World Series: Yankees' Giancarlo Stanton once wanted to play for the Dodgers. Now he'll face them with a title on the line.
Yankees designated hitter Giancarlo Stanton (27) bats during the first inning in Game 1 of the World Series on Friday, Oct. 25, 2024 at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. Credit: Newsday/Thomas A. Ferrara
LOS ANGELES — At one of the most critical junctures of Giancarlo Stanton’s career, when he had been freshly named the Most Valuable Player of the National League and had a say for the first time in where he would play the next season, the allure was obvious.
Of course he wanted to go home.
It was late 2017 and the Marlins were about to trade their superstar slugger. The Los Angeles native wound up, obviously, with the Yankees, with whom he reached the World Series this week. But in the moment, facing so much uncertainty, he also wanted the Dodgers, his childhood team.
The Dodgers could’ve had him — their second such opportunity, in fact. Consider it another one of those twists of fate that make baseball great, another layer of intrigue to Stanton’s latest homecoming to Dodger Stadium, the ballpark where he learned to love the game as a kid and has mashed as an adult.
“There’s all sorts of scenarios that could’ve happened,” Stanton said ahead of Game 1 on Friday night. “Coulda, shoulda, this meeting, that meeting — it ultimately didn’t.”
Flash back to seven years ago. The Marlins had just been bought by a group headlined by Derek Jeter and funded by Bruce Sherman. The new regime entered with a clear first objective: cut, cut, cut payroll. Stanton’s contract — at the time the richest in major-league history at $325 million over 13 years — was the primary target.
Since Stanton had a full no-trade clause, though, Miami needed his OK to ship him out. He provided a pre-approval list of four teams: Yankees, Dodgers, Astros, Cubs. After playing so long for a laughingstock of a franchise, and since he already had all that guaranteed money, what Stanton wanted most was to join a winner. Those clubs were the participants in the League Championship Series' that year and seemed set up well for the near future.
And Stanton preferred the Dodgers, according to a person familiar with his thinking at the time, at least as much as the Yankees.
The Marlins tried. In their first round of calls, the Yankees weren’t interested at all, focusing initially on Shohei Ohtani, the pitching-and-hitting phenom/phenomenon who was coming over from Japan. The Cubs had their core of position players — Kris Bryant, Anthony Rizzo — and passed. The Astros asked the Marlins to pay most of the rest of the money owed to Stanton for a decade, which wasn’t going to work.
The Dodgers had interest, another person involved said. But they wanted the Marlins in return to take on some of their bad contracts, including Adrian Gonzalez and Scott Kazmir. They were trying to get under the luxury-tax threshold for 2018, so as much as Stanton’s big bat — he had just hit 59 home runs — would have helped Los Angeles, his big salary would have been counterproductive.
“We explored it,” Stan Kasten, Dodgers president and CEO, recalled this week. “But given what we were doing and where we were going, we thought the contract would not be a plus or work for us. I don’t think we ruled it out, but we didn’t see it working.”
Miami and Los Angeles proved not to be a match, setting up the Stanton-Yankees union. Stanton shot down trades to the Giants and Cardinals. When Ohtani never bothered to hear out the Yankees’ pitch, the Marlins re-engaged general manager Brian Cashman. The deal came together quickly.
And so Stanton has been a mere visitor in Los Angeles ever since. And enjoy those visits he has. In his career, he owns a .309 average and 1.086 OPS at Dodger Stadium, his highest anywhere other than Colorado. In 2015, he hit a home run clear out of the ballpark, an estimated 475 feet to leftfield.
“That Cali air, man,” Stanton of his success here. “I can’t pinpoint a certain thing. I got a few days to do well still and not worry about the past.”
When the Dodgers won the NL pennant, setting up their date with the Yankees, Stanton first reaction was to “uhhh turn off my phone,” he said, only half-joking. His family loves it, but he doesn’t need distractions from others. Being here at all is enough of a walk down memory lane.
“There’s creep-in moments. It’s hard not to reminiscence around the ballpark,” he said. “But it’s all business. You check in and out of enjoy it and understand there’s work to do. You gotta understand both.”
The Stanton clan were regulars at Dodger Stadium, especially when the likes of Barry Bonds and Ken Griffey Jr. and Mark McGwire, the premier home run hitters of their era, came to town. Stanton’s favorite memories “are probably the little things,” like arriving early to watching batting practice and hear the bat-on-ball sound in a mostly empty building. As a teenaged prospect, late Dodgers scout George Genovese came to watch him often at Notre Dame High in Sherman Oaks.
About every organization considered Stanton in the draft in 2007. The Marlins selected him in the second round.
“[Genovese] would come see me hit all the time and we had conversations [about the Dodgers picking him],” Stanton said. “I told him how much of a mistake it would be if they didn’t and how hard I would work if they did.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
