Andre Ethier gave his career to the Dodgers. Now it’s time for the organization to pay him back
It’s been more than two weeks since the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Tampa Bay Rays in the World Series, snapping the franchise’s 32-year championship drought. Following along at home in Arizona, the victory must have been a bittersweet moment for Andre Ethier.
Ethier was a Dodgers lifer. He spent 12 seasons in the big leagues from 2006-2017, all of them in Dodger blue. His 1,455 career games are the fifth most among Dodgers players who never wore another uniform. His 51 postseason games rank sixth all-time for the franchise.
But, despite eight postseason appearances, Ethier never got to celebrate a world championship with his Dodgers teammates. The closest he came was in 2017, his final season in the Majors, when the Dodgers fell to the Houston Astros in seven games. Ethier came on as a pinch-hitter in Game 7, his RBI single to right field the only runs the Dodgers would score that night, but it was not enough.
It was the last game Ethier would play in the big leagues. Hampered by injuries that limited him to just 38 games over his last two seasons, he retired after finding no takers in free agency and now spends his time coaching kids. He only started two games in that 2017 postseason run, both in the NLCS against the Cubs including a 6-1 Dodgers win in Game 3 that featured his last home run.
When the Dodgers celebrated in Globe Life Field two weeks ago, there were a number of faces that Ethier would’ve been familiar with. He was teammates with Clayton Kershaw for 10 years, with Kenley Jansen for eight. He shared a locker room with Cody Bellinger, Corey Seager, Joc Pederson, and Chris Taylor.
They all now have World Series rings, but Ethier does not. He was already a veteran when most of the Dodgers core broke into the big leagues, helping to nurture them into the championship players they would become. He hasn’t been a Dodger for three years, but Ethier deserves an honorary World Series ring just for the impact he made on the players who earned it on the field.
Ethier was robbed of winning a ring in his own right by the Astros, who were subsequently revealed to be cheaters. It’s still a bitter memory for him, and so is the physical and mental toll the Dodgers took to win the title that year.
“Working back from injury that year to get to that point, the team being that close to winning, the organization being that close…and knowing that your career is possibly coming to an end for the Dodgers, in baseball maybe, just a ton of emotion,” he told Jon Weisman of DodgerThought.com in February. “I don’t think I’ve ever been that emotionally and physically exhausted.”
Ethier exerted himself to the fullest right up to his last moment for the Dodgers. If the organization is feeling charitable when handing out rings this offseason, then their first call should be to the man who was loyal to the franchise to the end.