A team with global flair, from the city of immigrants

What's not to love about an L.A. team featuring a trio of players made in Japan? And a slugging right fielder heralding from obscure Cotui in the Dominican Republic? And a Puerto Rican with rock star hair who plays any position? And a substitute second baseman from Venezuela who fielded like a Gold Glover and hit a movie-moment homer to force the final game into extra innings?

- BY JAMES RAINEY

That's not to mention teammates from Cuba, South Korea and, yes, Louisville, Ky. (That's the hometown of catcher Will Smith, who hit the winning homer early Sunday morning in Toronto, to launch the Dodgers to a 5-4 victory.)

The irrepressible Dodgers bonded in America's city of immigrants, Los Angeles. They took a path prepared for them by pioneers like the great Fernando Valenzuela. The native of the state of Sonora, Mexico, hurled ungodly stuff, as his eyes rolled toward the heavens, making Fernando a star throughout America and the Spanish-speaking world beyond.

The following decade, Hideo Nomo, the son of a Japanese fisherman, dominated so thoroughly that his 11-strikeouts-per-nine-innings average broke a more than three-decade-old record held by the legendary Sandy Koufax.

The 2025 Dodgers dialed up a Japanese trifecta - the incomparable Shohei Ohtani, the often-unhittable Yoshinobu Yamamoto and their spiritual kid brother, Roki Sasaki, whose 100-mile-an-hour fastballs provoked equal parts awe and anxiety (over whether they'd find the strike zone) among his fans.