Why this Yankees vs. Dodgers World Series is great for baseball as polarizing powerhouses square off

The 2024 World Series begins Friday at Dodger Stadium. For the 12th time — the most among any matchup — it’ll be the Dodgers vs. the Yankees. 

Every single World Series is exciting and amazing and breathtaking. I still get the chills every time the home team takes the field, moreso in Games 1 and 3 when they get introduced in front of the home crowd. Often, it is the first time in years or decades for these fans. Many or even most of the people in the crowd are achieving a lifelong dream in getting to witness their favorite team in the Fall Classic. It’s the whole reason we are sports fans and I immensely cherish getting to witness those feelings. 

Through that lens, this World Series is equally as special as every other (other than 2016, which is head and shoulders above every other sporting event ever, but I digress). 

In terms of the landscape of the entire sporting world, though, it’s difficult to argue anything other than this being an absolute home run grand slam for Major League Baseball.

The 2024 World Series will take in the two largest markets in baseball and arguably the two largest and most recognizable brands. It’s New York vs. Los Angeles. It’s the Yankees and Dodgers. This is our version of the Celtics and Lakers or maybe Steelers and Cowboys. Sure, it’s been a while in the case of the latter Super Bowl matchup, but it’s been a while here, too. 

There will be pushback on this being a favorable matchup for the sport. The Yankees and the Dodgers are polarizing. It comes with the territory of being a gigantic brand. If you only care about your favorite team and that isn’t either of these, you may hate it. Past that fandom-related reaction, though, there isn’t much downside.

One of the biggest complaints about championship matchups in sports is that they can get stale. I’m totally with these complaints. I’ve gotten tired of the Chiefs and Warriors, Alabama and Duke and many other teams along the way these last several decades. It happens. 

And, yes, the Dodgers go to the playoffs every single freaking year. They also haven’t been to a full-season World Series since 2018 or won one since 1988. The 2020 season absolutely counts, but in going back and watching those highlights, it’s different. 

The Yankees haven’t been to the World Series since winning it in 2009. That’s an eternity in Yankees years. It’s absolutely long enough that no one can truthfully say they are “sick of seeing” the Yankees in the World Series. Since they last won one, the Cubs, Royals, Rangers and Nationals have hoisted the trophy. The Red Sox and Astros have done it twice. The Giants did it three times. I still think it’s funny to imagine telling a Yankees fan in the spring of 2010 that all these other championships would happen before the Yankees got back. Remember, that was long enough ago that the Astros were still in the National League. 

I’m well aware that there will be plenty of complaints about the large payrolls the Yankees and Dodgers have, but it’s worth reflecting on the context behind the payroll narrative. It’s also worth reiterating a point here we’ve made so many times over the past decade or so: Major League Baseball hasn’t had a repeat champion since 2000. That will remain the case after we crown the 2024 champs. Do the hailed bastions of parity that are the salary-cap leagues boast the same claim? 

There isn’t room for any argument that this specific matchup is stale, either. A Dodgers-Yankees World Series hasn’t happened since 1981, when it featured Dusty Baker (as a player), Fernando Valenzuela, Ron Cey and Pedro Guerrero taking on Dave Winfield, Willie Randolph, Ron Guidry and Dave Righetti. 

Most most importantly, this is truly a battle of the titans. It’s not like the Dodgers and Yankees were a couple of 84-win No. 6 seeds that just caught lightning in a bottle for a month. We don’t need to split hairs about the playoff format, lamenting that the playoffs weren’t a representation of the regular season. We don’t need to sit around and invent reasons that the underdogs toppled the best teams. We just get to sit back and watch the best go to battle.

The Dodgers ended the regular season with the best record in baseball. The Yankees had the best record in the American League. Before 1969, this was how the World Series participants were decided. There were no other playoffs; the best team in each league just advanced. In a marathon sport like baseball, that’s really the way to decide the best teams. In the era of so many playoff rounds, we rarely get to see the two best teams squaring off in the finals. That’s simply not what the World Series means anymore. Except this time.

The last time we had a full-season World Series that featured the two No. 1 seeds was 2013, when both the Red Sox and Cardinals won 97 games. Before that, it was all the way back in 1999. 

How about the star power here? The last time both regular-season MVPs played in the World Series was 2012, when it was Buster Posey of the Giants and Miguel Cabrera of the Tigers. It hasn’t happened too often. This time around, we’ve got both (likely) MVPs in Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.

Judge and Ohtani are probably the two biggest names in the sport right now across the entire globe. They are a draw on their own. 

It isn’t just them, of course. Both teams have multiple MVPs and other well-known stars. 

On the Yankees’ side, Judge is going to win his second MVP while Giancarlo Stanton has one. Juan Soto is an MVP-caliber player who feels likely to win one someday. He’s still only 25, by the way, and already has a World Series ring, four Silver Sluggers, four All-Star Games, a batting title and an MVP runner-up to his name. Gerrit Cole has a Cy Young. Anthony Rizzo isn’t what he once was, but he finished fourth in MVP voting and won the World Series in 2016. 

With the Dodgers, they’ve got three MVPs. Ohtani is about to win his third, while Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman each have one. He’s inactive due to injury, but Clayton Kershaw is hanging out in the dugout with his MVP and three Cy Youngs. Yoshinobu Yamamoto is an international superstar who has won the Sawamura Award (think of it as Japan’s version of the Cy Young) three times. He’s only 25 years old. Teoscar Hernández just won the Home Run Derby in July and finished above 30 homers again and he’s a relative footnote in this series. 

It’s a World Series matchup that hasn’t happened in over 40 years featuring two of baseball’s most recognizable teams. The biggest city on each coast. The two best teams in baseball. The two biggest stars in the sport flanked by handfuls of other stars and superstars. 

There sure is a whole lot to love here. Let’s hope we get seven games of drama, because the foundation for a classic is set and it feels pretty sturdy.