Los Angeles Dodgers’ Will Smith celebrates a home run against the Toronto Blue Jays during the 11th inning in Game 7 of baseball’s World Series, Sunday, Nov. 2, 2025, in Toronto.
Brynn Anderson/AP
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Brynn Anderson/AP
TORONTO — In a World Series for the ages that went back and forth again and again, Will Smith delivered the biggest swing of all for the Los Angeles Dodgers.
Smith connected in the 11th for the first extra-inning homer in a winner-take-all title game, and Miguel Rojas became the first player to hit a tying home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7. On a roller-coaster night of see-sawing emotions, the Dodgers outlasted the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 Saturday to become the first repeat champion in a quarter century.
“You dream of those moments,” Smith said after the 4-hour, 7-minute thriller. “I’ll remember that forever.”
In the type of dramatic Game 7 that kids conjure in backyards, the Blue Jays led 3-0 on Bo Bichette’s third-inning homer off Shohei Ohtani and 4-2 before Max Muncy’s eighth-inning solo homer off star rookie Trey Yesavage.
Toronto was two outs from its first championship since 1993 when Rojas, inserted into the slumping Dodgers lineup in Game 6 to provide some energy, homered on a full-count slider from Jeff Hoffman and stunned the Rogers Centre crowd of 44,713.
“I’ve cost everybody in here a World Series ring,” Hoffman said.
Rojas hadn’t homered since Sept. 19.
“I had a conversation with my wife,” he said. “She told me something big was waiting for me.”
World Series MVP Yoshinobu Yamamoto escaped a bases-loaded jam in the bottom half, and Toronto reliever Seranthony Domínguez stranded three Dodgers runners in the 10th.
Smith, who hit a go-ahead homer in Game 2, sent a 2-0 pitch from Shane Bieber into Toronto’s bullpen in left field, where it bounced into the seats and gave the Dodgers their first lead of the night. Running between first and second, Smith raised his arms in triumph.
“He hung a slider,” Smith said. “I banged it.”
Bieber, the 2020 AL Cy Young Award winner, was making his first relief appearance since 2019.
“He was looking for it and I didn’t execute,” he said.
Of course, there had to be even more drama in just the sixth winner-take-all Series game to go extra innings. It matched the Marlins’ 3-2 win over Cleveland in 1997 as the second-longest Game 7, behind only the Washington Senators’ 4-3, 12-inning victory against the New York Giants in 1924.
Vladimir Guerrero Jr. doubled leading off the bottom of the 11th and was sacrificed to third. Addison Barger walked and Alejandro Kirk hit a broken-bat grounder to shortstop Mookie Betts, who started a title-winning 6-6-3 double play. It was only the second double play to end a Series, after the Yankees turned one in 1947 against the Dodgers.
“I thought we had chances to sweep them,” Blue Jays manager John Schneider said. “Going back to the beginning of the Series when people were calling it David vs. Goliath, it’s not even close.”
Smith set a Series record by catching 73 innings. Betts earned his fourth title in the finale of baseball’s 150th major league season, the first that began and ended outside the United States.
In the Dodgers bullpen for the last game of his decorated 18-year career, Clayton Kershaw lost track of the outs.
“When he hit the double play, I thought the run scored and it was tied,” he said. “I thought I had the next batter.”
Los Angeles and its $500 million roster overcame a 3-2 Series deficit on the road. The Dodgers became the first repeat champion since the 1998-2000 New York Yankees won three in a row, and the first from the National League since the 1975 and ’76 Cincinnati Reds.
