Before tonight’s matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees was even set, Fox began airing World Series commercials featuring only two players: Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani.
The reasons are obvious to any baseball fan. This is a showdown between baseball’s two greatest players today — generational talents who achieve feats normally reserved for the dreams of little kids and video games.
Ohtani can do it all. He’s a five-tool talent and a top pitcher. Judge is built like a linebacker yet floats effortlessly through center field. Both players seem to be at stages in their careers where, if healthy, they can rack up consecutive near-60 home run seasons all while hitting above .300.
The 2024 World Series isn’t just a battle to decide baseball’s best team. It’s also a duel between the game’s two best active players in their prime.
A Historic Rivalry
But the Yankees and Dodgers aren’t secondary pieces of the storyline. They’re two of baseball’s most storied franchises.
Since 1941, the Dodgers and Yankees have played against one another in the World Series eleven times. That includes three World Series matchups in a five-year period from 1977-81.
Fox is banking on all those story arcs combining into a big audience this time around. And so too is Major League Baseball. Long eclipsed by football, baseball is no longer America’s pastime.
Ratings for the World Series have been in steep decline since 1978. That year marked the peak of World Series viewership, with 35 million watching. And guess who was playing? The Yankees and the Dodgers.
Fox and MLB are hoping that the game’s two biggest names, playing for the league’s two most storied teams in the two largest markets, will multiply into a ratings bonanza — not just in the U.S. but also abroad.
With Ohtani on the field, all of Japan will be watching. And media coverage could extend to countries that don’t traditionally view baseball but are enraptured by the spectacle of a matchup that echoes the NBA’s Magic vs. Bird.
Fox and MLB would relish a seven-game series. Even better? Judge and Ohtani leading their teams in consecutive World Series faceoffs, just like decades ago.
The Battle to Be the Next Mr. October
Now, past Yankees-Dodgers World Series battles have catapulted stars into legends.
In Game 7 of the 1952 World Series against the Dodgers, the 20-year-old Mickey Mantle hit the go-ahead home run in the 6th inning, to clinch the series for the Yankees.
But, of course, nothing compares to the performance of Reggie Jackson. The larger-than-life outfielder hit three home runs against the Dodgers in Game 6 of the 1977 World Series, driving the Yankees to win the game and the series, and forever crowning him “Mr. October.”
Jackson’s legacy adds to the weight of history on Aaron Judge’s shoulders. The world of baseball will be looking to see whether he can overcome his playoff underperformance — he’s got a lifetime .203 postseason batting average. The trouble, it seems, is all in Judge’s head.
But even if Judge falls short, like “Casey at Bat,” the Yankees still have Juan Soto, who continues his fearlessness in the playoffs that dates back to his first years in the majors.
So as much as Judge and Ohtani are the protagonists in this epic baseball story, don’t count out the other great players on the field: Soto, Mookie Betts, and others. Baseball is a team sport, after all.
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