LA Law

BY KEVIN KERNAN

The Yankees continue to choke on the Dodgers’ exhaust fumes.

One year ago, the Dodgers embarrassed the Yankees in the World Series, winning in five games, low lighted by the Yankees fifth-inning defensive meltdown – and then coldly danced on the Yankees grave, saying they did not deserve to be in the same postseason universe as them.

On the way out the door of his major league career, Dodgers reliever Joe Kelly crushed the Yankees, saying, “If we had a playoff ranking, they might be ranked the eighth- or ninth-ranked playoff team.’’

All this came on the heels of the Dodgers’ tremendous World Series scouting report on the Yankees that shredded the Bronx Bombers for their lack of fundamentals and lack of baseball precision. It proved to be all true.

Yankee fans were upset with the harsh criticism but here we are one year later, and the defending World Champion Dodgers are back in the World Series while the Yankees are nothing but a playoff memory after being annihilated by the Blue Jays in the ALDS after barely getting past the punchless Red Sox in the wild card round.

This October, the Yankees once again proved the Dodgers’ point. You could rank the Yankees again overall in that eighth- or ninth-playoff ranking.

If that wasn’t bad enough, Yankee fans painfully had to put up with yet another Brian Cashman and Aaron Boone Groundhog Day autopsy press conference this past week, hearing the same tired comments from Cash/Boone, who officially act as Hal Steinbrenner’s baseball DoorDash.

It seems the Yankees do just enough every year so Cash/Boone can hold their downcast press conference, promising more of the same the next season.

Hal sets the price on what is available, and the DoorDash pair deliver. The Yankee lineup isn’t exactly fast food but it’s not a Michelin 3-star restaurant, either, other than Aaron Judge.

It seems the Yankees do just enough every year so Cash/Boone can hold their downcast press conference, promising more of the same the next season.

For Yankee fans, it is beyond maddening. For example, a while back it was “We could not sign Freddie Freeman to play first, but how about Anthony Rizzo?’’

Meanwhile the Deferral Dodgers, as I call them, always seem to get what they want and what they need – look at their starting pitchers – and not just the free agent acquisition of baseball unicorn Shohei Ohtani but all across the roster as the $350 million Dodgers swept away the overmatched $121 million Brewers in four games in the NLCS with Ohtani’s Game 4 Playoff Game for the Ages, more on that later.

For example, the Dodgers, who wisely traded for Mookie Betts before the 2020 season, starting this World Series resurgence, used him in the outfield when they needed him for years and then put Betts at shortstop this season, with Betts even doing his Derek Jeter impression, a  jump throw from deep in the hole at shortstop in the ninth inning of the Dodgers 3-1 Game 3 win over the Brewers to get Andrew Vaughn at first.

Meanwhile, the Yankees had no problem playing a flawed and injured Anthony Volpe at shortstop.

Just that one difference, Betts vs. Volpe, speaks volumes, but there are so many more as the Dodgers again stand only four wins away from their second straight World Series triumph, something that has not been done since the Yankee days of Joe Torre and Stick Michael (1998, ’99, 2000), and the Dodgers’ third World Series title in six seasons.

Need I remind you that the Cash/Boone Yankees have never won a World Series and you have to go back to 2009 to find the Yankees last World Series victory, No. 27.

Baseball sure has a way of going full circle if you hang around long enough.

Back in the Glory Days of New York baseball, it was the Yankees who dominated the Brooklyn Dodgers and treated them like a little baseball brother. From 1947 through 1956 the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers five times in the World Series. The Bums broke through for a face-saving victory in 1955, but the Yankees owned the Dodgers so much that the Dodgers had to escape to LA to win their first Los Angeles world championship, topping the “Go-Go’’ White Sox in the 1959 World Series.

Will these Yankees ever break through like the ’55 Dodgers did 70 years ago?

It’s not looking good because already the Yankees are an injured team again heading into 2026 with Volpe undergoing surgery to repair a left shoulder labrum tear. He can’t swing a bat for four months.

Former ace Gerrit Cole is returning from Tommy John surgery, so don’t expect to see him until halfway through 2026. Carlos Rodon had elbow issues (loose bodies, bone spur) and will not be around for the start of the 2026 season as well. Clarke Schmidt is coming back from Tommy John surgery.

Meanwhile, the Dodgers are trotting out Blake Snell, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Shohei Ohtani and Tyler Glasnow as their super rotation for the World Series and have moved Roki Sasaki to the closer’s role. The Dodgers have so much starting pitching, they did not have to use their top starters for a good part of the season, ensuring that would be fresh and at their best come October.

They can do much of the same next year if they want because they are not really challenged in the NL West with the Padres slipping mightily and the Giants not able to figure it out. Both teams will have new managers and the Giants, according to reports, are going the college route with Tennessee’s Tony Vitello, a new approach. The Giants have not had managerial luck since Bruce Bochy departed in 2019, their two managers after Bochy being Gabe Kapler and Bob Melvin. They have not finished over .500 in each of the last four seasons.

Essentially, the Dodgers have broken them, just as they broke the Padres.

You could say the Dodgers broke the Yankees too in that 2024 World Series.

And all along, Dave Roberts merrily throws it back in everybody’s face. Roberts chirped after ousting the Brewers, “I’ll tell ya, before this season started, they said, ‘The Dodgers are ruining baseball.’ Let’s get four more wins and really ruin baseball.’’

Gotta love Roberts being so brash.

If you are going to be the bully, act like the bully. Be who you are. Be the bully.

That’s how the Yankees treated baseball back in their U.S. Steel days when they regularly beat Brooklyn. And later, that’s how the Yankees treated baseball back when Hal’s father was in charge and the Yankees came back to life with the Real Boss, not the Nepo Boss.

In each of the 1977 and ’78 seasons the Yankees beat the Dodgers in six games to win the World Series. Back then the Yankees were The Boss.

How times have changed.

In fact, it was Reggie Jackson who became Mr. October with his three home runs against the Dodgers in that 1977 Game 6. That was on October 18th. Flash forward 48 years, minus one day, on October 17, 2025, and there is a new Mr. October in Shohei Ohtani, who not only blasted three monster home runs in Game 4 of the NLCS against the Brewers in the Dodgers 5-1 clinching NLCS victory, he also started and pitched six shutout innings while striking out 10.

Sorry, Reggie, Shohei has topped you this October and who knows what the World Series will bring for Ohtani and the unstoppable Dodgers. And now you have Mr. Roberts challenging all of baseball after they have “ruined’’ so many teams, including the team that used to ruin the Dodgers, the Yankees.

Holy Cow!

Mr. Roberts is talking about ruining baseball and Cashman is talking about what a good a manager he has in Aaron Boone, his hand-picked successor to Joe Girardi, who did happen to win the World Series in 2009.

“I think he’s a good manager,’’ Cashman said of Boone. “I think he is one of the better managers.’’

Cashman, as expected, did not care for the criticism he received from Derek Jeter and Alex Rodriguez about roster construction and other Nerd matters.

However, Cashman should know this better than anyone that when you are in charge of the Yankees and the Yankees have gone 16 years without a championship, despite spending large amounts of money, but again, not the kind of money the Dodgers are spending, you should expect criticism.

That is what life in New York, New York is all about.

That’s why they play that Frank Sinatra song at Yankee Stadium, Cash.

Cashman and Boone should “wanna wake up in that city, that doesn’t sleep. And find I’m king of the hill, top of the list. A number one, king of the hill.’’

It has to start there, not just be happy to be in the tournament.

It’s funny, Boone is criticized for not holding his players accountable, but you can see where he gets it from with Cashman’s glowing comments about Boone the manager and from the Nepo owner Hal who does not hold Cashman or Boone accountable.

No one really holds anyone accountable in Yankees World.

Meanwhile, again, Roberts is laying down the law saying the Dodgers goal is to “ruin baseball.’’

That used to be the Yankee mindset.

The Dodgers have become a global baseball giant with an incredible pipeline of Japanese players, passing the Yankees by in the baseball night.

When you are born on third base like Hal Steinbrenner, and you hold your job seemingly forever, like Brian Cashman and now Aaron Boone no matter how poorly your team plays, and can’t accept criticism from one of your most iconic players in Jeter and another ex-Yankee superstar, a guy with 696 home runs like A-Rod, a flawed student of the game, you can see how a team mindset can change for the worse.

And then you listen to the tired words of another postseason autopsy, the same words you hear year after year, the new Yankees goal should be only one thing, like Frank sang, “make a brand-new start of it, right there in New York.”

The Dodgers are the top of the heap and are only four wins away from doing something that has not been done since 2000 in Major League Baseball.

No, the Dodgers haven’t ruined baseball, they put the money, the revenue back into the team in creative baseball ways. They have shown how a big market monster should attack the season.

This is truly a tale of two teams. And right now, Dodgers fans are loving life. Let them sing away to Randy Newman’s classic.

“I love L.A. (We love it)!”