It's Dodgers vs. Cardinals on MLB Opening Day. LA is 'obsessed' with winning World Series.
LOS ANGELES — It is the most anticipated Opening Day in the glorious history of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
There will be celebrities sitting in the front row seats.
There will be Hollywood stars lowering their sunglasses to take peeks.
There will be billionaires clamoring for an up-close and personal look.
The Dodgers, after spending a record $1.2 billion this winter, and securing the two biggest international stars in baseball history, will continue their worldwide tour when they step onto the field at 4:10 p.m. ET to play the St. Louis Cardinals in front of a sellout crowd at Dodger Stadium.
“It’s going to be pretty electric," Cardinals veteran Matt Carpenter tells USA TODAY Sports. “We all heard the stories about the crowds following [Shohei] Ohtani around at Dodger camp. You’ve got a Dodger team that’s stacked. You’ve got two Japanese superstars. You’ve got a fanbase is fired up to see them play.
“I imagine it’s going to be pretty wild. We’re excited to be on that field to see it."
The Dodgers will open the season as perhaps the most hyped team the game has seen. There will be sellout crowds at visiting stadiums. There will be autograph seekers camped out in front of their hotels. And there will be a massive throng of reporters in every clubhouse they visit.
“It’s going to be a show all year," says Chicago Cubs pitcher Kyle Hendricks, well-aware the Dodgers are coming to Wrigley Field on the Cubs’ first homestand. “It’s just a super-exciting team, man, seeing all of those players over there.
“Just as a baseball fan, it’s super-cool to see how good they are. It’s going to be interesting to see how they go about their business, to see how they perform for a full 162-game season. It’s something we all love to see.
“It’s great for the game."
Where else can you see four MVPs on one team and perhaps the greatest player to step onto the field since Babe Ruth?
“The star power over there is crazy," says Cubs outfielder David Peralta, who played for the Dodgers last season. “They’re like an All-Star Game. Everyone is going to want to see all of those superstars on one field.
“It’s going to be wild watching them."
Says Cardinals shortstop Brandon Crawford, who spent the last 13 years playing for the Dodgers’ bitter rival, the San Francisco Giants: “When you get arguably one of the best players to ever play the game, there’s going to be more than the usual hype. I mean, the combination of stars that they have on their team, expectations are as high as ever."
While all of the hysteria and attention surrounding the Dodgers is spectacular, this Dodgers team will ultimately be judged how they perform in the postseason.
The Dodgers didn’t build this goliath to make it to October.
They’ve been there, done that, with 11 consecutive postseason berths and 10 division titles.
This is a team built for a World Series parade.
Anything else, the Dodgers will tell you, will be considered an ultimate failure.
“We wouldn’t want to be anything else," three-time Cy Young winner Clayton Kershaw says. “It’s awesome to have those expectations. We don’t hide from it. We embrace it."
The Dodgers, of course, have been a juggernaut long before this season. They’ve won 100 or more games in each of the past four full seasons, and in five of the last six years. They’ve been the NL West Division champions 10 of the last 11 years, and the lone season they didn’t win it, they won 106 games.
“It’s not like they’ve been a bad team before this," Cubs manager Craig Counsell says. “They’ve been the class of the National League."
It’s just that with the exception of the 60-game COVID season in 2020, the Dodgers haven’t won a World Series since 1988.
They have won just one postseason game the last two years, just one postseason series in three years, and haven't had that parade in 36 years.
The Dodgers hope to rip up that narrative, and dominate the landscape like no National League team has done since the Cincinnati Reds Big Red Machine in the 1970s.
“Guys are obsessed with winning a championship this year," Dodgers manager Dave Roberts says. "If we don’t win the World Series, I think we’ll all feel that we’ve failed."
Certainly, there’ll be plenty of potholes to navigate along the I-5 to the postseason.
Ohtani has been ensnared in the first scandal of his life after accusing his interpreter Ippei Mizuhara of stealing money from him to pay off gambling debts. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, who’s trying to make the adjustment from Japan after signing the richest pitcher’s contract (12 years, $325 million) in history, lasted just one inning after surrendering five runs in his major-league debut in South Korea.
Mookie Betts, who hasn’t played shortstop regularly since high school, is being asked to learn the position on a World Series contender.
No team in baseball will be scrutinized, dissected, probed or face more pressure than the Dodgers.
Every single day of the season.
“When you put on this uniform," Roberts says, “that’s what you sign up for. Really, it’s always like this. But this year, it’s a little bit more extreme knowing we’ve got a real chance to do something pretty special."
Lights. Camera. Action.
Showtime at Chavez Ravine.
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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Dodgers vs. Cardinals: MLB Opening Day starts LA's 'wild' 2024
