Mookie Betts isn’t leaving any doubt about where he sees his baseball home.
Yes, his career began in Boston. Yes, he spent six seasons with the Red Sox. But Betts, now 33 and in his seventh season with the Dodgers, says the Los Angeles chapter is the one that will define him when everything is said and done.
“When I’m done playing, I’ll remember Boston, of course. But what I’ll really remember is if somebody said, ‘Oh, you played baseball, like who did you play with?’ These are the guys I’m going to say I played with," Betts said to The Athletic regarding the Dodgers.
That feeling tracks with the way his time in Los Angeles has unfolded. Betts arrived ahead of the 2020 season and immediately helped change the temperature around the franchise, helping the Dodgers win their first World Series title since 1988. From there, he kept producing at a high level while the team continued piling up championships.
In his first six seasons with the Dodgers, Betts helped them reach the top three times, including back-to-back seasons. Even during stretches when the team’s overall run wasn’t as smooth, he was still putting together some of the best numbers of his career.
From 2020-23, Betts hit .282 with a .912 OPS, 113 home runs, 286 RBIs and 520 hits in 1,841 at-bats and 471 games.
Then came another shift in 2025, when Betts moved to shortstop full-time and helped the Dodgers win consecutive World Series titles.
For Betts, the success in Los Angeles has gone beyond the trophies. He said the group around him is what makes this stretch so meaningful, and that walking away from that would be difficult to imagine.
“I feel like I’m kind of on the tail end of what I signed up for,” Betts said. “I signed up in 2020 for that prime, and I feel like I got it. I got what I asked for, which is a team to go win.
“That’s why you know it’s so special with these guys. We’ve been together for four or five years, and I couldn’t imagine taking a field and not having those guys with me. Of course I want to play, but it’s almost like, well, if I don’t have my boys here, like, what am I doing?”
Betts’ contract with the Dodgers runs through 2032, and he has previously said he plans to retire when that deal is up, at age 40.
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