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The thing about history is that every team has it. And when you think you might be channeling something from the past, the parallels might actually be unfolding in the opposite dugout.
Take Game 2 of the 2025 World Series as an example of that.
Ahead of the context, Joe Carter, the hero of the Toronto Blue Jays’ last Fall Classic appearance, met with the media before he threw out the ceremonial first pitch. He drew plenty of parallels between the 2025 team and the squads that captured back-to-back titles in the early 1990s.
“Very much. A lot of similarities,” he explained when asked to about the current Blue Jays and those of his era. “One thing that we had in ’92 and ’93 it was the cohesiveness of the team playing together. And even though we had great players, everybody pulled for one another. So we had the great chemistry in the clubhouse, on the field, and every day it was somebody different. It wasn’t just one guy you could focus on.”
And what this 2025 Blue Jays team has — I mean, you got from 1 through 9 everybody coming through. When you have nine guys — and not just nine guys, but you got the bench players too, for them it’s a lot of fun to come to the ballpark, it’s a lot of fun for them to cheer for one another, and those are things that’s going to propel you to a championship.”
Those good vibes didn’t last for very long, though. Toronto didn’t play poorly, but they did run into a buzz saw in the form of Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who threw a dominant complete game capped off by retiring the final 20 batters he faced.
“He was that good. It kind of started that way. Got his 23, 24 pitches in the first, I think. That was probably our best chance. First and third and nobody out. After that, it was kind of few and far between,” Toronto manager John Schneider explained.
“Second complete game in a row in the postseason, that’s pretty impressive, with a layoff in between. I think he made it hard for us to make him work. He was in the zone, split was in and out of the zone. It was a really good performance by him.”
Dodgers manager Dave Roberts kept things even simpler. “Outstanding, uber competitive, special,” he said. “He was just locked in tonight.”
And in a parallel to Carter’s historic comparisons, Yamamoto’s second-straight postseason complete game raised comparisons to legendary LA pitchers like Sandy Kofax and Orel Herschiser.
“I think that you look at Yamamoto, it’s kind of the throw back in the sense of, when he starts a game, he expects to finish it. And he’ll go as long as I let him. But that’s his intent,” Roberts said.
The pitcher, however, had a slightly different view.
“To be honest, I’m not sure about the history, but I’m very happy about what I did today,” he admitted.
So, where does that leave us?
The dueling histories and differing vibes are a good reminder that, at this point of the season, both teams are stacked with talent. Both teams have players with interesting stories and unique journeys to the Fall Classic. There are emotional and narrative reasons to support any possible outcome; historical trends and footnotes everwhere you look. Everyone is worth paying attention to in their own way.
But, at the same time, sports are based on winning. And those stories get pushed into the background when you lose. After Game 2, for example, no one cares about Addison Barger sleeping on a pullout couch or how the Blue Jays trust each other to come through in the big moments. And we can’t put too much stock in those good vibes carrying one team to victory over the other.
Is that exactly fair? Probably not, since every team bar one is going to end the season by coming up short of the ultimate prize. (And I do think we can have a bit more nuance about judging those non-championship seasons. An ALCS-winning team, for example, can still be successful, if you ask me.)
Right now, though, we’re in the thick of a World Series. And it will be decided by the incredible talent on the field, not based on vibes, historical parallels, or anything else.
Ultimately, that’s how it should be.
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