‘The feeling never gets old’: Dodgers celebrate seventh straight division title
by Rowan Kavner
A subdued celebration ensued on the field Tuesday night at Camden Yards as Caleb Ferguson struck out the final batter of the evening. His Dodger teammates leisurely shuffled out of the dugout and onto the field, where a normal line of high fives replaced what might’ve been a dogpile on the mound or some other more animated form of triumphant gathering for another team in another season after a division clinch.
Wrapping up the National League West for the seventh straight year didn’t require the dramatics of last season’s Game 163 tiebreaker for the Dodgers, and they didn’t celebrate dramatically on the field after getting the job accomplished with 16 regular season games remaining. Had they not traded out uniforms for “October Reign” T-shirts, posing for a photo with seven digits in the air represent their National League West dominance, Tuesday night in Baltimore might’ve seemed like any other postgame victory.
At least, until the retreat to the clubhouse, where the champagne awaited.
While many of the 2019 Dodgers have experienced the euphoria of a Major League clinch — and some, like Clayton Kershaw and Kenley Jansen, had been there for each of the seventh straight clinches — for many others, this was a first.
After years spent hoping to arrive at this stage, it was a first for Will Smith, Matt Beaty, Gavin Lux, Edwin Ríos, Tony Gonsolin and Dustin May, who all debuted this year and helped propel the club to this stage. Lux recorded his first career home run in the 7–3 win, but he said the postgame celebration is what he’ll remember most.
“It’s awesome,” Lux said. “This is a really special group of guys. Just getting here right away, they took me in and made me feel extremely comfortable.”
After seven straight years watching the Dodgers win the NL West while in Arizona as a division rival, it was a first division clinch for A.J. Pollock.
“I’ve been on the other side of it and know how hard it is to win the West,” Pollock said. “We did it pretty easily, but you’ve got to celebrate because it’s hard to do.”
And for Russell Martin, in a return to the club he started with, it was a first in a Dodger uniform this decade. He’ll be heading to his 10th postseason, but it’s his first as a Dodger since 2009. He remains in search of a title like the rest of the veteran Dodgers, and he considers this a second chance in Los Angeles.
“The feeling never gets old,” Martin said. “We’ve had a good record for a while, so we kind of felt like this moment would happen at some point. But the thing is, the group that we have, that’s what you think about. You think about the people that we have here. Celebrating this moment with good people is what matters, for me at least.”
Those people included two players who weren’t physically in attendance, but took part nonetheless.
Injured Dodgers Max Muncy and Alex Verdugo remain on the rehab trail, so they weren’t in Baltimore as the team basked in another division clinch. Manager Dave Roberts held up the postgame champagne celebration to make sure they could FaceTime in.
All of the Dodgers, Roberts said, should get a taste of the feeling.
“To take it for granted for guys that have been a part of it and not appreciate the people that haven’t been able to celebrate, I think you’d be doing them a disservice,” Roberts said. “Whether it’s A.J. Pollock or Will Smith or Gavin Lux, they’re going to remember this night. That’s a big deal.”
So the Dodgers reveled on Sept. 10, even if it was a foregone conclusion after leading the division by double digits the entire second half. These moments, after all, are not guaranteed, even if the Dodgers have made them seem inevitable with their stretch of success.
Justin Turner looked around the clubhouse at the elation of many of his teammates experiencing a joyful clinch for the first time, and he said it was clear how much it meant. Every year is special, Kershaw said. It never gets old, added Jansen. Every year is different, said veteran Rich Hill.
This season stood out in how effortlessly the 94–52 Dodgers got to this point, clinching at a time no other Major League team’s magic number was below eight. And it stood out for the seemingly never-ending influx of clutch rookies who helped a nucleus of Dodger regulars get to this point.
“It’s such a good mix of veteran guys and younger guys,” said Hill, who looks forward to returning from injury this week to contribute to the stretch run. “You look around the team, there’s a lot of guys that have been here the last couple years. But really there’s a lot of guys that just came up, and it’s their first time celebrating and understanding what winning a division is and how much work goes into it. You don’t want to take that away. You want to enjoy it as much as you can.”
At least for the night.
With the division clinched and three weeks of regular season baseball left, Roberts knows the question the Dodgers will get asked now is if they’ll let their guard down.
“But that’s something I don’t expect from our team,” said Roberts, who became the first manager in MLB history to lead his team to division titles in each of his first four full seasons. “We won the division, but everything now going forward is to win 11 games in October.”
