LOS ANGELES (AFP) — The two biggest teams from America’s two biggest cities, led by baseball’s two biggest superstars. East Coast versus West Coast. Broadway versus Hollywood. Goliath versus Goliath.
The most eagerly anticipated World Series showdown in decades gets under way on Friday when the Los Angeles Dodgers take on the New York Yankees in what promises to be a baseball blockbuster for the ages.
Forty-three years after their 11th and most recent meeting in a World Series, the historic rivals will face off once more at Dodger Stadium for Game 1 of the best-of-seven championship series.
“This is what the baseball world wanted,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
“It’s going to be a great World Series.”
Any World Series meeting between the two teams who were New York City rivals before the Dodgers left Brooklyn for California in 1957 would be a must-see event in its own right.
But hype surrounding this year’s collision between the two baseball juggernauts — the first time they have met in a World Series since 1981 — has soared into a different stratosphere, thanks largely to the star-studded nature of the two teams’ rosters.
The Dodgers boast the talismanic Japanese superstar Shohei Ohtani, the record-breaking generational talent widely seen as the greatest all-round player since Babe Ruth.
The Yankees are led by the big-hitting Aaron Judge, the former American League Most Valuable Player who blasted an astonishing 62 home runs in the 2022 season.
Yet while Ohtani and Judge are the headline acts, the supporting cast is equally gaudy.
The Dodgers have former Most Valuable Players (MVPs) in Mookie Betts and Freddie Freeman; the Yankees have Giancarlo Stanton, the 2017 National League MVP and five-time All-Star, along with the likes of the gifted outfielder Juan Soto and Cy Young award-winning pitcher Gerrit Cole.
“As a fan of baseball, how can you not be excited about this?” Dodgers infielder Max Muncy asked this week. “You’re talking about two of the biggest franchises. The biggest stars in the sport. We got Shohei, Freddie and Mookie. On the other side, they’ve got Aaron Judge, Giancarlo, Juan Soto, Gerrit Cole.”
It’s the kind of dazzling star power capable of eclipsing the bright lights of Broadway or Hollywood Boulevard.
And it’s the kind of box-office appeal that has Major League Baseball’s (MLB’s) bean-counters rubbing their hands in delight after years of steadily declining audience numbers.
So far this postseason, average television viewing figures have leapt 18 percent from last year’s average of 2.82 million per game to 3.33 million.
While this year’s World Series is unlikely to match the record average of viewers for a Fall Classic — 44.3 million tuned in for each game of the 1978 series — it is likely to obliterate the record-low 9.08 million who watched last year’s series between the Texas Rangers and Arizona Diamondbacks.
The presence of Dodgers ace Ohtani has also opened up a new international frontier, with Major League Baseball revealing that record 12.9 million Japanese viewers tuned in for the Dodgers’ recent National League Division Series decider against the San Diego Padres — roughly 10 percent of Japan’s entire population.
“That’s an unbelievable number, a huge audience,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred said. “Ohtani has really, really driven interest in the game internationally.”
Manfred believes this year’s World Series evokes baseball’s golden age, when the sport was truly America’s pastime and had yet to be usurped by the National Football League and National Basketball Association.