The Yankees remain defiant even as the Dodgers expose all of their mistakes

LOS ANGELES – There are no medals for bravery. Certainly not in the $300 million department of mega-coastal superpowers.

So that the Yankees don't have a hangover at the start of Game 2 from what happened the night before, and that they pushed the Dodgers to the Finals in Game 2 on Saturday night, it would all be worth it if everyone got Dairy Queen now and I'm leaving back to fourth grade on Monday.

Ultimately, the Dodgers came back late not once, but twice to win Game 1 – or what the Yankees couldn't do in Game 2. And whatever the Yankees offered in the ninth inning on Saturday didn't negate it through the first eight innings, the Dodgers were the far superior team en route to a 4-2 victory and a two-games-to-none lead.

“You're going to enjoy a nice flight to New York tonight and rightly so, they're up two percent,” Anthony Rizzo said. “The Dodgers played really well and you can’t take anything away from them. But the look in everyone’s eyes here makes me feel like this is far from over.”

Rizzo was part of the 2016 champion Cubs who rallied from a three-to-one deficit in the World Series to win it all. So he knows there's a way back and says, “A win on Monday changes history.” If they can win Game 3, the Dodgers have a bullpen game the next day and then the Yankees have Gerrit Cole in play 5.

The Yankees can also take comfort in the fact that the Dodgers may not have the presumptive NL MVP – or may have him in a more compromised condition – after Shohei Ohtani suffered what is known as a subluxation of his left shoulder while throwing his hand in hit the ground was caught stealing in the seventh inning.

What was supposed to be the Yankees' main advantage in the rotation was not the case. Jack Flaherty knocked Cole to a draw in the opening game and Yoshinobu Yamamoto soundly beat Carlos Rodon in Game 2.

The ability to hit homer after homer and star after star and long lineup after long lineup with the Dodgers? Not quite.

Remember, the Yankee plan in the offseason was Yama-Soto. But after the Yankees signed Juan Soto in a trade, Yamamoto decided he preferred to work with Ohtani. The Yankees wanted Flaherty and Tommy Edman at the trade deadline and the Dodgers acquired both – Edman's lefty mashing continued with one of the three home runs off Rodon.

Administer? Aaron Boone's decision not to let Tim Hill face Freddie Freeman in the 10th inning of Game 1 only looked more dubious when Hill brought Freeman in as part of his four-up, four-down outing in Game 2 to come shortly. Boone had selected Nestor Cortes, who delivered the walk-off grand slam to Freeman in Game 1.

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But as devastating as it might be to lose just one out to win a World Series game, the Yanks steadied Game 2 early with Soto's home run matching Edman's home run, making it 1-1 by the end of the third period stood. But Teoscar Hernandez hit a two-run home run and Freeman followed with his fourth home run in his last four World Series games (dating against the 2021 champion Braves), and the Yanks didn't get another hit until the ninth inning.

Key to this silence is that Aaron Judge continued to miss October, going 0-for-4 with three more strikeouts. The 120th World Series was largely about the two biggest stars, but now Ohtani may be physically lost while Judge continues to insist he is not mentally lost. He agreed that he had to get up and stop leaving the zone. These Yankees are neither technically sound nor well built. They win with the long ball and that means Judge can reach his full power – but so far the Dodgers have the edge here too, continuing to defuse Judge.

“Nobody said it was going to be easy,” Boone said. “It’s a long series and we need to make it a long series now.”

Indeed. The only way the Yankees can win this series is to return to Los Angeles. That means the 27 innings in the Bronx will have to be much better than what the Yankees offered over two days at Dodger Stadium.