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MLB Dave Roberts has guided the Dodgers to five of the last nine World Series, with championships in 2020, 2024 and 2025. Isaiah J. Downing / Imagn Images GLENDALE, Ariz. — A hero of October manages the Los Angeles Dodgers. But here’s the funny thing about Dave Roberts: He never actually played in the World Series. His famous playoff steal propelled the Boston Red Sox to a pennant more than two decades ago. But the World Series was so lopsided that manager Terry Francona left Roberts on the bench. Advertisement “There was never really any opportunity for me in a big spot, ” Roberts said last week, in his office at Camelback Ranch. “But I knew Tito trusted me. I knew I was valued, and that’s all any player needs. I could wear that ring with pride. ” Most seasons end now with Roberts at the dugout rail in the World Series. He has guided the Dodgers to five of the last nine Fall Classics, with championships in 2020, 2024 and 2025. Only 10 other managers in major-league history have won three or more titles. Nine are in the Hall of Fame, with Bruce Bochy likely to join them in Cooperstown in 2027. None can match Roberts’ . 621 winning percentage. “He knows the personal side of every player he’s managing, ” infielder Miguel Rojas said. “So I think that’s the reason why he’s been so successful in those moments, taking the team to where we want to go. He cares about the personalities instead of just the player, or what the back of the baseball card says. ” Last fall, moments after the Blue Jays took Game 5 at Dodger Stadium, Roberts texted Rojas to tell him he would start at second base in Toronto. The Dodgers would be facing elimination there, and Rojas was hitless since the wild-card round. He did not play at all in the championship series. There was no matchup data to support the plan. Rojas does not hit right-handers well, and all of Toronto’s most trusted pitchers were righties. But Roberts was not thinking about that. “When you write a lineup, certainly in an elimination game, you have to write as many names where you know that game is everything to them, ” he said. “And not that it wasn’t for the other guys. The point is: the experience, the pain of losing, the potential that you might retire — I was willing to bet that he was going to leave every ounce of his being on that field for the Dodgers to win. ” Advertisement Roberts’ decisions helped win Game 6. Mookie Betts, the struggling star Roberts had dropped in the lineup, laced a two-run single for the margin of victory. Rojas preserved it by snagging a short-hop throw from left fielder Kiké Hernández, then holding onto second base for a game-ending double play. For Roberts, though, the work was just getting started. Last Monday, with a scoresheet from the press box and still-fresh memories from Rogers Centre, he dissected the strategies of a Game 7 like no other. “The pressure points in that World Series, ” Roberts said, shaking his head. “There were so many different things. I mean, it’s unbelievable when you unpack it. ” Shohei Ohtani can do almost anything. But the most talented player in history had never taken a major-league mound on three days’ rest. It showed in Game 7. “Shohei just didn’t have his best stuff, ” Roberts said. “And I saw that early. ” Even with extra time to warm up between innings – too much, the Blue Jays thought – Ohtani was lucky to reach the third inning without allowing a run. He gave up a two-out single in the second to Ernie Clement that should have scored Bo Bichette from second base. But Bichette was hobbled by a late-season knee sprain, and stayed tethered to third when Ohtani overpowered Andrés Giménez to end the inning. That was as good as it got for Ohtani, but Roberts needed more. In the third inning, with one out and a runner on second, he ordered an intentional walk to Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to set up a double play against Bichette. Roberts did not count on Ohtani hanging a slider with his first pitch. Bichette punished it for a three-run homer, but Roberts had no regrets. “I would do it again, the way Vlad was swinging the bat, and because Bichette wasn’t running well, ” Roberts said. “And you’re also trying to figure out how to cover the innings. So yes, Shohei struggled through the second and got through it unscathed, but it’s front of mind, appreciating that if you do take him out after the second inning, then I might have to introduce somebody else. ” Advertisement Roberts’ teams had won five postseason games after trailing by three runs, including the 2024 World Series clincher at Yankee Stadium, when they erased a five-run deficit. Still, the 3-0 score plunged the Dodgers’ odds of winning to 17 percent, according to Baseball Reference. The bullpen would have to be just about flawless, and the offense — then hitting . 187 for the World Series — would have to rise. “We put ourselves behind the 8-ball with the three-run homer, because you realize you just don’t have any more margin to give up any runs, ” Roberts said. “And then you feel like you’re only gonna get so many opportunities to score, and we just couldn’t cash in. ” In theory, the Dodgers had 12 more pitchers they could use after Ohtani. In practice, they had five or six. The bullpen trust tree — flourishing in the 2024 postseason — was about as sturdy as Charlie Brown’s sad little Christmas pine. Roberts planned to use his other starters — Blake Snell, Tyler Glasnow and Yoshinobu Yamamoto — in Game 7, but not for very long. Yamamoto had worked six innings to win Game 6, and Glasnow had saved it with three outs on three breathless pitches. He still felt strong. “If I’m sore, I don’t really get sore the following day, ” Glasnow said. “So back to back is a little bit easier to manage than pitch a lot, wait a day, pitch again. ” Roki Sasaki was not in the plans. Protecting a two-run lead in the ninth inning of Game 6, he had hit a batter and served up a double that wedged itself between the warning track and the bottom of the outfield wall. To Roberts, Sasaki had given all he could after a disjointed rookie season. The arms he trusted, beyond the starters, were Justin Wrobleski and Emmet Sheehan. Wrobleski had been left off the roster for the NL playoffs, activated only when a family tragedy forced Alex Vesia from the team before the World Series. Sheehan had a 9. 95 ERA in October. But Roberts believed in them. Advertisement Wrobleski, he said, had attacked his work in the earlier rounds, looking sharp and confident in live batting practice to Dodger hitters. He’d pitched three times against Toronto without allowing a run. “His stuff was power, ” Roberts said. “And I thought stuff and power played against the Blue Jays. ” Sheehan, meanwhile, had struggled with runners on base. But he had looked good in the 10th, 11th and 12th innings of the Dodgers’ marathon Game 3 win, and Roberts trusted him – with one corollary. “I was going to make sure that Emmett started a clean inning, ” he said. “That was the main thing. For me, I still believed in the stuff. ” Wrobleski replaced Ohtani and survived the third inning. Then Will Smith opened the Dodgers’ fourth with a double on the first pitch, just as Roberts was starting a league-mandated live dugout interview with Fox’s Tom Verducci. Roberts raised his left hand to the field after the double — he said he’s not sure why — but he was clearly distracted. “That’s the hard thing, ” he said. “TV is so important now, so I’m trying to be sensitive to the broadcast. But my most important thing is managing the game. So that was a tough one. Obviously, I’m listening, but my focus is out there. ” Smith would score, and another run followed in the sixth. But those middle innings were unfulfilling: the Dodgers left runners on first and second in the fourth, fifth and sixth. For their part, the Blue Jays wasted their own chances. The benches and bullpens emptied after Wrobleski hit Giménez on the hand with a fastball in the fourth, and the crowd roared when George Springer followed with a single off Wrobleski’s leg. One out later, with Guerrero due up, Glasnow entered with one mission. Avert disaster. Another three-run homer would give Toronto a five-run lead. Perched on that tightrope, Glasnow would not look down. Advertisement “I think you’re just replacing it with what you were doing, ” he said. “It’s like: ‘Go heater here, ’ and we’re just focused on that. You don’t really have a lot of mental capacity to be like, ‘What if I throw it here and he hits a homer? ’” Glasnow faced 10 hitters, with Guerrero as bookends. Both times, Glasnow won the duel. Guerrero flied out to strand two runners in the fourth, and grounded out to strand another in the sixth. After Sheehan struck out two in a scoreless seventh, Max Muncy murdered a Trey Yesavage splitter to make it 4-3 in the eighth. Both teams had used three relievers, but neither had gone to its bench. That was about to change, with massive implications. The last time Toronto had hosted the World Series, in 1993, Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston missed the ending. When Joe Carter connected off the Philadelphia Phillies’ Mitch Williams with the clinching home run, Gaston was studying a stat sheet, debating whether to use Darnell Coles to bat for Alfredo Griffin, the light-hitting, 36-year-old infielder on deck. Like Gaston’s team, Roberts’ Dodgers also trailed by a run with one out in the ninth of the World Series finale. And like Gaston, Roberts considered replacing his own light-hitting, 36-year-old infielder. With Ohtani due up third in the inning — which started with a strikeout by Hernández — the Dodgers needed a baserunner. And Alex Call, a reserve outfielder, had a . 380 on-base percentage against righties last season, compared to Rojas’ . 285. He was the logical choice. “I did think of Call, ” Roberts said. “But I just felt that once I made the decision to play Rojas in Game 6, I was going to ride or die with him in any situation. Alex is traditionally better versus (righties), but you’ve still got to bake in coming off the bench, (while) Miggy’s played the entire game. Advertisement “And I understand the scrutiny of not optimizing a potential matchup. But, for me, I’ve played in and managed plenty of postseason games and you’ve just got to bet on people. So I was prepared to just sell out and bet on Miguel Rojas. ” What followed was one of the most signature at-bats in World Series history, as Rojas recently recounted, pitch-by-captivating-pitch, with The Athletic’s Fabian Ardaya. Rojas had homered once off a right-hander all season — in June, against a backup catcher in a 10-run game. Then he did it to Jeff Hoffman to tie Game 7. In the jubilant Dodger dugout, Roberts held his hands to the side of his head, as if keeping his brains from exploding. The homer literally dropped his jaw — his gum popped out of his mouth. But as stirring and shocking as it was, Rojas’ homer was nearly a footnote. With one out in the bottom of the ninth, Bichette singled off Snell to put the winning run on first. Again, though, his injury made an impact. John Schneider, the Blue Jays’ manager, inserted Isiah Kiner-Falefa as the potential World Series-winning run. A walk moved Kiner-Falefa to second, and Yamamoto replaced Snell. The Dodgers were desperate. They went with their best. “You don’t know what you’re going to get from Yamamoto, ” Roberts conceded. “He pitched the night before, so it’s like, I can’t bank on two innings. ” Yamamoto, like Glasnow, would face 10 hitters, the first one the same as the last. His two-time matchup was Alejandro Kirk, an excellent hitter but, at 5-foot-8 and 245 pounds, a plodding runner. Yamamoto started with a good double-play pitch — the splitter — for a strike. Then he drilled Kirk with a sinker, bringing Daulton Varsho to the plate. So there it was: one out, bases loaded, tie game, elimination 90 feet away. In Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, the New York Yankees had faced the same situation. Joe Torre pulled the infield in, Luis Gonzalez floated a broken-bat single to shallow center, and the Arizona Diamondbacks won the title. Roberts took the same strategy as Torre, for the same reason. He could not risk losing the World Series while trying to turn a double play. Advertisement “He runs too well, ” Roberts said of Varsho. “And so we had to find a way to cut the run off. He wasn’t a double-play candidate for me. So I felt that, if the infield’s back, we’re not going to double him up – and then we lose the World Series. I was going to make him get a hit to beat us, essentially. ” A long fly ball could also have beaten the Dodgers — and of all the hitters in Toronto’s lineup that night, Varsho had the highest fly-ball percentage. Roberts would need the best arms possible in his outfield. So instead of turning to Justin Dean — the speedy defensive specialist who had finished every other postseason victory in center field — Roberts called for Andy Pages. Roberts had passed him over for the start, but let him know he was valued. “When he put me on the bench, he told me I was his first choice to be in the game, ” Pages said. “So I was always ready. ” When Pages replaced Edman in center, Roberts had again made a move that backfired in another ninth inning of another Game 7. Managing the Cleveland Indians in 2016, Francona pulled Coco Crisp from right field when the Chicago Cubs put the go-ahead run on third with one out. Crisp was a good hitter with a bad arm. Michael Martinez was a bad hitter with a good arm. The moment demanded the arm. The fly ball never came, and Cleveland had an empty bench when Crisp’s spot came up as the winning run in the bottom of the 10th. That was checkmate, as Martinez grounded out meekly to end the season. But to leave in Crisp for an at-bat that might never happen? That would have been malpractice. “If I can’t explain this, ” Francona said years later, “it’s wrong. ” Roberts, likewise, would wish he had Edman at the plate with the bases loaded and one out in the top of the 10th; Pages, who hit . 078 in the postseason (4-for-51), tapped into a force out. But he knew what he needed in the ninth. “You’ve got to play for that moment, ” Roberts said, “and hope you get to the next moment. ” The next moments will live in World Series lore. Advertisement So let’s reset. Bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, one out, tie game. Kiner-Falefa at third, Addison Barger at second, Kirk at first. Unlike Ohtani, who pitched from the windup with the bases loaded in the second inning, Yamamoto worked from the stretch. That kept Kiner-Falefa close to the base, as did the fear of being doubled off by a line drive to third; Giménez had just hit such a liner the inning before, against Snell. Roberts said he did not notice how close Kiner-Falefa had stayed to the base. This would be a major talking point the next day — and has been ever since — but not in the frenzied moments after Game 7. A routine ground ball to second, with the infield in, will almost always get the runner at the plate. But Varsho’s grounder was not routine. Rojas, positioned on the turf, backhanded the ball but lost his footing, staggering to the dirt before planting his feet and firing home. Smith reached for the catch, his foot straying from the plate for a perilous split-second before landing just in time. In theory, Kiner-Falefa could have reached home faster by running straight through instead of sliding. Now with the Boston Red Sox, he said last month that his goal was to break up a double play so the next hitter, the scorching Clement, would get a chance. Clement had three hits in Game 7 and a record 30 for the postseason. Yamamoto started him with a curveball, and Smith dropped his glove to the dirt. Maybe the curve would have skipped to the backstop, and the Blue Jays would have won on a wild pitch. But Clement connected. Hernández, whose prescient positioning had led to his game-saving play the night before, raced to the track with his back to the plate, like Willie Mays at the Polo Grounds in 1954. Pages bolted 121 feet from center. “Right when I saw the fly ball, I looked at (Hernández) and he’s very shallow, ” Pages said. “So I just thought: ‘Go get it. ’ I didn’t look at him again. ” Advertisement Pages did not see Hernández; he felt him, left side on left hip, as Pages left his feet. The two will be twisted and tangled for all time — plenty of T-shirts commemorate the catch — with the Series secured in Pages’ glove. In for his arm strength, Pages made the catch with his speed. Dean might have gotten there, but at 5-foot-8, he is five inches shorter than Pages. Edman is 5-foot-9 and would soon undergo ankle surgery. Would he have made that catch? “I don’t know, ” Roberts said. “I know Andy was graded out as a plus center fielder last year and he has more foot speed, he has more range, he’s taller, all that stuff. But I don’t know. ” Compared with all that — and the agony for the Dodgers of leaving the bases loaded in the top of the 10th — the go-ahead homer, by Smith off Shane Bieber with two outs in the top of the 11th, was almost elementary. It was the first extra-inning home run ever in Game 7 of a World Series, hit by an All-Star who had just broken a 122-year-old record for most innings caught in a World Series. Yet, it might not have been the most dramatic moment of the inning. Facing Yamamoto to lead off the Blue Jays’ half, Guerrero came through with the hit he had needed against Glasnow: a double. Kiner-Falefa — batting in Bichette’s spot — bunted him to third. That brought up Barger, and Roberts wanted no part of him. Barger had 12 hits already. Another would tie a World Series record and tie the game — or worse. Though it meant putting the clinching run on base, the Dodgers pitched around Barger, walking him on four pitches to force the matchup they wanted. Seventy-eight years earlier, in another Dodgers World Series, the season had ended when a catcher grounded into a double play in Game 7. That time, the Dodgers lost (to the Yankees) and Bruce Edwards was the hitter. Advertisement This time, it was Kirk at the plate for Toronto. For the 14th time in the World Series — twice in Game 6, a dozen times in Game 7 — a Blue Jays hitter came to bat as the potential winning run. Fourteen chances to match Joe Carter, and every time, the Dodgers kept it from happening. With the left-handed Varsho up next, Roberts decided that Kirk would be Yamamoto’s last batter. Clayton Kershaw, the great lefty in his final game as an active major leaguer, would face Varsho. Kershaw, who had lived through so much triumph and torture in autumn. Kershaw, with no tomorrow, for the season or his career. Kershaw, with a chance to etch one last line on his plaque in Cooperstown. Kershaw! “I just felt that, for all the storybook narratives, all that stuff — we’re trying to win the World Series, and I’m going to go with people that I feel can handle the moment, ” Roberts said. “And part of the moment is potentially failing. And I understand what it would have looked like for me to make that decision for Clayton, this being his last year, all that stuff. But it’s like, I’m still not going to run from potential failure. You don’t win championships by being afraid to fail. ” In the end, of course, the vintage ace watched from the bullpen as the new ace finished the job. Yamamoto attacked Kirk with three pitches: a cutter for a foul, a curveball for a called strike and a splitter on the outside corner. Kirk lunged for it, shattering his bat with the most obvious double play ball you’ll ever see. Betts gathered the two-hopper, crossed second in stride and flung the final out to Freddie Freeman at first. Closure. Exhale. Rejoice. “It was just so pressure-driven up until that last pitch, ” Roberts said. “I mean, we were fighting upstream the entire series, and those guys weren’t going to go away. It was just so exhausting. And so to get finality — I just couldn’t believe that it was over, because there was so much going on and we were so close to losing the World Series so many times. I mean, we didn’t have a lead until the 11th inning! ” Advertisement It was the very best kind of World Series, a different emotion after every game: Blue Jays lead, Dodgers tie, Dodgers lead, Blue Jays tie, Blue Jays lead, Dodgers tie, Dodgers win. That precise pattern, with the home team winning only Games 1 and 3, hadn’t happened in 99 years. For Roberts, it came so close to never happening at all. Two years in a row, the Dodgers had lost a division series to a division rival, and stood one game from doing so again in 2024. But Roberts preserved the bullpen in a Game 3 loss in San Diego, then masterfully directed shutouts the next two games — eight pitchers in one, five in the other. That escape, and the championship that followed, probably saved Roberts’ job. He has never raised the issue with the front office, because what’s the point? Roberts led the Dodgers back to the top, earned a new contract, then won again with a managing master class. For all the money the owners spend, all the plans his bosses devise, Roberts’ greatest victory was a testament to understanding and trusting people. Which is why, when Rojas came to him in the dugout before the bottom of the 11th and told Roberts he could not continue, Roberts did not ask for more. Rojas’ body was so battered, he explained, that he did not trust himself to have the range he needed. Hyeseong Kim, who had not played at all in the World Series, was on the field at the end. That, Roberts thought, was the ultimate example of team over self, collective joy over individual glory. Yet, as proud as he was of his players, Roberts landed on a different feeling when he climbed the victory podium: gratitude. When the microphone came his way, Roberts told the world that baseball was the greatest game ever invented. The words are a blur to him now, Roberts said. But he is glad his instincts led him there. The victory belonged to the Dodgers. The game — that night, and always — belongs to the ages. Advertisement “I talk to our guys every day about playing for something bigger, and I try to remind myself all the time that I’m a baseball fan first, ” Roberts said. “And yes, I’m going to manage to win and make our players better. But I don’t ever want to lose sight of how great this game is. “One of the biggest compliments I could get is that so many people that don’t watch sports, or don’t even like baseball, were glued to the World Series. They just couldn’t get away from it. And so I just think the more that people show gratitude for our game and appreciate how great it is, it just makes our game better. So it was an emotional thought, and I meant it. I was very grateful to be a part of a World Series that people are going to talk about forever. ” Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Tyler Kepner is a Senior Writer for The Athletic covering MLB. He previously worked for The New York Times, covering the Mets (2000-2001) and Yankees (2002-2009) and serving as national baseball columnist from 2010 to 2023. A Vanderbilt University graduate, he has covered the Angels for the Riverside (Calif. ) Press-Enterprise and Mariners for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer, and began his career with a homemade baseball magazine in his native Philadelphia in the early 1990s. Tyler is the author of the best-selling “K: A History of Baseball In Ten Pitches” (2019) and “The Grandest Stage: A History of The World Series” (2022). Follow Tyler on Twitter @Tyler Kepner