Dodgers' wild five-run rally clinches World Series victory

NEW YORK (AP) — Walker Buehler snapped a curveball past Alex Verdugo and stared into his dugout with what seemed like equal parts amazement and assuredness, his head slightly cocked, his arms stretched wide.

It was 11:50 p.m. ET on Wednesday in Yankee Stadium, and the Los Angeles Dodgers -- an exorbitant, star-laden team that spent its season ravaged by injury and was hardened because of it -- had clinched a World Series championship in the most fitting way possible.

By overcoming a five-run deficit against one of the best pitchers on the planet.

By using seven relievers -- one of them Buehler, a starter making his first relief appearance in six years -- to record 23 outs.

By scratching and clawing and using every aspect of the roster to solidify a title that seemed inevitable in January and felt impossible at the start of October.

“Crazy,” Mookie Betts said after the 7-6 come-from-behind victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5. “That’s the definition of the 2024 Dodgers.”

The Dodgers clinched their eighth title in franchise history, their first since the COVID-19-shortened 2020 season and their first in a full season since 1988. On Friday -- the day on which the late Fernando Valenzuela, who died last week, would have celebrated his 64th birthday -- the Dodgers will get the parade they were denied four years ago amid a pandemic.

Before these Dodgers, no team had ever clinched a championship by using that many pitchers or by coming back from down that many runs. It’s the story of their season.

“It seems like we hit every speed bump possible over the course of this year,” Dodgers first baseman Freddie Freeman said.