Dodgers: Dave Roberts’ first 2021 speech to team will fire up LAD fans

OK, it’s been three and a half months of celebrating for the Los Angeles Dodgers and their fans.

It’s been awesome. What a time to be alive. No notes.

Well, time to get back to work!

Dave Roberts’ Dodgers reported, in part, to spring training this week, and with the arrival of pitchers and catchers came the manager’s first motivational pep talk of 2021.

While the last few years of lectures have mainly been centered around finishing the job, this year’s edition took on a bit of a different tone.

After all, the job’s already been done once. The 32-year-old World Series drought has been eternally broken. But everyone would really like to go ahead and do it all again.

“We weren’t going to be denied a championship last year. There was no way.”

Chills. The good kind.

Roberts and the Dodgers have every reason to want to do it all again, too, and not just because it’s fun and rewarding to be steeped in glory.

While it certainly was fun to cap a 60-game pandemic season with a World Series win on neutral territory, the detractors began before the final out had even been recorded, tarnishing the legitimacy of one of the most circumstantially difficult titles to win ever, across all sports.

Surely, the Dodgers would like to re-up their legitimacy and quiet their haters.

But on a more noble level, it would simply be more fun to win a title in front of their rabid fans at their friendly confines. It would be more joyous to celebrate on the Dodger Stadium turf. It would certainly be nice to return to semi-normalcy by the fall and throw a well-stocked championship parade in Los Angeles.

For the rest of time, Clayton Kershaw will be referred to as “World Series Champion Clayton Kershaw”. Corey Seager will be able to make appearances at sports memorabilia shows as “World Series MVP Corey Seager” for the rest of his life, provided the host also adds the caveat, “Of course, you also know him as a Hall of Famer and U.S. President.”

But Tom Brady’s always professed his favorite ring to be “the next one,” and no MLB team has repeated as champions since the 1999-2000 Yankees. You want to truly be considered one of the best, instead of the team that capped a devastating 2016-2019 run with one lone title in the Texas desert?

Do it again.

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