Will Smith’s World Series streak is ending.
For six straight seasons, a Will Smith has been on a championship team, but that run stops this year. There isn’t a Will Smith on the Milwaukee Brewers or the Tampa Bay Rays, so the stretch that ran from 2020 through 2025 is over.
The strange overlap between the Dodgers catcher and the now-retired left-handed reliever with the same name became especially memorable in the 2020 National League Championship Series. The two Smiths wound up on opposite sides of one of the defining moments of that series, and it came in Game 5 with the Dodgers facing elimination.
Los Angeles was down three games to one and trailing the Atlanta Braves 2-1 in the sixth inning. With Mookie Betts on second and two outs, the left-handed Smith came out of the bullpen to face Max Muncy, who worked a six-pitch walk.
Then the Dodgers catcher stepped in and worked the count full before launching a three-run homer off his namesake. The blast flipped the game, and the Dodgers went on to win 7-3.
That home run stood alone against the pitcher with the same name. In their other meetings, the catcher never got going: he was hitless in six at-bats with three strikeouts against the pitcher in 2019, when Smith was with the Giants, and again in 2021 and 2022, when the lefty pitched for the Braves.
The Dodgers went on to beat Atlanta in that 2020 NLCS, then ended a 32-year championship drought by winning the World Series over the Tampa Bay Rays. A year later, the other Will Smith was part of the Braves team that snapped a 26-year title drought.
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