NEW YORK – Never before has a World Series been so important to so many people.

As gold ribbons glittered on the champion Los Angeles Dodgers, the joy of it reverberated far, far beyond the makeshift stage hastily assembled in the outfield of Yankee Stadium.

In the audience below the party stage, tears flowed freely and easily over the proud faces of loved ones, decked out in blue. In the stands behind the visiting dugout, dozens of traveling fans, like those who followed this team on the road all season, serenaded the strangers they don’t know still care so much.

Back in Los Angeles: fireworks in the streets, an illuminated blue D in the Hollywood sign, a symphony of car horns and more flowers laid outside Chavez Ravine in honor of Fernando Valenzuela. The long-dreamed-of parade will take place on Friday, which would have been Valenzuela’s 64th birthday. And across the Pacific, during a lunch break at Shohei Ohtani’s high school, students cheered, banging thunder sticks together in honor of their most famous alumni.

The size and scope of this title, which the Dodgers secured on Wednesday with a ridiculous 7-6 comeback victory in Game 5, cannot be overstated. This organization is a colossus, a monstrosity, impressive in both size and strength. The Dodgers have resources that few other teams can match, as evidenced by their outrageous spending last winter, when they committed more than $1.15 billion to Ohtani plus a pair of right-handed pitchers, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Tyler Glasnow.

Yet for most of the past decade, the Dodgers have dominated during the summers and disappointed during the fall. It wasn’t until 2020, during the bizarre COVID-shortened season, that this organization ended the year with a trophy. Despite that title, their financial might, their development acumen, their endless horizons of talent and their twelve consecutive trips to the playoffs, the Dodgers still felt like a club operating below their ceiling. Always tantalizingly close, always the victim of October’s roulette wheel.

That’s why this title meant so much to a team that spent so much, worked so much, planned so much and dreamed so much about this exact moment.

“We understand this is very difficult,” pitcher Evan Phillips told Yahoo Sports. “I think that’s why you see us really cherishing the moment tonight and seeing how deep the celebration can go – because we know how special it is.

“And there is so much involved. There are people here tonight I’ve never met before.’

Phillips, a key member of the Dodgers’ bullpen the past three seasons, did not pitch in this Fall Classic. An arm injury suffered during the NLCS forced him into the position of knowledgeable fan, one who lived vicariously through the men he spent the past eight months with. But being a spectator hasn’t dampened the experience; Phillips’ journey from twice-out, also-run to shutdown reliever is a perfect encapsulation of how the Dodgers identify, develop and enable players to be their best selves. Phillips couldn’t even name all the people within the organization he wanted to thank.

One of the people he remembered mentioning, Walker Buehler, soon emerged from the clubhouse shirtless and shoeless, his pants soaked in champagne. The World Series hero shivered in the evening air as his wife, McKenzie, shielded him under her leather jacket. In his right hand, touched by God, three large cups of beer, stacked on top of each other. Another can of soapy water, unopened, was sticking out of his right back pocket. Buehler, the Game 3 starting pitcher who scored the finale of Game 5 in a surprising relief for the ages, thoroughly enjoyed the good times. Understandable, given the difficult road he has taken to reach this point.

Elsewhere on the field, right through the madness was Shohei Ohtani, the most talented baseball player the world has ever known. On either side of his comically broad body, a guard followed in perfect stride. Behind Ohtani followed his ubiquitous shadow, an army of cameras and flashbulbs documenting his every move for millions of adoring fans in the US and across the Pacific. Japan’s Taylor Swift soared above, moving past the crowd of spectators before ducking into the clubhouse to raise that gold trophy for the first time.

As the Dodgers’ leading man disappeared from view, the least heralded player on the active roster strolled solo across the stage, scanning the crowd for his wheelchair-bound father. Brent Honeywell Jr., whose once-promising starting pitching career was derailed by an avalanche of arm injuries, joined the Dodgers as a reliever on a flyer in July. He brought with him a screwball, enough fuck yous to fill Yankee Stadium, and the experiences of a man who had seen the bottom and crawled out.

His role in these playoffs was ugly, but undeniably important: throw the garbage innings so the high-leverage relievers didn’t need to. That meant that in Game 4, the only game of this fall classic that the Dodgers dropped, Honeywell set a record for most pitches ever thrown in a single postseason inning (50), while the Yankees put him down by five runs.

But none of that failure, recent or historical, hovered over the perennial pitcher as he kept an eye on his father. There, on the grounds of Yankee Stadium, Brent Sr., himself a former minor league pitcher, stood tall—supported on one side by his wife and on the other by his best friend—giving the two Honeywells the opportunity for a long hug. The two men cried in each other’s arms as the wheelchair was temporarily empty, both deeply understanding the pain and patience behind that beautiful moment of total satisfaction.

It was a moment that belonged to every Dodger in the building, from those whose contributions were clearly visible, like World Series MVP Freddie Freeman and now three-time champion Mookie Betts; to the unsung heroes, like Honeywell; for those who haven’t been able to play at all, like Phillips; for those who stood up big when it mattered, like Buehler; to those who helped build the behemoth that is these Dodgers, like veteran starter Clayton Kershaw, manager Dave Roberts and president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.

At one point in the postgame frenzy, outfielder Teoscar Hernández, whose crucial two-strike double in the fifth tied the game, navigated through the crowd with his two-year-old son in his arms. The wide-eyed boy, only partially understanding the moment, looked at his father and asked a very simple question.

“No more baseball?”

For this year, yes, no more baseball. But for the first time for Hernández, Honeywell, Phillips, Ohtani and a host of other Dodgers, that sobering reality of the end of a season is a good and glorious thing.

It’s something they will celebrate forever, with the hundreds, thousands and millions of Dodgers around the world.