Well, Fritz, one of us will be happy tomorrow morning.
I don't know how you'll feel, and I'd be happy to know if you'd like to share, but this is how I'll feel, and I'm probably writing this at all to sort out my nervousness for tonight's game. For so many years of when my Dodger fandom started we never got into first place in our division, and that was for 10 years. Then from 2004-2009 we started upward. In that period we had three division wins and had a Wild Card win, but in the play-offs we lost in the first round twice to the Cardinals and Mets, and then we lost in the second round to the Phillies twice.
Then we backslid the next year:
2010: 4th place
2011: 3rd place
2012: 2nd place
The following year we moved to the top and kept climbing:
2014: 1st place, won NLDS, lost NLCS to the Cardinals.
2015: 1st place, lost NLDS to the Cardinals.
2016: 1st place, won NLDS, lost NLCS to the Cubs.
2017: 1st place, won NLDS, won NLCS, lost World Series in 7 to Astros.
2018: 1st place (won in a one game tie-breaker), won NLDS, won NLCS, lost WS in 5 to Boston Red Sox.
2019: 1st place, lost NLDS to Washington Nationals
Dodger fans are tired of hearing for three decades plus, "the Dodgers haven't been to a WS in ____ years" and the last two years "haven't won a World Series" etc. After the last two seasons, even though getting to a WS is difficult enough once, the fans have been primed from day 1 this year for a WS win. All season we've just been waiting for it. We want the demon exorcised! I don't even want to think about an alternative. I've gone all the way past winning the WS to be manifesting a Dodger parade in downtown Los Angeles the end of the month!
