The Boston Red Sox celebrated their fourth World Series title since 2004 with a 5-1 victory over the Dodgers in Los Angeles on Sunday night.

Red Sox Dominate Dodgers in Game 5, Win World Series

A series that was undeniably loaded with big names and stock with talent, however, failed to deliver a potent viewing experience, and instead raised more questions regarding the cohesiveness of these playoffs and the sport altogether.

It was evident that the Boston Red Sox of 2018 were special from the jump. Winning a cool 119 games and the biggest four games of the season in October, there will be no questions going forward about their legacy, especially considering their opponents leading up to the win. But that’s where the questions about the sport begin.

With a plethora of stars on display, (although several of them underperformed severely) and games that were destined for classic postseason games, baseball fans were instead treated to a laborious, taxing postseason and an even more mundane World Series.

If a five-game series win wasn’t telling enough, the Dodgers’ underperformed their run differential by a majors-leading ten games, meaning the talent simply laid an egg (again) in the World Series. To make matters worse, the games of the series were dreadfully long and devoid of many thrills during the long innings, a trend that preceded this series during the regular season.

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Three hours and four minutes is more than a third of the typical 9-5 shift, and its also the average length of a baseball game this season, ten minutes longer than it was at the beginning of the Wild Card era. The Sox and Dodgers managed to top that rather decidedly, with their games lasting an average of three hours and thirteen minutes. With a seven-hour, 20-minute Game three, the teams dismounted with an emphatic statement on the state of the MLB.

The numbers following Game one weren’t exactly advanced analytics, but they indicated a deficiency in the market of baseball; the opener of the Boston-Los Angeles series should have boasted explosive numbers, but instead ended up with the fourth-fewest viewers for any World Series opener on record. Regular-season fan attendance was no better: it plummeted to a 14-year low, ten million less than 2007, when attendance saw its peak.

Major League Baseball’s state of uncertainty in 2018 will continue past this season if improvements aren’t made to supplement a hemorrhaging sport ingrained in America’s quilt of culture. Baseball can’t save itself, but it has to try harder.

The Boston Red Sox are World Series champions, anyhow.

The Houston Astros were down by four runs in Sunday night’s Game 5 at Minute Maid Park, but delivered a stellar performance to take a 3-2 World Series lead with a ten-inning, 13-12 victory over the Los Angeles Dodgers. 

Astros vs. Dodgers World Series Game 5 Score

The five-hour, 17-minute marathon marked the second-longest World Series game in history. The longest was the five-hour, 41-minute Game 3 matchup between the Astros and Chicago White Sox.

Alex Bregman smacked a walk-off single into left field off Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen in the 10th to score pinch-runner Derek Fisher from second base.

“Just when I thought I could describe Game 2 as my favorite game of all time, I think Game 5 exceeded that and more,” Astros manager A.J. Hinch said. “It’s hard to put into words all the twists and turns in that game, the emotion, doing it at home, in front of our home crowd. Just exactly what you expect to come to the park with [Dallas] Keuchel and [Clayton] Kershaw pitching.”

The club with a 3-2 lead in the World Series has won the national title 43 of 65 times.

Both Keuchel and Kershaw — Cy Young Award winners — lasted less than five innings. Kershaw allowed six runs and four hits in 4 2/3 innings, and Keuchel allowed four runs (three earned) and five hits in 3 2/3 frames.

“I’m sure everybody’s pretty exhausted, emotionally and physically,” Kershaw said. “It was a tough one. But you know what? We’ve still got a chance at this thing. We’re going to go home and get ready to go. … I just lost my command a little bit there in the fourth inning and that’s all it took.”

The squads also set the record for most homers in a World Series with 22 and raised the total number of home runs these playoffs to 101 — the most in a single postseason.

After Houston erased deficits of  4-0, 7-4 and 8-7 with game-tying homers, Los Angeles returned from a 12-9 deficit in the ninth frame.

Yasiel Puig blasted a two-run homer off Astros reliever Chris Devenski, who was one strike away from ending the game when Chris Taylor fired an RBI single to center to tie it 12-12.

Astros first baseman Yuli Gurriel, meanwhile, was suspended five games for next regular season after making a racist gesture during Game 4 on Friday night. According to ESPN, Gurriel “used his fingers to slant his eyes in a gesture that is offensive to people of Asian descent and mouthed a derogatory word in Spanish after hitting a home run against [Yu] Darvish.”

Darvish — a five-year MLB veteran — is Japanese, and 33-year-old rookie Gurriel is Cuban. Commissioner Rob Manfred met with Gurriel Saturday and said Gurriel “expressed remorse.” Manfred added the first baseman will also be fined $322,581 because of the incident.

Game 6 begins Tuesday at 8 pm EST. Rich Hill will start for the Dodgers. The lefty was removed after allowing only one run in four innings in Game 2, during which he also struck out seven Astros and walked three. Justin Verlander will start for Houston. He is 4-0 with a 2.05 ERA in four playoffs starts and one relief appearance this year. Verlander is 9-0 with a 1.53 ERA in 10 games (nine starts) since being traded to the Astros from Detroit.

HOUSTON, TX – OCTOBER 29: George Springer #4 of the Houston Astros dives and fails to make a catch on a RBI triple by Cody Bellinger #35 of the Los Angeles Dodgers (not pictured) during the seventh inning in game five of the 2017 World Series at Minute Maid Park on October 29, 2017 in Houston, Texas. (Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images)