Los Angeles defeats Toronto 5–4 in 11 innings to capture second straight title. When the final out of Game 7 of the 2025 World Series was recorded late Saturday night, Clayton Kershaw didn’t even realize his career had ended with another championship.
The 37-year-old Dodgers legend was loosening in the bullpen, preparing for an emergency appearance, when Alejandro Kirk rolled a broken-bat grounder that turned into a double play and clinched Los Angeles’ second straight World Series crown.
“Are you sure?” Kershaw asked when told it was over. Indeed, it was — the Los Angeles Dodgers had stolen Game 7 in extra innings, outlasting the Toronto Blue Jays 5–4 in 11 unforgettable frames at a roaring Rogers Centre to repeat as World Series champions.
Down a run with two outs left in their season, the Dodgers got a stunning game-tying home run from Miguel Rojas in the ninth inning and a go-ahead blast from Will Smith in the 11th to seal the series, 4–3. Between those moments came two of the most improbable defensive plays in recent postseason memory — one by Rojas himself, and another by rookie outfielder Andy Pages — that kept the Dodgers alive long enough to finish the job.
Game 7 was a showcase of grit, adaptation, and depth. Los Angeles used four starting pitchers in a single night — Shohei Ohtani, Tyler Glasnow, Blake Snell, and Yoshinobu Yamamoto — each contributing a piece to the puzzle.
Ohtani, pitching on just three days’ rest, started and battled into the third inning before surrendering a three-run homer to Bo Bichette that ignited the Toronto crowd. Glasnow followed just one day after closing out Game 6, tossing 2⅓ gutsy innings. Snell, working on two days’ rest, retired four more batters.
Then came Yamamoto. The 26-year-old Japanese star, running on zero days’ rest after six dominant innings in Game 6, told team staff he was “ready to finish this.” He entered in the ninth, blew away the Blue Jays in the 10th, and wriggled out of danger in the 11th to preserve the championship.
Yamamoto’s heroic outing — on the heels of a complete game in Game 2 and another gem in Game 6 — earned him World Series MVP honors.
The Dodgers’ offense was uncharacteristically quiet all night, going 1-for-11 with runners in scoring position. But with one out in the ninth, Rojas turned on a Jeff Hoffman slider and lofted it into the Blue Jays’ bullpen to tie the score 4–4. It was his first extra-base hit of the postseason.
Toronto nearly walked it off in the bottom of the inning. The Jays loaded the bases with one out, but when Daulton Varsho ripped a grounder toward the right side, Rojas made a full-extension stop and fired an off-balance throw home to nail Isiah Kiner-Falefa. Then, Ernie Clement drove a 366-foot shot to the left-center gap.
Pages — inserted just moments earlier for his arm strength — sprinted, leapt, and snagged the ball on the warning track, colliding with Enrique Hernández as the crowd collectively gasped. Hernández, thinking the ball had fallen, stayed face-down in the dirt. But Pages had it. The game went to extra innings, tied at four.
Two innings later, Smith completed his redemption story. After a quiet series, the Dodgers catcher turned on a hanging Shane Bieber slider and launched it into the second deck for a 5–4 lead — the first of the night for Los Angeles.
Moments later, with runners on the corners and one out in the bottom of the 11th, Mookie Betts fielded Kirk’s sharp grounder, stepped on second, and threw to Freddie Freeman for a double play that sealed it. As the ball hit Freeman’s glove, Betts jumped into the air, and Kershaw sprinted from the bullpen screaming in celebration.
The victory solidified the Dodgers as baseball’s modern dynasty. Once labeled a team that couldn’t finish in October, Los Angeles has now won three titles in six years, and became the first club since the 2000 New York Yankees to repeat as World Series champions.
With the win, the Dodgers tied the Boston Red Sox and Oakland Athletics for the third-most World Series titles in history.
The road back was anything but easy. Injuries decimated their rotation midseason, the bullpen faltered at times, and a 93-win regular season felt underwhelming for a team built to chase records. But their pitchers rediscovered dominance down the stretch, posting a 2.07 ERA in September and carrying that form into October.
After dispatching the Reds, Phillies, and Brewers, the Dodgers met their match in Toronto — a Blue Jays team that refused to yield. They traded blows across seven tense games: a Game 1 blowout, Yamamoto’s masterpiece in Game 2, Freeman’s 18th-inning walk-off in Game 3, and a late-series surge by Toronto that forced the decisive Game 7.
In the end, though, it was the Dodgers’ resilience — embodied by Rojas’ swing, Pages’ leap, and Smith’s blast — that delivered another championship.
As champagne sprayed and the clubhouse filled with laughter and tears, Kershaw finally let it sink in. “To go out like this,” he said, his voice cracking, “there’s nothing better.”
The Los Angeles Dodgers are, once again, World Series champions.
