TORONTO — In the moments after the swing of his life, Will Smith hoped.
“Go ball, go ball,” he yelled, the kind of desperate plea that sounded the loudest when coming from the quietest voice among the Los Angeles Dodgers. It resonated the most when it silenced the Rogers Centre for good. All Smith could do was pray that he had fulfilled the childhood dream: that he had hit the home run that won a World Series, the kind of swing that would be etched into baseball history forever.
Maybe it’s fitting that the type of Game 7, and the type of World Series, that included every scenario imaginable and every scenario deemed unthinkable, ended like this, a 5-4 victory in 11 innings on the strength of Smith’s homer in a winner-take-all Game 7. Maybe it was fitting that the Dodgers cemented a dynasty, becoming baseball’s first back-to-back world champions in a quarter century, swung for good with Smith at the plate.
All he could do was hope. Eventually, the Toronto Blue Jays’ Myles Straw ran out of room. Smith quickened his pace as the ball flew 366 feet, soaring over the home bullpens. His teammates spilled out of the dugout six minutes past midnight, after Saturday night became Sunday morning. They emptied their lungs, filling the void left by the silence in this place when Smith ruined a night that 44,713 fans in this dome felt would change this city forever. In what would become Smith’s record-setting 73rd inning behind the plate in this series, he might as well have floated around the bases, arms spread out wide as he touched them all for a swing he’ll never top.
“I was just hoping I got enough,” Smith said.
THE FRESH PRINCE! #WORLDSERIES pic.twitter.com/ty8zLuOisJ
— Los Angeles Dodgers (@Dodgers) November 2, 2025
The ninth championship in the Dodgers’ franchise history, and third in six years in what they’ve aspirationally dubbed the organization’s “golden era,” is here. This championship evening required multiple heroes. Yoshinobu Yamamoto, pitching a night after starting Game 6, somehow managed to record the most outs and picked up the win, collapsing into Smith’s arms once the final two outs were recorded on a double play started by Mookie Betts. Miguel Rojas, who went 26 days between starts in this postseason, became the first player to launch a game-tying home run in the ninth inning of a Game 7 of the World Series, finally closing what had been as big as a three-run deficit.
Then there is Smith, the steadying, quiet presence who Freddie Freeman dubbed “the silent assassin” and who inked a 10-year contract extension in March, the longest contract for a catcher in baseball history.
“To me, he kind of epitomizes a lot of the success that we’ve had,” said president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman. “He checks so many of those boxes, and has been a huge part of our success looking back. And we’re excited he’s gonna be a huge part of our success looking forward.”
The Dodgers plucked Smith out of Louisville with the 32nd pick in the first round of the 2016 MLB Draft, picking toward the back as they always do, before his work with his now-hitting coach, Robert Van Scoyoc, turned the smooth-swinging college catcher into an offensive force.
Smith, now 30, has emerged as a two-time All-Star.
“He’s a superstar,” Clayton Kershaw said. “When you talk about superstars on our team, he’s a superstar. He really is. He might not get the publicity of these other guys, but he’s a superstar.”
The Dodgers kept that in mind when tailoring his schedule over the course of this season with hopes of avoiding some of the drastic offensive drop-offs he saw in the second halves of each of the last two seasons.
The plan worked, until it did not. Smith took a foul ball off his hand in early September; it took 17 days for doctors to confirm Smith had suffered a hairline fracture on the top of his throwing hand. When the Dodgers opened postseason play at the end of September against the Cincinnati Reds, Smith made the roster even though his hand was hardly playable. He didn’t appear in his first game action this postseason until he entered as a pinch hitter midway through Game 1 of the National League Division Series in Philadelphia. He started behind the plate for Game 3 of that series and did not miss an inning the rest of the Dodgers’ run.
It still took time to feel right. He managed six hits in 15 at-bats in the National League Championship Series against the Milwaukee Brewers, he said, on pure survival. His swing felt out of whack, just as it did shortly before he fractured his hand. A seven-day layoff allowed him to work with the team’s hitting coaches. Aaron Bates called Smith “the most coachable guy ever,” a player willing to listen to whatever ideas were presented in front of him and gifted enough to apply whatever they threw at him. When Smith scuffled early this season, they suggested he mentally close himself off, trying to create the illusion that he was standing at the plate like New York Yankees star Giancarlo Stanton. It worked.
This time, they noticed Smith “one-handing” his swing, following through with the left hand only to subconsciously protect a right hand that still gives him some trouble and has limited how much he’s able to swing daily. By the time Game 2 of the World Series came around, Smith started to feel like himself again. “Something clicked,” he said, which translated immediately. In the seventh inning that night, he turned around a Kevin Gausman fastball and sent it into the upper deck for the go-ahead blast in a 5-1 victory.
“That’s when I knew his swing was right,” Bates said.
More reinforcement came back in Los Angeles before Game 3. Albert Pujols, the likely Hall of Famer, had struck up a friendship with Smith during the slugger’s cameo with the Dodgers in 2021. Smith grew up idolizing him as a boy in Louisville. Pujols saw something in Smith then, and he brought it up when he stopped by amid the festivities (and his duties with MLB Network) to offer encouragement.
The series put a beating on Smith that night and the rest of the way. He caught all 18 innings of the Dodgers’ marathon victory in that Game 3, then all 18 innings that followed the next two nights. Smith’s 73 total innings caught in this World Series marked the most ever, according to researcher Sarah Langs, passing Lou Criger, who caught 71 innings for the Boston Americans in the first World Series ever played. That series went eight games.
“His legs,” Kershaw said, “have to feel like Jell-O.”
Just five days after playing the longest game in World Series history, the Dodgers and Blue Jays appeared as if they could play deep into the night once again in Game 7.
Until Smith stepped up to the plate in a tied game with two outs against Shane Bieber, the seventh pitcher to start a game in this series and make an appearance in this winner-take-all contest. Time was against the Dodgers, who had not led all night.
“We didn’t lead until we needed to,” Freeman said.
Yamamoto was spent. Had the night kept going, the Dodgers would have called upon the likes of Roki Sasaki and the retiring Kershaw, with a hungry Toronto lineup constantly applying pressure.
The first two batters Bieber faced went down quietly. Rojas, who injured his ribcage a half-inning after writing himself into World Series lore, chased a slider low and away for an easy groundout. Shohei Ohtani, who had started the game on short rest and surrendered a three-run blast to Bo Bichette that put the Dodgers in a hole, hacked at a first-pitch cutter inside that Isiah Kiner-Falefa at second base handled easily.
That left things to Smith, who patiently waited as Bieber avoided going to his fastball. A slider and a curveball each went for a ball off the plate before Bieber threw a slider that spun right over the heart of the plate.
Smith swung and hoped, connecting with a decisive cut on a night no one will ever forget and a homer that will be replayed for years to come.
“It’s probably going to rank up there for him for sure,” Max Muncy said. “But make no mistake, there are going to be a lot of those moments for him. He’s going to be here for a long time. … What a hit man. What a hit.”
In the moments after a third World Series title in six years was secured, Smith found his wife, Cara. He held his oldest daughter, Charlotte, with the biggest swing of his life yet to set in, until he spotted the gold, silver and blue confetti on the bottom of the Rogers Centre turf. So he put Charlotte down, and showered her with it. Once again, the Dodgers will get to celebrate a World Series.
Smith’s swing made sure of it.
“This is just, this is special,” Smith said.
