World Series - Will Smith's 11th-inning homer lifts Dodgers to second straight championship
Yahoo Sports senior MLB analyst Jordan Shusterman reports from Toronto after the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Toronto Blue Jays in extra innings to win back-to-back World Series championships.
Video Transcript
Jordan Schusterman here at Rogers Center at the conclusion of the 2025 Major League Baseball season.
You see it right behind me, the Los Angeles Dodgers are the World Series champions for the second consecutive year.
How did they do it?
Where to?
Even begin a night that began with Shohe Otani and Max Scherzer on the mound that on its own was already an unbelievable sentence to process when the night began, and yet so much happened after those two pitchers left the game.
That it is difficult to know where to even start, but at the end of the day, this World Series was won with 3 swings and an unbelievable, unprecedented pitching performance from Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Let's start with those 3 swings.
It's Max Muncy taking the rookie Treya Savage yard in the 8th.
It's Miguel Rojas.
Miguel Rojas taking closer Jeff Hoffman deep in the 9th with the Blue Jays, just 2 outs away from a World Series championship.
And finally it is Will Smith.
This dude is as locked in as it gets this time of year, and he takes Shane Bieber on in relief, deep in the top of the 11th to give the Dodgers the final lead that they needed and at the very end.
Against all odds, against all logic and reason and physical possibility, we have Yoshinobu Yamamoto.
Just yesterday, this dude threw 6 innings.
Before that, earlier in the series, he threw a complete game.
Before that, he threw another complete game and here he was on.
20 hours rest, however much rest you would want to say it, and he gets the final 3 outs, most remarkably with the runner on 1st and 3rd and 1 out with the 1 run lead, he gets Alejandro Kirk to ground into a double play to end the game, to end the series, to end the season, and make the Los Angeles Dodgers World Series champions again.
So much to process from this game 7.
That's my best attempt.
We will be talking about this game for years to come, a devastating end to the season for the Blue Jays, an unbelievable triumph for the Los Angeles Dodgers, and my goodness, it is going to take a while for anyone that was in this building to get over what they saw tonight at Rogers Center.
