Judge's Muff, Cole's Boner, and Six Games of World Series in a Five-Game Bag

For as long as there have been World Series, there have been occasional complaints that they're sloppy. We should expect that. The crispest baseball of the season can't come at the end of a 200-game schedule, in varying climates and amid a media circus. But extraordinarily compelling baseball still can.

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A great World Series has to run six or seven games, and thus, sadly, the much-hyped 2024 Fall Classic fell short. A good one needn't be played at an exceptionally high level of tautness or neatness, though. Chaos is good. Chaos is the element thrown at the last moment into the mixture of great ingredients—talent, stakes, and setting—that make up good baseball in general, elevating it by testing the players contesting a series and forcing them to meet unexpected moments and challenges.

Chaos creates vividity, and that's how you should truly judge a World Series: by its vividity, piquancy, and historical redolence. Those are the aspects of great baseball drama, and they were all present in the 2024 postseason, including the Series between the Dodgers and Yankees. There has to be rising action, and good rising action includes foreshadowing. We had that. There have to be visible, understandable protagonists, but there also have to be surprise heroes and goats. We had that. Finally, there have to be twists, but not twists so violent that the final outcome feels unearned. We got that, too.

The Dodgers were the better baseball team, and they won this Series without even having to go back to Los Angeles for a second miniature set at home. It didn't have to be that way, though, and the path the team carved to their ultimate victory was as messy, as dramatic, and as fragile as good baseball always ought to be, even as they earned every drop of it.