Los Angeles Dodgers outfielder Mookie Betts will haunt Boston Red Sox forever

NEW YORK — Comparison is the thief of joy. Alas, in baseball, oftentimes the former is all we have. Choices made — be they calling on a reliever who hadn’t pitched since the leaves started to fall, or a decision to send a runner who appears to have a piano on his back — can haunt guys forever, as they stay up at night and wonder what could have been.

When placed against other strategic wagers — such as moving a right fielder to shortstop in spring training or bumping a player down in the order who is top of the franchise list for leadoff home runs — we’re forced to look at competitions often as binary and a choice between right and wrong.

After the 2024 world champion Los Angeles Dodgers were done with the largest comeback ever in a World Series-clinching win, following an outing from outfielder Mookie Betts that doesn’t look super-flashy, you couldn’t help but compare the steadiness of their veterans.

And after a Game 4 performance that included a double in his first at-bat (after which he eventually scored from yet another homer by the Series MVP, first baseman Freddie Freeman) and fighting for the first out of the game with not one, but two fans (an odd mix of a Jeffrey Maier and Steve Bartman situation all in one) one thing is absolutely clear: Comparing anyone to Betts is a pointless exercise that will leave you with no joy.

Just ask the Boston Red Sox.

While Freeman is the one going home with extra hardware and the eyes of the globe are on Dodgers star pitcher Shohei Ohtani’s non-throwing shoulder after an awkward slide in Game 2 left his shoulder hanging out of its socket, Betts has quietly been the one steadying the lineup. Coming into Game 3, the 2018 American League MVP was the only Dodger with an on-base percentage above 1.000. He’s also made a couple good to great catches that are the kind of things you can take for granted, because he’s a two-time Wilson Defensive Player of the Year to go with his half-dozen Gold Gloves.

Never mind that he’s played three different positions this season and batted at two different spots in the lineup. For lesser players, you might call him a Swiss Army knife. For him, it’s generational talent.

In the last game of the season, it was all on display. He beat out a ground ball hit directly to first baseman Anthony Rizzo, when pitcher Gerrit Cole had one of many New York Yankees’ brain farts on the evening and simply didn’t cover the base. Betts ended up scoring, leading to a five-run inning that allowed the Dodgers back into the game. He went on to hit the sacrifice fly to deep center that gave them the go-ahead run, pumping his fist all the way down to first, before returning to his dugout to much support.

Reminder: Betts is now a three-time World Series champion.

“He’s one of the best players on the planet. I’m really excited for the postseason that he’s had on both sides of the baseball,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said after a Game 4 victory in the Bronx. “One of [his] at-bats that set the tone. Tommy [Edman] did a great job reading the ball off the bat, going on contact, scoring right there. But that at-bat to just kind of win pitches, get down with two strikes and to keep fighting to still drive in a run, we did that all night. I thought we took really good at-bats. Mookie kind of sets the tone with that.”

The play he’s referring to doesn’t look like much in the highlights, a ball fisted off Betts’ hands to the opposite field. But unlike, say, the Yankees, who rely on slugging and walks to score runs, it was the kind of play from Edman that guys make for each other when their star consistently does, too. The inning before, Betts robbed Yankees infielder Jazz Chisholm of a liner that would have definitely scored a run for the Yankees. Chisholm was so upset he jumped high enough to dunk a basketball in reaction to the snag.

“This guy just wants to win. He’ll do anything. He gets thrown in at shortstop in spring training, doesn’t complain about it. He’s out there working hard early every single day to try to get better,” Dodgers second baseman Gavin Lux said before Game 4. “Just watching him, how he goes about his work every day. He’s in the cage for hours before the game. He’s out every day doing his early work on defense. The main thing that I’ve watched him and learned from is his work ethic is just relentless. He’s one of the best players in baseball, and he doesn’t take a single day off. I think that’s why he’s so great and that’s what makes him different from everybody else.”

Imagine being the Red Sox right now. You decided that as an organization you were too good for a guy who all he does is show up, do the job and showcase the game in his personal time, too. You’re not going to convince me that letting Betts walk from their organization wasn’t the single most idiotic decision in baseball front office history — never mind that franchise’s history — since Babe Ruth’s contract was sold to the Yankees in 1919.

Imagine being former Red Sox chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom — who figured that the player who was part of a reignition of a city and squad that waited so long to return to glory didn’t matter as much as payroll flexibility did — and you just let a generational human being walk out of the door over money. A colossally disastrous move that for all we know could end up being as bad as The Babe. Lord knows when Boston will get back to contention. For their sake, let’s hope it’s not another hundred years.

Betts came to the Dodgers and won a World Series almost immediately in 2020. He was there before Freeman and before Ohtani. People wanted to give the guy flak over his in-season podcast, as if he weren’t routinely leading the team in runs scored — the easiest indicator of the best player on the team.

Now, there’s probably thousands of young fans across the Boston area, likely even wearing their Betts jerseys, watching one of the best five-tool players of our generation beat THE YANKEES — your blood-sworn rival that we’ve all had to hear about for decades on end — in a cruise of a gentleman’s sweep in the World Series. And for what? Because you wanted to be cheap?

It’s almost laughable how staggeringly stupid that looks now. It’s like fumbling the best partner you ever had because your mom told you that you could do better. More importantly, the point is that Betts is the superstar hard worker who people try to make up or look for to almost no avail in sports, period, never mind baseball.

“He’s been great. He’s been very unselfish. We asked him to do a lot, and he hasn’t complained about any of it,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said Tuesday. “We’re talking about one of the best right fielders in the game defensively. There was a conversation had that he wanted to go back to the infield, and he did that thinking it was going to help the team. Then he had to change to shortstop to help the team. He didn’t complain about it once.

“He went out there, and I think he actually really enjoyed having to put in all the hard work to improve at it. When one of your superstars is willing to do that, it sends a big message to your team that everybody’s all in this together, and it doesn’t matter who you are, you’d better be willing to do something to help this team. Doesn’t matter where you need to bat, what position you need to play, what you’re called on to do, pinch-hit, it doesn’t matter. As long as you’re helping this team win. When your superstar is doing that, it sends a big message.”

Betts has made his mark on pop culture, but he’s genuinely not looking to be the next superstar or “save baseball” as he told The Washington Post. In 2018, I asked Betts what he’d give himself as a letter grade for that year. “I’d give myself an A,” he said. He eventually won the MVP award and the Red Sox won the World Series, beating … the Dodgers.

Since then, the Dodgers have added two world championships and four pennants with Betts. Comparatively for the Red Sox? One playoff appearance, zero division titles. That thief of joy is dashing around New England like Paul Revere telling folks the redcoats are on their way.

“He’s one of the guys I’m really excited for because going into postseason, he’s one of the guys we talked about that didn’t perform,” Roberts said after Game 5. “To be able to block out all that noise and still focus on helping us win baseball games, there’s not a guy that cares more. He’s a very talented player. Hopefully, we can keep this narrative quiet for a little bit, because he did everything and played both sides of the baseball. He made some big plays defensively, and offensively he came up big.

“Certainly, it’s been on his mind all year as far as, ‘once we get to the postseason. It doesn’t matter until I perform in the postseason,’ all that stuff that he was saying. I just felt that he was in a good spot mechanically, but I liked the fight. There was just a lot of fight.”

Is Betts a “savage in the box”? Not quite, to quote the famous line from Yankees manager Aaron Boone. But comparably, the quote that opens this column is attributed to President Theodore Roosevelt, a native New Yorker. He also quite famously said, speak softly and carry a big stick.

I think Mookie knows which philosophy works best.