike out Gavin Lux, and Ohtani to get two outs and the bases loaded while facing Mookie Betts. And then, to the horror of everyone Yankee fan (and delight of everyone else), that’s when everything went downhill.

Betts hit a weak ground ball to first baseman Anthony Rizzo, Cole proceeded to rush from the mountain to cover the base. At least, that’s what everyone in America knew Cole should have done, but in a moment of inexplicable stupidity, Cole did not rush over to the bag and looked at Rizzo as if it was his responsibility to get to first base.

That was a mind-numbingly stupid play to make, but even so he had a chance to get out of the inning. But then our hero Freeman made sure Cole would feel the sting of his massive brain fart. 

He roped a single to drive in two runs, and Oscar Hernandez followed up with another two hits that tied the score at five to five. In the blink of an eye, the Yankees went from being on autopilot and sending the series back to the West Coast to looking at a tie ball game that had shifted dramatically in Los Angeles’s favor. 

Even so, the Yankees had a 6-5 lead at one point, yet squandered it by letting up two runs in the eighth. While you can’t put all the blame on Cole for the loss, the lion’s share of it certainly falls at his feet – all because the guy neglected to execute the most fundamental of defensive assignments for a pitcher.

Yankees fans will forever remember this as the most cursed moment of that fateful game. But for everybody else, we are thanking Cole is the hero that we didn’t deserve.

October is the time for heroes, and each year, you never know who is going to emerge as “the guy” for that postseason. These three superstars delivered in the biggest of ways to accomplish the ultimate mission – making sure the Yankees did not win title No. 28. OutKick’s Ian Miller said it perfectly:

“The Los Angeles Dodgers are World Series Champions, and deservedly so. Injuries robbed them of much of their depth, some of their top level talent, and even impacted their seemingly invincible superstar Shohei Ohtani in the World Series. They still were the best team in the regular season, and the best team in the postseason. They beat the San Diego Padres and the New York Mets. Then beat the New York Yankees and their particularly indefensible fans. It’s an unbelievably satisfying win, shutting down critics, naysayers and rivals. There’s never a guarantee that good triumphs over evil in sports, as in life. But the 2024 World Series shows that sometimes the good guys come out on top.”

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

What did you think of the World Series? How happy are you that the Yankees lost? Let me know: john.simmons@outkick.com.