Box office baseball returns at crucial time for the MLB

Los Angeles Dodgers vs New York Yankees isn’t a romantic narrative but it’s the World Series the sport urgently needs

- LUKE BAKER

If you’re looking for a romantic sporting story, then this World Series isn’t for you. There will be no plucky underdog when the Los Angeles Dodgers and New York Yankees begin their seven-game series to decide the winner of baseball’s biggest prize on Friday evening.

The mythology of baseball as “America’s pastime” is rooted in feelgood stories played out amid hazy summer days, culminating in a shot at sporting immortality just as the air begins to take on an autumnal crispness. And the World Series has provided plenty of that romanticism over the past decade.

The Kansas City Royals’ “comeback kids” claimed the crown in 2015, sport’s most cursed team the Chicago Cubs ended their 108-year title drought a year later, the 2019 Washington Nationals delivered a first World Series to the nation’s capital 14 years after baseball returned to the city following 41 years away and 2023 saw the Texas Rangers triumph for the first time.

But 2024 will be different. Dodgers vs Yankees is juggernaut vs juggernaut, Hollywood vs Broadway and no matter who wins, it will be an unromantic victory for a financial and sporting behemoth. As a neutral, there is no little guy to root for this time round.

And it is exactly the World Series that baseball needs right now.

However you dress it up, the Dodgers and the Yankees are Major League Baseball’s two biggest teams. This year will be the 120th World Series and the two franchises now have an incredible 65 appearances between them. They are consistently the sport’s biggest spenders when it comes to player salaries, they have rosters full of superstars and, as brands, they have genuine cultural cut-through that extends well beyond baseball. Throw in the fact that Los Angeles and New York are North America’s two biggest media markets and we’re talking about a pair of sporting powerhouses.