Miguel Bracamontes

The one that just ended was my first baseball postseason watched as an informed fan. I saw the Dodgers take on the Yankees to win the series 4-1 past Wednesday. All the previous baseball watching in my life was unfocused and with little to no interest in the game; but even then, I managed to hold some cool and pleasant memories about baseball, like my local tv commentator' voices and some key players from my country that were really loved by the media. So when the time came and baseball was knocking on my door for some of my attention recently, I immediately knew that this “new” hobby will be sticking with me for a while. It was something really close to a nature call, so it was easy for me to invest myself in learning the game and everything related.

I am a self-taught person in almost every aspect of my life. However, learning baseball was not something that I'd successfully learn all by myself. It turns out that I barely understood baseball by only looking at it, and it wasn't until I was able to read the rules and some baseball literature that I cemented my understanding of the game and its strategies. Some plays were straight up not making sense for me, but my mistake was to never pay attention to it so I never learned, and now watching baseball is a whole new experience. A fun and entertaining one. I am increasingly confident in knowing what is going on, who's at bat, what's the order, what are some of the statistics being shown on TV, and so on. Obviously, I am not able to call myself an expert yet, because I am a newbie to knowing baseball stuff, but the road is pretty clear and is full of interesting stuff all along.

So the Dodgers took the 2024 WS, and when facing the Yankees for the same title, they have won the last two in a row (1981 and 2024). The Yankees retained their title of the baseball franchise with the most WS wins, and that is really far from being contested, but we cannot stop talking about the obvious and clear plan from the Dodgers to grow the team to epic proportions and to take over baseball in the coming years. Starting from the “Japan Takeover”, meaning the move from LAD to take two of the best former players from the Japanese league, Ohtani and Yamamoto, and with that, turning the japanese baseball fans into Dodgers fans, which is no small thing. Investing so much money in those contracts that the Dodgers organization is even factoring in the amount to be payed in MLB taxes and penalizations for surpassing the economic cap of the league, and that fact not being a problem for them, speaks volumes about how solid and tits-deep their plan looks.

Speaking a little about why I am saying turning Japanese fans is not a small thing: there's a fun fact going around saying that more people in Japan watched the world series than people in America. And a game where three japanese stars collided, broke all kinds of rating records for a baseball game. It is perfectly clear that Japan loves their baseball and their players, so not only merch is being sold, but also a lot of brand and sponsorship participation coming the teams way and a lot more money to buy the services of the best players abroad and to call the attention of the best young prospects. Is a huge deal overall.

We can only sit and see how far they get in their mission of growing and immortalization, and be beautifully entertained in the meantime.