Follow the second game of the World Series between the Yankees and the Dodgers on RDS and on RDS.ca.
Dave Roberts made a bold prediction.
“This World Series will be the most listened to in history,” said the manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Major baseball could not hope for better than the Dodgers against the New York Yankees. Two huge markets, huge pools of fans and rosters full of star players, led by Shohei Ohtani.
“It’s like Ali-Frazier, or Magic and Bird, or Jordan and Isaiah Thomas, or Ohio State versus Michigan in football,” Bill Wanger, executive vice president in charge of programming, told Fox Sports.
For the first time, a World Series features five athletes who have been MVPs in a season: Ohtani, Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton.
Given the presence of Judge and Ohtani, this is only the fourth final round where the home run leader of each league appears.
It also happened in 1936 (Lou Gehrig and Mel Ott), 1937 (Joe DiMaggio and Ott), and 1956 (Mickey Mantle and Duke Snider).
Game 1 lived up to expectations, ending with Freeman’s game-winning grand slam in the 10th for a 6-3 Dodgers victory.
Ohtani’s jersey is the best-selling in major league baseball. Judge is third, Betts fourth and Juan Soto seventh.
The presence of Ohtani and Yoshinobu Yamamoto led to record television audiences in Japan.
On October 11, with Yamamoto as the Dodgers’ starting pitcher, there were 12.9 million people tuning in in the Land of the Rising Sun – more than the Texas World Series average of 9.11 million – Arizona last year.
