On Saturday evening, the Los Angeles Dodgers won their second straight World Series championship with a thrilling Game 7 victory over the Toronto Blue Jays in extra innings. The Dodgers' league-leading payroll showed up huge in this one, with the team rotating through a slew of multi hundred million dollar pitchers to get them through the game's 11 innings, including Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who did some impressive work in closing out the game despite having pitched the day before.
One star Dodgers pitcher who did not take the field for this one was Clayton Kershaw, for whom Game 7 was the final game of his career.
After the game, Kershaw could be seen celebrating with his family on the field.
My god this is an incredible moment between Clayton Kershaw and his family after the following game of his career ♥️
Going out a champion pic.twitter.com/NETZipbcC9
— Baseball Quotes (@BaseballQuotes1) November 2, 2025
(Video via Baseball Quotes on X, formerly Twitter).
The heartwarming moment was a fitting end to a Hall of Fame career for Kershaw.
Kershaw was up and down throughout this postseason running, having an awful performance in Game 3 against the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS but rebounding after that. While he won't be able to fully divorce his image from the postseason meltdowns he has racked up throughout his career, ending his run with two straight World Series wins will certainly help out with the damage control.
A familiar result for the Dodgers
The Los Angeles Dodgers have now won two straight World Series championships and three of the last six, dating back to the COVID-shortened season in 2020.
Los Angeles' bats had a relatively quiet World Series overall, including in Game 7, when it was unsung hero Miguel Rojas who launched the game-tying home run in the top of the ninth inning to send the game to extras, where Los Angeles eventually won courtesy of a home run from Will Smith.
The Dodgers will now look forward to an offseason full of celebrating and possibly adding more talent to its already loaded roster. Meanwhile, the rest of the MLB world will look forward to what is almost guaranteed to be a 2027 lockout, at which point concerns about the lack of a salary cap in the league are sure to be addressed, which could spell bad news for Los Angeles.
