No matter the matchup, the ’24 Fall Classic will be an Instant Classic

The Yankees are back in the World Series for the first time in 15 years, which to Yankees fans has felt like a period just slightly shorter than the Ice Age. Juan Soto — brought to New York to be the star game-changer who Reggie Jackson once was — hit the kind of home run at this time of year that Reggie once hit for the Yankees, in the 10th inning in Cleveland on Saturday night to help the Yankees win the ALCS over the Guardians. And now whatever happens from here, baseball-wise and story-wise, baseball can’t lose after an October that has been rich with stories so far.

If the Dodgers win Game 6 against the Mets on Sunday night (or a potential Game 7 on Monday), we will get Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge, the two home run kings of baseball this season, in the World Series. We will get Giancarlo Stanton — this postseason’s home run leader and the ALCS MVP — and Soto and Mookie Betts. At the same time, we will get the first New York vs. Los Angeles World Series since 1981, as the Yankees and Dodgers — that includes the Brooklyn Dodgers, too — would play their 12th World Series against each other, the most two teams have played in World Series history.

Or we will get a Subway Series if the Mets can get two games off the Dodgers at Dodger Stadium. The Bronx-Queens Subway Series happened for the first time in 2000 with the Mets and Yankees. It evokes the golden age of baseball in New York City, a time in the 1950s when there were still three teams in the city; the Yankees played the Dodgers four times in the Series in that decade alone, and the New York Giants once.

The Yankees will now try to win just their second World Series since the Subway Series of 2000. The Dodgers would be trying to win their first since ’20, which was the first they’d won since 1988 — when Kirk Gibson hit a home run you might remember — after they had won an NLCS against the Mets.

And the Mets? If they can manage to have their season live and not die in Los Angeles? They would be trying to win their first World Series since 1986, and just the third in their history.

That is baseball right now. And it is a lot, as the Dodgers and Mets settle their business once and for all, one team or the other trying to write a Hollywood ending for itself, starting tonight.

We will get Los Angeles vs. New York in a World Series right after we’ve gotten the same thing in the National League Championship Series. Or we will get New York vs. New York, after four regular-season games between the Mets and Yankees, which the Mets just happened to sweep 4-0. If it is Mets vs. Yankees — if the Mets can somehow manage to come all the way back from three games to one down against the Dodgers — we will even get the storyline of Mets manager Carlos Mendoza opposite Yankees manager Aaron Boone after having been Boone’s top lieutenant at Yankee Stadium.

There have been other times over the past few years when we came into seasons thinking that it might be time for another L.A.-N.Y. series in October. Now there is at least the chance — if the Dodgers can close the deal against the Mets — that we might get two series like that, one right after another.

For sure, the Dodgers are just one win away, but they need to get it off a Mets team that has been as tough an out as there has been in baseball this season; a team that didn’t go away after starting out the season at 0-5, didn’t go away after being 22-33 at the end of May, didn’t go away when it was two outs away from next season in the Wild Card Series in Milwaukee before Pete Alonso hit one over the right-field wall. The Mets got to keep playing. They will try to keep playing in L.A. tonight.

Ohtani tries to get to his first World Series tonight. Judge and Stanton will be playing in their first later this week. So much of the story still to be written, starting with Game 6 at Dodger Stadium, just after 5 p.m. PT time and just after 8 p.m. ET in New York.

“This ain’t the trophy I want,” Stanton said on Saturday night in Cleveland, after hitting a home run in his third straight game for the Yankees and the 16th postseason home run of his career, passing Babe Ruth and Judge. “I want the big one.”

First, Stanton and the Yankees have to find out who they will be playing. So much has happened in these playoffs. So much baseball still to come. New York vs. Los Angeles one more time this October. Or New York vs. New York, one more Subway Series. Big stuff in our two biggest cities, before we find out who wins the big trophy this time. As the great Mr. Scully always said, “Pull up a chair.”