It may feel like a lifetime ago when Yoshinobu Yamamoto fired a splitter to Alejandro Kirk, who rolled a ground ball to Mookie Betts with the bases loaded, Betts simply stepping on second and tossing to first and ending a World Series, just like that.
Yet here we are, Opening Day upon us and real baseball, coast-to-coast and nearly around the clock a daily reality. Does the world seem any different since Nov. 1, when the Los Angeles Dodgers and Toronto Blue Jays played one of the greatest Game 7s of all time, to end one of the greatest World Series of all time?
A lot can happen in 145 days. Especially in the baseball industry. With that, USA TODAY Sports gets you back up to speed on what you missed since the Dodgers claimed their second consecutive World Series championship:
We’ll start on that Rogers Centre turf, where the disconsolate Blue Jays filed back to a clubhouse where the tears flowed as easily as the champagne in the opposing room a few hundred yards away.
It’s really hard to repeat as champions in baseball, as the Dodgers learned. So wouldn’t it seem equally hard to get back to the Fall Classic after losing Game 7?
