DODGER STADIUM (Los Angeles) — As Miguel Rojas rounded third base after his improbable season-saving World Series Game 7 home run last October, the cameras cut briefly to his manager. Dave Roberts, who decided to ride with the light-hitting veteran infielder with the Dodgers’ season on the line, screamed in excitement before briefly raising his arms in the air.
He then immediately placed his hands on his head, closed his eyes and exhaled.
The emotional gamut Roberts experienced — elation, disbelief, relief, all in a matter of seconds — offered a glimpse into the pressure of his high-stakes job, though Roberts believes he has gotten better over the years at handling and masking the stress. Deep breathing exercises and an unwavering belief in his process have helped. So has golf. He takes his clubs on the road and tries to sneak in time to play during the season as a way to “balance out this crazy life of managing the Dodgers.”
Of course, winning three championships in six years has also lightened the load that once existed, quieted the criticisms that were once pervasive and helped the man with the highest winning percentage of any manager in modern AL/NL history find more delight in a journey that was once, amid unfulfilled October expectations, less joyful.
“I can honestly say that, at times, the joy has been taken out because of the cynicism from the eyes looking in at my job or the job I’ve done,” Roberts told me last weekend during a reflective 12-minute conversation from his office at Dodger Stadium. “But I do think that that has considerably dissipated after winning in 2024.”
(Photo by Daniel Shirey/MLB Photos via Getty Images)
Even before that World Series victory earned Roberts a four-year extension, the 2024 triumph brought more jubilation than the championship four years prior, when a 2020 pandemic-shortened World Series title snapped a 32-year drought for the Dodgers but failed to stifle the noise around their manager.
“2020 was just a relief,” Roberts explained. “I still felt that, I don’t know, whatever, the unease, or just kind of not as joyful, and it was unfortunate because I love this game so much. I love our city. I love our players. But unrealistic expectations are hard to kind of realize all the time, right?
“And that’s the job I signed up for, which I completely understand, but it did at some points take away the joy. So I’ve had to intentionally, consciously, enjoy moments. Because the question is, if you can’t enjoy moments, then what am I doing this for?”
After back-to-back World Series wins, he no longer has to question that.
(Photo by Erick W. Rasco/Sports Illustrated via Getty Images)
‘Just trying to slow down time’
Roberts has grown accustomed to short offseasons after leading the Dodgers to the World Series in five of the last nine seasons. So when the pressure of October gives way to a calmer November, he tries to take advantage of every second, detaching from the game and keeping a busy itinerary.
“I think I’ve done a very good job of getting away,” Roberts said, “and our front office does a great job of kind of letting me get away.”
This winter, Roberts took a couple of trips to Maui. He played more golf. He went to Japan and visited his birthplace of Okinawa. A week after celebrating his third World Series win as the Dodgers’ manager (and fourth overall, including his 2004 win as a player in Boston), he was on the sidelines in Tuscaloosa taking in his first SEC football game in an Alabama rivalry clash against LSU.
“Coach [Kalen] DeBoer’s a good friend of mine,” Roberts explained. “I saw some UCLA games — football games, a basketball game — spent time with the family, and I think when you have two short offseasons in a row, you’re just trying to slow down time.”
(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
He has found that to be more challenging than slowing down a game, which has gotten easier with more experience and success.
Roberts isn’t on social media, which protected him from some of the vitriol spewed by fans after the Dodgers lost back-to-back World Series in 2017 and 2018 and were stunned by the eventual champion Nationals in the 2019 NLDS. More acrimony followed after the 2020 success when the Dodgers were bounced in the 2021 NLCS before suffering consecutive NLDS exits against division rivals in 2022 and 2023.
Beyond the boos from his own home crowd, he would get wind of fan sentiment another way.
“You know how you hear about it? Is when I get texts from good friends saying, ‘Hey, we still love you,’ and, ‘It’s not that bad,’” Roberts recalled. “I’m like, shoot, it must be really bad.”
Those messages aren’t as prevalent anymore, not after becoming the first manager to lead his team to back-to-back World Series titles since the 1998-00 Yankees. The jeers at home have turned to cheers every time Roberts is introduced. His Dodgers are the odds-on favorites to three-peat, and they’ve started the 2026 season with 13 wins in their first 17 games.
“The thing is, there’s no better teaching tool than experience,” Roberts said. “There really isn’t. You can always say, ‘Just enjoy it,’ right? But when you’re hearing all this stuff and the expectations are almost unrealistic, that’s hard to enjoy. But you’ve got to kind of wrap your head around that to then say, ‘The world’s not going to end, the sun is going to come up.’”
(Robert Gauthier/Los Angeles Times via Getty Images)
‘If that goes wrong…’
Roberts prefers to think forward, not dwell on the past. He hasn’t even taken his 2024 World Series ring out of the safe in his house, though he knows what that postseason run meant for his career.
“If that goes wrong,” Roberts said, “there’s a chance that I could not be out here. I could not be in this job.”
Roberts understood that at the moment, but he projected confidence despite the beleaguered state of the Dodgers’ rotation, the two elimination games his team faced against the Padres and the bullpen games that would be required to ultimately prevail.
With the season on the line in San Diego, he told his players he believed in them more than any team he had ever coached.
“Everyone’s aware of the noise and narratives out there,” Roberts recalled, “but I didn’t want anyone to feel that.”
That postseason was Roberts’ masterpiece. He pushed all the right buttons as the Dodgers rebounded to shut out the Padres in Games 4 and 5 in an NLDS victory that many on the team considered a turning point in the franchise’s history.
On a personal level, it was around that time when Roberts felt the full buy-in and trust of his players, which he credits in part to the support of veterans Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman and Blake Treinen, who has found it easy to open up to Roberts.
“As a manager, there are times where he’s in the right and he could easily come in barking at people, but he doesn’t,” Treinen told me. “He meets them where they’re at, gains understanding, and he’s willing to listen to people. That’s why he’s such a great leader.”
(Photo by Harry How/Getty Images)
Roberts doesn’t think much about the “what-ifs” from that 2024 run unless someone else brings them up. But the widespread criticisms of his past October bullpen decisions ended with that potentially make-or-break postseason.
“No one likes to hear bad things about them,” Roberts said. “No one does. Every single day, you’re opening yourself up to criticism with my job. And it’s hard not to take things personal, but I’ve realized as time has gone on, it’s like, it’s really not about me. There’s a lot of miserable people in this world with a platform. Anyone that has a phone or some account, they have a voice. And a lot of people are never around, have their own issues personally, and they’re lashing out. For me, it’s like, I actually have grace for them.”
Who helped him get to that place?
“More self-reflection,” Roberts said.
Winning didn’t hurt, either.
Roberts has led the Dodgers to the postseason in each of his first 10 years as the team’s manager, something no other National League skipper has done before, but the postseason success of the last two years has put him on a different pedestal.
In 2024, his prudent bullpen decisions shielded a shorthanded rotation. Last year, he leaned on his starting pitchers to protect a shoddy bullpen and relied on the players he trusted with the season on the brink.
The result, one of pure elation, put him on a track toward Cooperstown and helped remove any doubt that might have existed before about why he’s doing this.
“Not everyone that’s involved in this game loves it,” Roberts said. “I love this game. I feel like I want to be a steward for this game, and I love players, and I feel like that’s what keeps me joyful — because I feel like I’m impacting the game in a positive way.”
Rowan Kavner is an MLB writer for FOX Sports. He previously covered the L.A. Dodgers, LA Clippers and Dallas Cowboys. An LSU grad, Rowan was born in California, grew up in Texas, then moved back to the West Coast in 2014. Follow him on X at @RowanKavner.
