‘It’s been like a dream’: Dodgers OF Justin Dean took role player route to World Series

TORONTO — The crowd was eager. The chances were waning. Pitchers Yoshinobo Yamamoto of the Los Angeles Dodgers and Kevin Gausman of the Toronto Blue Jays had been dueling all night, with the 27-year-old Japanese wonder arm coming out on top, ready to close out a dazzling complete game, eight-strikeout, zero-walk Game 2 outing, the likes of which we haven’t seen in the World Series in decades.

In the ninth inning, Alejandro Kirk — who’s been as hot as any Blue Jays player in the Fall Classic — looped a ball opposite field with enough loft on it to reach the outfield but hit sharply enough to get to a gap if it dropped. Instead, Dodgers center fielder Justin Dean — who came in for fellow rookie Andy Pages in center field an inning earlier — glided to his left, stuck out his pink/blue glove about waist high and snared it, while going to the ground with a spin move for the second out.

It looked like a casual play for the 28-year-old Dean, but those are the kind of plays a defensive substitute is supposed to make look easy when they enter a game to protect a lead. Similarly, at Dodger Stadium the week before during Shohei Ohtani’s historic 10-strikeout, three home run performance in the National League Championship Series, Dean came in to run for last season’s playoff darling Teoscar Hernandez. After one pitch, Dean was on second, swiping the bag with ease.

If you changed the uniforms, you might have thought you were looking at his manager, Dave Roberts, 21 years ago at Fenway Park in Boston in the American League Championship Series. Coincidentally, the two have similar games overall: quality range and glove, with game-changing speed. But when Roberts came up big in a huge spot for the Red Sox, he’d been in the majors for six seasons.

Justin Dean hasn’t been in the major leagues for six months.

“Things kind of flipped on its head as the season started,” the Mauldin, South Carolina, native said at Toronto’s Rogers Center after World Series Game 2.

Dean started the season in the minor leagues with Oklahoma City. He made his big-league debut, coincidentally, against the Blue Jays in August at Dodger Stadium.

“Had a good year in Triple-A, playing well with those guys and then getting a taste of the big leagues,” Dean said. “And here we are. So, it’s just been life on fast forward as of right now.”

Well, fast forward, so to speak. When you’re a role player, sometimes you just have to wait your turn in more ways than one. While he says he’s fine without getting any at-bats, sometimes that filters down to the most mundane things. For example, when your locker is next to star shortstop Mookie Betts’ on the road, that comes with hurdles.

After swiping his first career playoff bag, he had to wait in his towel for 20 minutes in the clubhouse just standing there because the gaggle of reporters surrounding the three-time World Series champion Betts was blocking his entire locker, including every piece of clothing he had.

But Dean certainly remembers his first game with the Dodgers well.

“It was crazy. It was [Clayton] Kershaw versus [Max] Scherzer on Kobe [Bryant] Night. So, it was a really good night. That night was really intense,” he recalled. “They [Dodgers] were playing their a–es off, as they still are.”

There’s a popular trope among birdbrain sports fans (who only claim to like baseball when they’re finding a way to insult some portion of the game) that the Dodgers are destroying baseball from a competitive standpoint. On their way to the World Series, Roberts famously said, ‘Let’s win four more and really ruin baseball,’ ” referring to the idea that a large payroll, scouting department and high-profile players are an unfair advantage because their owner is super rich.

(Mind you, this is a fundamentally flawed argument at best and a woefully asinine path of logic at worst. God forbid a wealthy investor actually spend money on all parts of his/her franchise to actually improve the product. Man, it sure is a shame that other billionaire owners whine like they’re in the poor house because they are more interested in using their baseball teams as ATMs instead of competitive outfits).

The Dodgers excel because they’re willing to do what many other teams don’t — one of which is scouting. Dean isn’t some college baseball stud or a big-time bonus baby who rocketed to the big leagues. He played NCAA Division II baseball at Lenoir-Rhyne University in Hickory, North Carolina, and was a 17th-round pick of the Atlanta Braves in 2018. When the Dodgers signed him in December 2024, he was coming off of playing winter ball in Mexico.

Winter ball isn’t the madcap, disorganized mess that is portrayed (quite racistly, to be honest) in the 1994 movie “The Scout,” but you don’t often hear tales of a player going from south of the border to on top of his proverbial world in just a year after bouncing around the minors for half a decade.

“It’s felt like a long journey, for sure, while you’re in it. It’s been a really cool, interesting, intricate journey [with] a lot of twists and turns, a lot of stuff [you] might not expect,” Dean said during workout day in Los Angeles before Game 3. “But I, I love playing in the Mexican leagues, and I went down there four years in a row.”

Dean’s journey started there during the COVID-19 season, when he felt he just didn’t get enough at-bats in the U.S. to really develop his game. By going to winter ball, he really developed as a human being as much as anything, he said.

“One of the coaches that I played against in Low-A [in Minor League Baseball], he was with the [Colorado] Rockies. He called me like a month into the offseason. He was like, ‘Hey, you want to play winter ball?’ Played against him. Played well against him,” Dean expanded, still kind of incredulous that he was in this position.

“So, he remembered me and called me up. And I had never even really thought about winter ball. I never even really heard about it. Hit my agent up about it and just see whatever. Didn’t really expect anything. Agent called me back said you’re gonna play. You’re gonna get some playing time. You’re gonna lead off or hit at the top of the order — pretty much gonna get some at-bats and just, just an experience.”

He asked his mother. She was supportive, so he went. Turns out he loved it.

“You adapt [to] where you’re at. When you’re submerged in that type of culture … just be a part of it. I feel like it’s the best way to make it go smooth,” Dean said.

He doesn’t speak Spanish, but he’s a good listener and basically figured it out as he went with his teammates’ help.

“A couple of my teammates, they spoke English and Spanish, so that really helped me a lot as far as listening to them talk — like when they’re talking to each other, and then I try to pick on what they saying, and then I asked them questions. Did you say this? Did you say that?

“Once I started to pick up on the humor and stuff … like OK, I’m understanding stuff, but it’s just a whole different world when you’re submerged into it, and that just kind of opened me up as a person and a player.”

Without that experience, getting noticed by a guy on an opposing team, and taking a chance on himself, he might not ever have roamed the outfield in the World Series.

“I kind of found myself while I was playing down there,” Dean said of winter ball.

While Dean is sort of similar to Roberts in terms of style of play, the reasons why Dave was so well-liked as a player and teammate are also a part of Justin’s personality.

One day this week in the Dodgers’ clubhouse, Soulja Boy’s “Kiss Me Thru The Phone” was playing when Dean arrived for work. Dean — who wears No. 75 and attended the same South Carolina high school (Mauldin) as retired NBA legend Kevin Garnett — was rocking out.

He would have been in middle school in 2008 when that song came out — a.k.a, peak target demo. When they play the wacky drum songs before the game in the stadium, Dean’s dreads shake in earnest head-banging mode to get himself fired up with his teammates, who sometimes do it in unison.

It’s pretty clear why having him on a squad of grizzled veterans has its value beyond balls and strikes.

“Everybody talks about this Dodger team saying, “Oh, it’s all big-money guys,” Dodgers television analyst Jerry Hairston said about the narrative surrounding the franchise that moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1958. “What they make sure of, [what] this organization does, they don’t leave any stone unturned.

“They’re always trying to make sure, how can we [improve] our ball club — whether it’s on the defensive end, offensively, with the bat, obviously pitching. So, they want not only guys that are talented, but character guys. Dean knows his role. That’s another thing. You just don’t want a team full of stars. You need to create a team. So, Dean knows his role. He has incredible speed. He can steal a base. Obviously, he’s elite defensively in the outfield.”

People around the organization will tell you that Dean kept making plays in spring training that made him impossible to ignore. The long-winding baseball road that took him all over the South, as well as across the border, paid off. Now he gets to have the burden of finding tickets for his family to come watch him play, as they did in Game 4 in Los Angeles.

Oddly enough, if it weren’t for the Mexican League, Hairston Jr. wouldn’t even be who he is.

“I wouldn’t be here if my dad didn’t go play in the Mexican League,” Hairston said with a wry laugh. “My dad met my mother, Esperanza, playing in the Mexican League. My mom was a teacher, and they met at a place to help kids — you know, a foundation dinner — and my dad went up to her. She denied him, threw some games. Yeah, denied him a couple times.”

This story ended with a son who played in the Big Leagues after his dad was a Negro Leaguer.

“After the third or fourth time asking her out, she said, ‘Yes.’ They had to bring a chaperone,” Hairston Jr. said. “She brought her cousins and her sister, and he took them all out. They all fell in love with my dad and they end up getting married. So, I have a lot of love for the Mexican League, because me, my brother Scott, my siblings, we wouldn’t be here.”

Tales of traveling baseball love aside, Roberts loves what Dean brings to this team. Surely, he sees a lot of himself in the young man and utilizes him as such.

“Great teammate. Really good self-evaluator,” Roberts said of Dean. “[He] Obviously wants to be a guy, wants to be in there, but you understand your role on the team, and you try to make the most of it when your number’s called. He’s a plus, plus defender out in center field, he can steal a base, and he’s good on the team.

“Those guys, in the postseason you need to kind of have your horses, but you also have to have the guys on the periphery that are good teammates and kind of keep that mojo going, and Justin does just that.”

Considering his role as a defensive stopper who enters late in games, Dean could be in a position to catch the championship-clinching out if the Dodgers can find a way to turn it around in Toronto. They trail 3-2 in the best-of-7 series after losing 6-1 Wednesday night in this season’s final game at Chavez Ravine.

A World Series ring for Dean would be a glorious cinematic ending the likes of which few would have imagined a year ago — unlike the aforementioned movie starring Brendan Fraser (which ranks at 33% on Rotten Tomatoes). Dean’s life now, though, is still getting storyboarded, and he loves it.

“It’s been like a movie, for sure,” Dean said. “A good one at that.”

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