On a crisp night in Cleveland, Hal Steinbrenner stood on the infield dirt of Progressive Field and waxed poetic about the resiliency of his New York Yankees. “It’s been a while, [and the] season had its ups and downs,” the franchise’s 54-year-old billionaire lead owner said Saturday, after the Yankees had defeated the Guardians in five games to advance to the World Series. “But the guys never gave up. They never doubted. Day after day, they always thought they’d have a really good chance to accomplish this, and they did.”

Steinbrenner has seen his fair share of disappointment at the helm of baseball’s most valuable franchise, worth an estimated $7.55 billion. The Yankees haven’t won a World Series since 2009, their second-longest title drought in an illustrious history that includes a record 27 championships. And since Steinbrenner and his siblings inherited the club from their late father in 2010—pushing each of their net worths past $1 billion—their tenure has been defined by early playoff exits, bloated superstar contracts and a disgruntled fan base. But that narrative could change quickly when the Yankees take the field for the 2024 World Series, starting Friday.

It won’t be easy. Across the diamond awaits a Los Angeles Dodgers club managing equally high expectations. The Dodgers, baseball’s second-most-valuable team at $5.45 billion, committed more than $1 billion in the off-season to add key contributors including Shohei Ohtani, Yoshinobu Yamamoto and Teoscar Hernández. They then roared to a major league-best 98 wins, a mark the franchise has now reached six times in 12 years under an ownership group that is led by Mark Walter, worth an estimated $6 billion, and features a slew of other big-time investors including Todd Boehly, Peter Guber, Magic Johnson and Billie Jean King.

Regardless of which team emerges victorious, there is already one clear winner: Major League Baseball. This year’s Fall Classic not only features the country’s two largest media markets but also renews a rivalry that has spanned 11 World Series showdowns, starting in 1941, when the Dodgers still called Brooklyn home. That history has included iconic moments such as Jackie Robinson’s steal of home in 1955, Don Larsen’s perfect game a year later and a series-shifting pitching performance in 1981 from Fernando Valenzuela, who died this week.

With the presumptive American League and National League MVPs on each side of the lines in Aaron Judge and Ohtani, the 2024 World Series should be a worthy follow-up—and the teams’ first October rematch since 1981.

“You pull in the young fans who want to watch Judge and Ohtani jack home runs, you pull in the older fans who remember Reggie [Jackson] and the three home........

© Forbes