The Dodgers broke out the gold caps. Rolled out the blue carpet. And enlisted an actual movie star.
The team might have been kicking off its new 2026 season Thursday night, hosting the Diamondbacks at Dodger Stadium for Opening Day.
But everything before first pitch focused on last year –– when the team won its second straight World Series championship and cemented a dynasty that was worthy of a Hollywood pregame celebration five months later.
“It’s like the same thing that happened with the parade,” veteran infielder Miguel Rojas said earlier in the afternoon. “The first time, you don’t know what to expect, and it goes by fast. But this year, you know what to expect. You know how you’re gonna be feeling. You’re gonna have a better understanding of, ‘OK, I want to be present. I don’t want to miss much of it.’”
Rojas didn’t.
Instead, in a 30-minute on-field presentation that included every outside-the-box idea the club could seemingly think of –– from pyrotechnic player introductions, to fighter jet flyovers, to a ceremonial first pitch delivered from Magic Johnson to Shohei Ohtani, and of course the unveiling of the franchise’s ninth championship banner and outfield plaque –– it was Rojas and fellow World Series hero Freddie Freeman who were the leading stars of the show.
First, the pair were featured in a video skit with actor Will Ferrell that was played on the Dodger Stadium scoreboards –– in which Ferrell sneaks around the Dodgers’ clubhouse with the team’s two most recent World Series trophies before being discovered by the players.
Then, from out of the center field fence, Rojas and Freeman appeared on the back of a Dodger blue Cadillac driven by Ferrell, holding up the two Commissioner’s Trophies as the car paced around the warning track.
It was overwrought, completely cheesy, yet devoured all the same by an adoring and raucous sell-out crowd.
In recent years, the Dodgers have become known for their ambitious in-game presentation almost as much as their on-field dominance. And on Thursday, they took their chance to combine both.
Eventually, attention turned to the actual game action, with Yoshinobu Yamamoto kicking off the team’s bid for a World Series three-peat with a 5:30 p.m. first pitch.
Still, celebratory remembrances of the team’s 2025 title aren’t over yet.
On Friday, there will be another pregame ceremony in which the members of last year’s roster will receive their World Series rings.
And from there, three-peat pressure will follow the Dodgers throughout the season, as they try to become only the third team in MLB’s expansion era (since 1961) to win a title in three straight seasons.
“Yeah, it’s out there, but you’ve got to kind of block it out and focus on playing,” manager Dave Roberts said. “But understandably so, we put ourselves in a good spot that people want to talk about it. That’s a good thing.”
For the Dodgers, so, too, was the elongated pregame ceremony celebrating it all.
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
