TORONTO — The plot to ruin baseball hit a snag on Friday night. For the past seven months, the story of the 2025 Major League Baseball season has been the exploits and excesses of the defending world champion Los Angeles Dodgers, a budding dynasty to their fans and world-bestriding menace to the rest of the industry, a paragon of spending and winning and demoralizing their foes.
But the game has a way of sneering at coronations. If baseball was searching for a savior, if you believe the narratives about a game overflowing with talent yet overshadowed by the specter of labor strife, one emerged in Game 1 of the World Series, an 11-4 romp by the Toronto Blue Jays, a group enlivened by a raucous crowd at Rogers Centre and buoyed by a relentless offense that exposed the one major flaw within the Dodgers’ roster.
A nine-run sixth inning demonstrated the vulnerability of the Dodgers’ bullpen and the capacity of the Blue Jays to exploit it. Toronto taxed Dodgers ace Blake Snell and pilloried his replacements. Outfielder Daulton Varsho bloodied Snell with a game-tying two-run homer in the fourth inning. His teammates swarmed Snell in the sixth and forced him from the contest. A grand slam by Addison Barger sent the crowd into hysterics. A subsequent two-run blast by catcher Alejandro Kirk only heightened the mood underneath the dome.
“Just madness,” said Barger, who delivered the first pinch-hit grand slam in World Series history. “The fans are so energetic. We really feel it.”
THE FIRST PINCH-HIT GRAND SLAM IN WORLD SERIES HISTORY! pic.twitter.com/eQHuu1t4S8
— Toronto Blue Jays (@BlueJays) October 25, 2025
For the first time since a baseball cleared the left-field fence on Oct. 23, 1993, and Joe Carter touched ’em all, the World Series returned to Canadian soil. The Toronto Maple Leafs and the Toronto Raptors moved up their start times to train more eyeballs on the Fall Classic. Fans began to queue outside the ballpark more than six hours before the first pitch.
The country hosted a visiting franchise that has been painted this season as a swaggering colossus and a deep-pocketed bully capitalizing on a rigged system. At a time when small-market owners often sit out the free-agent market, the Dodgers have leaned into the financial bonanza accrued after signing Shohei Ohtani to a heavily deferred $700 million contract after the 2023 season. After winning last year’s World Series, the Dodgers financed a roster that cost about $500 million when including the luxury tax bill.
With the owners expected to lock out the players and pursue a salary cap after the collective bargaining agreement expires after next season, the Dodgers serve as an easy foil. Against any opponent, they profile as Goliath. Dodgers manager Dave Roberts got in on the joke after his team captured the National League pennant for the fifth time in the past nine years. “Before this season started, they said, ‘The Dodgers are ruining baseball,’” Roberts crowed from the stage at midfield at Dodger Stadium last week. “Let’s get four more wins, and really ruin baseball.”
Yet if the Dodgers are to be cast as villains from the Book of Samuel, Toronto brought to the fight far more than pebbles. The Blue Jays carried a franchise-record $254 million payroll in 2025. The club stabilized its future in April by signing five-time All-Star first baseman Vladimir Guerrero Jr. to a 14-year, $500 million extension. The team stocked its starting rotation with veterans earning eight-figure paydays.
Those vets ceded the stage in Game 1 to Trey Yesavage, a 22-year-old who grew up about 45 miles north of Philadelphia. His resume offered a sharp contrast with the Dodgers starter. Snell is a two-time Cy Young award winner who signed a five-year contract worth about $137 million because he sought a championship. Snell was facing a rookie making his seventh big-league start. Yesavage is so green that his Baseball-Reference page still does not include his picture.
Ability is the ultimate equalizer. The Blue Jays chose Yesavage in the first round of last year’s draft out of East Carolina University. He rocketed through the minor leagues this summer. By the time he joined the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats in June, Toronto officials were pondering how he might help in October. The wingspan on Yesavage’s 6-foot-4 frame creates an optical illusion for hitters. When he throws his split-fingered fastball, his release point is so elevated, the ball appears to descend from somewhere north of Newfoundland. He rode the pitch to an 11-strikeout performance against the New York Yankees earlier this postseason.
The Dodgers were unfazed, and Yesavage appeared unable to command his primary weapon. The Dodgers lineup stitched together a lead in the second inning after an RBI single by playoff maven Kiké Hernández. Yesavage avoided full collapse when he induced an inning-ending groundout from Ohtani to leave the bases loaded. An RBI single by Dodgers catcher Will Smith plated a second run in the third. Yesavage completed only four innings.
Toronto had stressed Snell in the first inning. The group exhausts and irritates opposing pitchers. No team struck out less often during the regular season than the Blue Jays. The hitters can extend at-bats or, in the case of Guerrero and veteran George Springer, detonate mistakes. Snell defused a first-inning, bases-loaded explosive when Varsho flied out. The inning required 29 pitches.
To tax Snell felt like a victory for the Blue Jays. In the National League Championship Series, the Dodgers blitzed the Milwaukee Brewers on the strength of starting pitching. For Toronto, the path to a championship will likely require feasting on the soft underbelly of the Los Angeles bullpen, the thermal exhaust port of the Dodger Death Star.
“Overall, we had a good approach against [Snell],” Varsho said. “Made him work.”
Varsho redeemed himself in the fourth. After a leadoff single by Kirk, Snell pumped a first-pitch fastball. Rarely does Snell serve up something so tantalizing. Varsho volleyed a two-run, game-tying blast over the center-field fence. It was the first home run permitted by Snell since Aug. 29.
Snell lost the plot in the sixth. He loaded the bases with a walk, a single by Kirk and an unintentional plunking of Varsho. Roberts did what he needed to do so rarely against Milwaukee and opened his bullpen. Disaster awaited 25-year-old right-hander Emmet Sheehan. Blue Jays third baseman Ernie Clement ripped an RBI single. Outfielder Nathan Lukes drove in a run with a walk. Shortstop Andres Gimenez did the same with a single.
The game was spiraling but Roberts pressed another button. Into the game was lefty reliever Anthony Banda, to counteract Barger, a pinch hitter. Banda hung a slider. Barger clobbered it.
“We just didn’t make pitches when we needed to, to keep that game close,” Roberts said.
The noise inside the ballpark felt volcanic. On the television broadcast, the camera shook. The fans reveled in the rally, the thrashing of Goliath, the awareness that this World Series pitted two foes who belonged on the same field.
No, baseball was not yet ruined. Even better: there will be another game Saturday.
