Dodgers win back to back World Series titles in Toronto thriller

TORONTO — Maybe it was inevitable. Maybe the Los Angeles Dodgers were always going to end up here — drenched in champagne, deafening the Rogers Centre with their roars, and breaking the sport in the process.

Baseball isn’t supposed to work like this. No one’s supposed to win this much, this often, in this many absurd ways. But the Dodgers just did it again — back-to-back World Series champions, this time after surviving the wildest Game 7 in recent memory, a delirious 11-inning 5–4 win over the Toronto Blue Jays that defied every rule of reason, endurance, and probability.

For the second straight night, the Dodgers won on foreign soil. For the second straight night, Yoshinobu Yamamoto walked out of the bullpen like a myth made flesh.

And now, for the first time in 25 years, baseball has a repeat champion.

Yamamoto, the 27-year-old Japanese phenom who arrived in MLB last season, delivered a performance that will be etched into the sport’s lore forever.

A night after throwing 96 pitches across six innings in Game 6, Yamamoto came back in Game 7 — on zero rest — and recorded the final eight outs. He allowed one hit. He struck out one. He induced one of the most cinematic double plays in baseball history to end it all: Alejandro Kirk rolling a grounder to Mookie Betts, who stepped on second and fired to first for the championship.

Ballgame. Dynasty. Madness.

When it was over, Dave Roberts summed it up in four words that will echo through Dodger history: “Yama’s the GOAT.”

Yamamoto became the first pitcher ever to win three games on the road in a single World Series. The first to win Games 6 and 7 on the road. The first man since baseball was born to throw his arm off one night and come back the next to close the title.

He is your 2025 World Series MVP — and, suddenly, the best pitcher alive.

The Dodgers trailed all night. Shohei Ohtani, pitching on three days’ rest, was human — maybe too human. He lasted just 2⅓ innings, surrendering a three-run shot to Bo Bichette that sent Toronto into delirium.

The Jays led 3–0 early and 4–2 late. Rogers Centre was shaking. Vladimir Guerrero Jr. was pounding his chest. The Dodgers looked dead — until they weren’t.

In the ninth inning, with Toronto two outs from their first championship since 1993, Miguel Rojas — the unlikeliest of heroes — blasted a game-tying solo homer into the left-field seats. Rojas hadn’t homered in the postseason since 2020. He hadn’t started the year as an everyday player. And yet, there he was, saving the Dodgers’ season with one swing.

Then, moments later, Rojas did it again — this time with his glove. With the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth, he fielded a grounder and fired home just in time to preserve the tie.

Rojas became a postseason legend in real time.

It was shortly after midnight when Will Smith delivered the final blow — a towering two-out homer in the top of the 11th that silenced the entire nation of Canada.

Smith circled the bases in stunned defiance as the Dodgers’ dugout exploded. For the first time all night, Los Angeles led. Minutes later, Yamamoto made sure it stayed that way.

Guerrero doubled to open the 11th. A bunt moved him to third. And then, Yamamoto induced the title-clinching double play. Mookie Betts to Freeman. 5–4, Dodgers. Dynasty confirmed.

Dave Roberts has been second-guessed, scrutinized, even vilified at times in Los Angeles. But Game 7 was his masterpiece — a managerial gamble that danced on the edge of disaster and ended in triumph.

He started Miguel Rojas, who saved the game twice. He inserted Andy Pages for defense, and Pages made a spectacular catch in the ninth. He trusted Yamamoto, on fumes, to get the final eight outs — and it worked. Every decision was a risk. Every risk was rewarded.

Clayton Kershaw didn’t pitch in Game 7. He didn’t need to. The future Hall of Famer officially retires as a three-time champion, the soul of a generation of Dodgers baseball. Freeman, now also a three-time champ, was already smiling about 2026:

“Back-to-back hasn’t been done in 25 years,” Freeman said. “What’s kind of cool is we get to use the same narrative next year.”

The Dodgers have now won three World Series in six years, appeared in five of the last nine, and claimed 12 NL West titles in 13 seasons. They are the first National League team to repeat as World Series champions since the 1975–76 Big Red Machine.

They’ve become something else entirely — a team too deep to die, too talented to doubt, too relentless to root against without losing faith in baseball itself.

So yes — baseball might be broken. The Dodgers broke it.

But in the end, as Mookie Betts threw across the diamond and Freddie Freeman raised his glove for the final out, no one cared about the balance of power or the payroll or the parity. They cared about this: A dynasty forged in drama, crowned in Canada, and built on the unshakable will of a team that refuses to let go. Baseball, meet your champions again—the Los Angeles Dodgers.