The “nobody believed in us” card is a strong one to play when you’re a manager or coach trying to keep your talented team motivated.
Look how well it worked for Dabo Swinney all those years when Clemson was playing for national titles. The “disrespect” was strong for them.
Kirby Smart’s Georgia Bulldogs have two national titles in the last three seasons but he had no problem pulling that card after their recent win over Texas.
And now, we present to you Dave Roberts, manager of the Los Angeles Dodgers, winners of 98 regular-season games, most of any team in Major League Baseball, trotting out the team’s “underdog” status while on the brink of sweeping the New York Yankees for their second World Series championship in five years.
“We know going into the postseason that no one picked us…We were essentially an underdog.”
Dodgers HC Dave Roberts describes their mentality going into the World Series pic.twitter.com/azLytrh2EP
— First Things First (@FTFonFS1) October 29, 2024
“You guys have maybe been the best team in baseball the last 12 years, but have the one World Series in the pandemic year that sometimes people don’t give it as much credit as maybe it deserves,” said Fox’s Chris Broussard on First Things First. “How much pressure did you guys feel heading into these playoffs? You made the big signings in the offseason, of Shohei [Ohtani] and [Yoshinobu] Yamamoto. And you’ve had these years where you haven’t won the World Series even though you’ve been a great team. How much pressure was there on you guys and how did you quell it and keep guys able to just focus on one game at a time?”
“Yes, there was pressure. Certainly with the signings that we had this winter,” responded Roberts. “I still believe every single year I hear the same thing. World Series or bust. So you can’t have anymore greater expectations than winning the World Series. How do we quell it? I think the ‘Us versus them…’
“We know going into the postseason that no one picked us. It’s really ironic that we were essentially an underdog… I think ‘us’ as a collective unit came together and said we want to prove everybody wrong. That’s sort of our rallying cry.”
To be fair, Broussard couldn’t have set Roberts up better if they’d scripted it beforehand.
Sure, there’s some truth to the notion that the Dodgers have taken over for the Atlanta Braves as the MLB franchise that dominates the regular season and always falls short in the playoffs. And the San Diego Padres and Philadelphia Phillies were trendy picks to come out of the National League. But there’s a difference between being the overlooked dominant team and being an underdog.
You don’t get to sign the best player in baseball, have a payroll in the $250 million range, win 98 games, lead your division for the entirety of the season, have a dominant run in the postseason, and then get to say “Nobody believed in us.”
But hey, as we’ve seen, the mentality often works, absurd as it seems to the rest of us.
