Hear Ye, Hear Ye! The Dodgers Are Done! Isn’t Baseball Wonderful?

If you woke up this morning and noticed the air felt fresher, the sun was shining brighter, and food tasted better, you’re not alone. The Wicked Witch of the West, the Los Angeles Dodgers, are finished for 2021, and baseball fans everywhere should be ecstatic. When the smoke cleared last night, the Braves had pulled off what felt like a colossal upset of a team that looked too stacked to compete with after their blockbuster move at the trade deadline.

Although people who support the Dodgers (some people may refer to them “fans”) may not feel the same way, the happiness felt by the rest of the baseball-loving world could be unparalleled. On July 31, most of the country surely felt gut-punched when news broke that the Dodgers not only swiped Max Scherzer away from the Nationals, but Trea Turner as well. The worst part about the Scherzer acquisition was that it essentially bailed the Dodgers out of their own Trevor Bauer-related mess. The worst part about the Turner acquisition is it simply felt like overkill considering they already had a superstar shortstop in Corey Seager. And the worst part about the trade as a whole was that it represented complete and utter abuse of baseball’s salary cap-less system.

It all looked bleak. The San Francisco Giants were holding their own, but it seemed unlikely they could sustain their pace over the last two months against a roster that was loaded with current and former All-Stars like Scherzer, Turner (two Turners, actually), Seager, Mookie Betts, Clayton Kershaw, Walker Buehler, Kenley Jansen, Blake Treinen, and Albert Pujols — just to name a few.

But a funny thing happened over those final two months. The Giants continued to win, and win some more, and just when you thought they would run out of steam, won even more. The Dodgers did their part, winning 106 games and actually topping the preseason over/under of 103 wins the oddsmakers set for them. But San Francisco ended with 107, setting up what looked to be a clash of the titans that, while it was taking place in the NLDS, truly felt like the NLCS with the winner primed to coast past the Braves/Brewers winner to the pennant.

Baseball, however, did not cooperate. The Braves took advantage of the flawed MLB playoff format and earned themselves homefield advantage over Los Angeles because the Dodgers were a wild card entrant. They won the first two games of the series in Atlanta, setting the tone for the series and ultimately taking a 3-1 lead for the second year in a row. The Dodgers romped in Game 5, bringing back memories of Atlanta’s collapse in 2020, but it was not to be. The Braves came through in Game 6, ending the Dodgers’ hopes and ending the nightmare for the rest of America.

Simply put, a team this good is supposed to win. $275 million. Endless All-Stars. The pedigree of being the “defending champions,” even though last season carries a major asterisk. None of it was too much for the Braves to handle, and this is why baseball is great. It obviously isn’t always the best team that wins, just the hottest and the one who plays the best when it matters most. The Dodgers are trying to be an even more obnoxious version of the Yankees, and it still didn’t work. As it stands, the Yankees are still the last team to repeat as world champions back in 2000, even though the Dodgers doing so also would have carried a major asterisk.

We shouldn’t be surprised anymore that parity, to a certain extent, seems to be alive and well. Even though teams like the Dodgers, Yankees, and Red Sox can assault the free agent market, winning the actual games in baseball is more difficult than any of the other major professional sports. Players can unexpectedly morph into stars in October, and the pressure can mount for a team that falls behind, which is likely what happened to the Dodgers after dropping the first two games in Atlanta.

The fact that baseball fans won’t be subject to watching any more games at Dodger Stadium (as much as we should all love Mary Hart) could be the sweetest of all. That obnoxious airhorn on home runs is one of the many artificial aspects of Dodger home games that stays consistent with the vibe of the entire city. World Series baseball will be played in two southern cities that love their sports. Each franchise is going for just its second-ever World Series title.

Meanwhile, the likes of Turner, Scherzer, Betts, and Buehler will all be hitting the links and relaxing on the couch watching the World Series games at home because the grind of a 162-game season is a far different animal that a 60-game, fan-less, regional-play-only sprint that was forced upon us last year so baseball could avoid further financial damage.

For six-and-a-half months of 2021, a Dodgers World Series berth seemed inevitable. Had we been forced to listen to all media hype about how the Dodgers were going for “revenge” against the Astros for 2017 and the alleged cheating that apparently was so impactful that it prevented Los Angeles from winning, it would have been far too much to bear. Instead, we can all breathe easy.

Enjoy the World Series, America. You deserve it.