After seven games during which Los Angeles collectively held its breath, the roars of joy when the Dodgers clinched the World Series in Toronto on Nov. 1 reverberated around the city. Fireworks filled the skies and digital billboards on freeways instantly flashed bright blue lights. The Short Stop in Echo Park, just a half-mile from Dodger Stadium, roared with approval. Seemingly every second patron of 33 Taps restaurant and bar in Silver Lake sported Shohei Ohtani jerseys, Philippe’s Downtown swarmed with World Series buzz and the iconic Bob’s Big Boy statue in Burbank was given a Dodger makeover. Despite joyous street celebrations that stretched to the far corners of L.A., the Los Angeles Police Department made just seven arrests; the city was blissed out with controlled nirvana.
It was a good year for baseball. The 2025 October (and November) Classic, which featured two extra-inning games, including the 11-inning finale, garnered the best TV ratings for a World Series since 2017. The games were invigorated by close plays at home plate, spectacular catches (Andy Pages’ wipeout of left fielder Kiké Hernandez to save Game 7, anyone?) and heroic moments, like Yoshinobu Yamamoto willing himself to pitch the season’s final three innings after having pitched six innings the night before.
Will Smith and Freddie Freeman (shown here earlier in the season) hit game-winning home runs in the World Series.Credit: Trent Kanemaki
A record 4 million fans crowded into Dodger Stadium this year, and a big reason for the excitement was the global makeup of a team nestled within a multicultural city. The Dodgers have players not only from Japan (Ohtani, Yamamoto and Roki Sasaki) but from Cuba (Andy Pages), the Dominican Republic (Teoscar Hernández), Venezuela (Miguel Rojas and Edgardo Henriquez), Puerto Rico (Kiké Hernández) and South Korea (Hyeseong Kim).
Fans on the Eastside have long been among the Dodgers’ most vocal supporters. When Fernando Valenzuela was a rookie phenom in 1981, people showed up in dynamic numbers to watch a pitcher from a small village in Sonora, Mexico, dominate the best hitters in baseball. And just as Fernandomania packed Chavez Ravine in the 1980s, so the Ohtani Effect is again making Dodger Stadium the center of the baseball universe, and not just for local fans. The Los Angeles Tourism & Convention Board reported a 91.7% increase in Japanese visitors to Los Angeles in 2024, a surge largely attributed to the Dodgers signing the former Japanese League star as a free agent (for 10 years and $700 million when his contract with the Los Angeles Angels ended) in 2023. Further, the board noted, 80% to 90% of Japanese tourists visit Dodger Stadium at least once during their stay.
Credit: Trent Kanemaki
Major League Baseball itself took note the instant the Dodgers signed Ohtani, sending the team to Seoul to start the 2024 season and Tokyo to begin play this year, turning Opening Day into an international event that sold out every game. Ohtani’s fame is well earned. In leading the Dodgers to the first back-to-back World Series championships this century, he has accomplished feats no other baseball player has approached.
Long touted as the new Babe Ruth for his ability to both hit and pitch, last year he ran circles around Ruth’s skill set, stealing 59 bases and hitting 54 home runs to become the only member in baseball’s “50/50 Club.” He’s been voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player in each of the past two seasons (to go with two American League MVPs with the Angels), and in the 18-inning third game of this year’s World Series, he hit two doubles and two home runs before Toronto manager John Schneider waved the white flag and ordered his pitchers to intentionally walk the Dodger star the next five times he came to bat. Four games earlier, Ohtani had homered three times and struck out 10 batters over six scoreless innings as he hit and pitched the Dodgers to the World Series in a sweep of the Milwaukee Brewers.
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At Dodger Stadium, the results are obvious. Eastside families who have been fans for generations are seated next to Japanese American fans, many sporting Ohtani jerseys. Some might not speak each other’s language, but Dodger baseball has become their interpreter.
For 1988 World Series Most Valuable Player and current Dodger broadcaster Orel Hershiser, comparisons between the 2025 team and those in the ’80s on which he starred alongside Valenzuela don’t use a wide enough lens.
“The current team that won back-to-back World Championships is probably one of the most, if not the most talented team that the Dodgers have ever put on the field,” he tells Los Angeles. “So comparing it strictly to the ’80s is unfair. Comparing it to the history of the whole Dodger organization is probably a fairer question. And to think there had been no Dodger teams that had won back-to-backs — these guys have a huge boost on their résumé.”
Dodger Stadium welcomes the World Series.Credit: Trent Kanemaki
As an organization, the Dodgers have been innovators, leading the Major Leagues in building a fan base that engages all parts of the community. Famously, in Brooklyn under Branch Rickey, the Dodgers broke baseball’s color barrier in 1947 with the debut of Jackie Robinson. The next year, they brought in Roy Campanella, now both in the Baseball Hall of Fame, and Don Newcombe, who became the ace of the pitching staff in 1955, when the Dodgers won their first World Series.
In 1958, their inaugural season in Los Angeles, they became the first team to hire a full-time Spanish language announcer, René Cárdenas. Jaime Jarrín joined Cárdenas in 1959 and continued calling games until 2022. In 1998, he was elected to the broadcast wing of the Hall of Fame.
The Dodgers have been the first team to bring top players from Asia to the Big Leagues, signing South Korean pitching star Chan Ho Park in 1994 and Japanese right-hander Hideo Nomo in 1995. Both became All-Stars. The Dodgers’ success in the Far East has likely made it easier for other Asian stars — including Kaz Ishii, Takashi Saito, Hiroki Kuroda and Kenta Maeda — to feel comfortable in Los Angeles.
Yoshinobu Yamamoto celebrates the title.Credit: Irvin Rivera
Back-to-back trophiesCredit: Irvin Rivera
Where the Los Angeles Dodgers haven’t been trendsetters is in holding victory parades. There were no official public celebrations immediately following the team’s World Series championships in 1959, ’63 or ’65. And while the 1981 and ’88 winners finally got the chance to be feted by fans, the team fell on hard times during the 1990s and 2000s, often missing the playoffs entirely and rarely advancing out of the first round when they did make the cut.
But things began to change for the Dodgers when Guggenheim Baseball Management (led by Mark Walter and Stan Kasten, but whose best-known face is Lakers superstar Magic Johnson) bought the team from Frank McCourt for $2 billion in 2012. Since then, the Dodgers have won the National League West division every year but one. In 2014, they hired Andrew Friedman, who built the Tampa Bay Rays into a perennial contender on a shoestring budget, and gave him the resources to go a step further. The result has been five National League pennants since 2017 and three World Series titles since the start of the decade.
And two parades in the past two seasons.
This year’s celebration was held Nov. 3, two days after the team left Toronto with a gleaming new trophy. With roughly a quarter of a million Angelenos lining the streets Downtown, Dodger players and their families, along with team executives and staff, packed onto seven double-decker buses for a 45-minute love-in with fans that crawled west along Temple Street from Broadway, turned south on Grand, west on 7th and north on Figueroa, before making its way to Dodger Stadium, where more than 50,000 fans were waiting.
Credit: Natalia Oprzadek
Credit: Laurel Lewis
Credit: Natalia Oprzadek
Credit: Natalia Oprzadek
Inside, team members put on another show — one of affection for the city. From Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Max Muncy and Will Smith to Teoscar Hernández, Miguel Rojas, Blake Snell and Tyler Glasnow, who grew up in Southern California, the Dodgers let fans know what it feels like to be lucky enough to play baseball in Los Angeles. Kiké Hernandez got the crowd roaring with a raucously salty speech, and Clayton Kershaw, retiring after a Hall of Fame career, said that he’s proud to be “a Dodger for life.” Ohtani and Yamamoto both spoke in English to the fans, and Yamamoto added a few words of Spanish, ultimately telling the crowd, “We did it together! I love the Dodgers! I love Los Angeles!”
A few hours later, the crowd had departed and the last of the accolades finally stopped echoing within the mid-century modern grandeur of Dodger Stadium, the third oldest ballpark in the land — and a place where all of L.A. is revealed: Views from the left field reserved section include the Griffith Park Observatory and the Hollywood sign, the Santa Monica Mountains and a sliver of ocean coastline near Playa del Rey. A walk around the top deck affords a view from San Clemente to San Pedro and the whole Westside. A look back behind home plate serves up City Hall and Downtown. Watching the game, you’re treated to a wide-open view of the San Gabriel Mountains, and when the sun sets and the city starts to twinkle, it’s hard to imagine a prettier place on earth.
One fan who took a morning flight to L.A. from Ohio to see the final Wild Card game this year said it best; “I know the Reds are gonna lose. I just want to be here.”
In a Dodger season that started in Japan in the middle of March and ended with a World Series championship in November in Canada, perhaps Los Angeles itself was the real star of the show.