Postgame P: Onions, group chats and the greatest left foot in OU history

The Los Angeles Dodgers won the World Series in seven games last night. No, you didn’t click on the wrong article. I promise I’m going somewhere relevant with this. Folks, I’ve been a Dodger fan for as long as I can remember. It’s the only professional sports allegiance that was a birthright for me. I was born into Dodger fandom. Admittedly, it’s gotten a little more difficult in years past to root for a team that’s essentially buying an all-star roster, but the Dodgers are the Dodgers, and I’m always going to love them. After witnessing years and years of October futility throughout my childhood and adolescence, I’ve been blessed to see three World Series wins in the last six seasons (2020, 2024 and 2025). Dodger fandom is the tie that binds basically all the Thune men. There exists a group chat that consists of nearly every adult male on my dad’s side of the family — uncles, great-uncles, cousins, second cousins. And because we are dudes, the group chat is literally only active for one month every year. It’s a group chat that specifically exists for discussion of Dodger baseball in October. Once the Dodgers’ playoff run ends, the chat goes dormant for another eleven months, and then we do it all again. You might have paid attention to the World Series, and you might not have paid attention at all. If you didn’t, let me give you the cliff notes: The Dodgers fought off the Toronto Blue Jays — #Merica — in what will go down as one of the greatest Fall Classics in history. A seven-game slugfest went down to the final pitch, with LA claiming a 5-4 extra-inning win in Game 7. I watched almost every pitch of the first six games of the series, but I didn’t watch any of Game 7. The game was going into extras as we were walking off the field at Neyland Stadium, and I was such a nervous wreck that I couldn’t bear to pull up the stream on my iPhone. Instead, I had a buddy text me pitch-by-pitch updates as I stood behind a camera and shot Brent Venables’ postgame presser. I’m not going to bore you with all the details of the World Series. That’s not what you’re here for. But I’ll say this: watching the World Series as a Dodger fan was very reminiscent of the Oklahoma football experience. Because brother, the Dodgers tried to lose that series a thousand different ways. They fell behind three games to two, and had to win Games 6 and 7 on the road. They needed a game-tying homer in the ninth inning from a 36-year-old infielder who hadn’t had an extra-base hit all postseason. They needed two unbelievable defensive plays to escape a bases-loaded jam in the bottom of the ninth. And for the final eight outs, they had to turn to a gassed pitcher who was working on no rest after throwing six innings the previous night.