NEW YORK – The 2024 Los Angeles Dodgers were full of stars but plagued by injuries. They had spent an entire season overcoming adversity.

And finally, when it came time to become champions, they did it again, erasing a five-run deficit and using seven relievers — including starting pitcher Walker Buehler — to cover 23 outs in a 7-6. -come-from-behind victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series on Wednesday night.

In doing so, the Dodgers clinched their eighth title in franchise history, their first since the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season and their first in a full season since 1988. The Dodgers became the first team to use more than seven pitchers to win a championship. achieve. .

“We’re obviously resilient, but there’s so much love in the clubhouse that won this game today,” Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts said. “It was. It was love, it was guts. I mean, it was just a beautiful thing. I’m just proud of us and I’m happy for us.”

Their comeback was a product of the multitude of opportunities presented to them in the fifth inning. Aaron Judge got a flash of light that bounced right at him and off his glove. Anthony Volpe threw wide of third base on a force out attempt. Anthony Rizzo fielded a slow roller, but had no one to go to at first base. With two outs and the bases loaded, Freddie Freeman followed with a two-run single and Teoscar Hernandez added a two-run double to tie the score at 5-5.

Yankees ace Gerrit Cole had powered through the first four innings, leaving the Dodgers hitless while throwing just 49 pitches. He then threw 38 pitches in a fifth inning, requiring six outs.

The five-run comeback tied for the fourth-largest in World Series history, surpassed only by the 1929 Athletics’ eight-run comeback against the Cubs in Game 4, the 1996 Yankees’ six-run comeback against the Braves in Game 4 and the Dodgers’ 1956 six-run comeback against the Yankees in Game 2, according to ESPN Research.

“We just took advantage of every mistake they made in that inning,” Teoscar Hernandez said. “We put together some good at-bats. We put the ball in play.”

The Yankees retook the lead on Giancarlo Stanton’s sacrifice fly in the bottom of the sixth and kept it when Clay Holmes came in to relieve Cole and struck out Max Muncy with two on and two outs in the top of the seventh. But the Dodgers broke through again in the eighth.

Enrique Hernandez and Tommy Edman led off with back-to-back singles and Will Smith hit four straight free throws, prompting Yankees manager Aaron Boone to replace Tommy Kahnle with Luke Weaver, who recorded four outs in Game 4. Gavin Lux and Betts followed with sacrifice. flies, giving the Dodgers their first lead – a lead they were not willing to relinquish.

The Yankees threatened in the bottom half, going two up and out against a tiring Blake Treinen. Daniel Hudson and Buehler, the Game 3 starter who has had to come out of the bullpen his entire career, were warming up. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts came out for a quick chat with Treinen, who then got Stanton to fly out and strike out Rizzo, ending the threat.

Buehler checked in for the ninth and retired the bottom of the Yankees’ lineup. He spread his arms wide and looked toward his dugout, only to be promptly mobbed.

“There’s just a lot of ways we can win baseball games,” Buehler said. “Obviously the superstars we have on our team and the discipline, it all adds up.”

It was a fitting capstone to a dominant run. According to ESPN Research, from 2020 to ’24 the Dodgers became the first team since the Yankees from 1953 to ’57 with multiple World Series titles and a winning percentage of .640 or better over a five-season span.

The Dodgers of this era advanced to the World Series in 2017, suffering a disheartening seven-game loss to the Houston Astros, a team that was later revealed to have illegally stolen signs. The Dodgers returned to the World Series in 2018 but were overwhelmed by the Boston Red Sox, suffering a heartbreaking late loss in the deciding game of the 2019 National League Division Series against the underdog Washington Nationals.

In the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season, the Dodgers finally broke through, coming back from a 3-1 series deficit against the Atlanta Braves in the NL Championship Series and then beating the Tampa Bay Rays in six games in the World Series, continuing their title claimed first title in 32 years. The next three years saw even more heartbreak: outlasted by the Braves in the 2021 NLCS, then demoralized by the San Diego Padres and Arizona Diamondbacks in the 2022 and 2023 NLDS, respectively.

The following offseason, the Dodgers spent more than $1 billion on two-generation players, two-way player Shohei Ohtani and young starter Yoshinobu Yamamoto. Tyler Glasnow was acquired via trade and signed to a lucrative extension. Teoscar Hernandez came over on a big one-year contract.

But injuries ruined the ensuing regular season. Yamamoto, Betts, Muncy, Treinen and Brusdar Graterol all missed extended periods; several key members of their rotation – Glasnow, Clayton Kershaw, Gavin Stone and Emmet Sheehan – were lost to season-ending injuries. On the night they won their 11th NL West title in 12 years, Freeman sprained his right ankle. On the night they took a 2-1 lead in this World Series, Ohtani suffered a subluxation of his left shoulder.

But the Dodgers kept going. They used a bullpen game to eliminate the Padres with their season on the line on the road in Game 4 of the NLDS, then came back to Dodger Stadium and eliminated them from advancing to the next round. They then used an overwhelming offensive attack to defeat the surging New York Mets, racking up an NLCS-record 46 runs. The first three games of the World Series showed their end-to-end dominance.

Trailing by one with two outs and the bases loaded in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 1, Freeman delivered a Kirk Gibson-style walk-off grand slam for a thrilling victory. But it was the starting pitching that carried the Dodgers through the first three games, with Jack Flaherty, Buehler and Yamamoto, the only three members of a maligned rotation, allowing just three runs in 16 2/3 innings.

The Dodgers absorbed an eventual loss while using mostly low-leverage relievers in Game 4. The idea, despite trailing by just one run after five innings and two runs heading into the eighth, was to save their best relievers for Game 5. Those relievers started to be taken into account as early as the second inning, at that point Flaherty had allowed four runs on back-to-back home runs by Judge and Jazz Chisholm Jr. and an RBI single by Alex Verdugo.

Anthony Banda, Ryan Brasier, Michael Kopech, Alex Vesia, Graterol and Treinen – representing the group of weapons that has stepped up so often this postseason – combined to hold the Yankees to just two runs on four hits in 6 2/3 innings, creating a title was strengthened.