CHICAGO — The dramatic ending of the World Series on Saturday night, in which the Los Angeles Dodgers beat the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4 in 11 innings in Game 7 to repeat as champions, was closely followed by pronouncements calling it the greatest ever.

It’s an argument that never ends because whenever there is a great World Series, we automatically assume it was better than all the ones that preceded it.

I can recall people saying just that after covering the Florida Marlins beating the Cleveland Indians in Game 7 of the 1997 World Series, in which Craig Counsell’s sacrifice fly with one out in the ninth tied it and Tony Fernandez committed an error on Counsell’s grounder in the 11th that led to the series-clinching run on Edgar Renteria’s walk-off single in a 3-2 win.

The ’97 Indians, like the 2025 Blue Jays, were two outs from a championship, only to see it all disappear with a shocking suddenness.

The media delivered the same narrative in 2001, when the Arizona Diamondbacks beat the New York Yankees in a seven-game series that ended with Luis Gonzalez’s walk-off single off closer Mariano Rivera.

Like 2025, it also featured three classic endings in Games 4, 5 and 7. Best ever? “I certainly think so,” Arizona manager Bob Brenly said. “I mean, it had a little bit of everything.”

More recently I heard it when Chicago Cubs closer Aroldis Chapman blew a Game 7 lead in Cleveland before the Cubs stormed back, after a brief rain delay, to win 8-7 in 10 innings. Many Cubs fans own T-shirts that say: “The greatest game ever played was on a Wednesday in Cleveland.”

My own recollection as a fan who never dreamed of actually covering a World Series tells me the greatest game ever was on a Tuesday in Boston, when Red Sox catcher Carlton Fisk hit a 12th-inning home run against the Cincinnati Reds to win Game 6 of the 1975 World Series. That was also a crazy World Series with so many twists and turns, historians have called it the best ever, and I’ve always defaulted to ’75 when asked to name my favorite.

But the truth is no one can tell you which one was better because it’s all subjective. No numbers-cruncher can determine an answer based on statistics or analytics, and no writers, analysts or historians can do anything but come up with an educated guess.

The greatest World Series is the one that made you laugh, cry or shriek to the heavens, bringing out feelings you never knew existed. Your choice is never wrong because it’s yours, and no one can tell you otherwise.

But no matter where it stands on the all-time list, the 2025 World Series will be remembered for the classic Game 7 comeback sparked by Miguel Rojas’ game-tying ninth-inning home run; for the 18-inning Game 3 that ended with Freddie Freeman’s walk-off homer; for Shohei Ohtani getting on base a record nine times in Game 3, then starting on the mound the next day in Game 4; for Yoshinobu Yamamoto’s three-inning relief appearance in Game 7 after starting and winning Game 6; and for Vladimir Guerrero Jr’s. heroic performance in a losing cause.

It was baseball the way it was meant to be, even if you wanted the megabucks Dodgers to lose.

If you’re a Cubs fan from Chicago, you have to sympathize with Toronto — or even with all of Canada because the whole nation was rooting for its only remaining MLB team since the loss of the Montreal Expos. To our sister city, we feel your pain.

“It breaks your heart,” former Commissioner Bart Giamatti once wrote of baseball. “It is designed to break your heart.”

This one was particularly heartbreaking, and even as a neutral observer, two moments during the 4-4 tie in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 made me gasp out loud.

The first was when Blue Jays pinch runner Isiah Kiner-Falefa was forced out at the plate on a bang-bang play on Daulton Varsho’s grounder to Rojas at second for the second out. Had Kiner-Falefa taken a bigger lead off third, the game would’ve ended with him scoring the winning run. But he stayed close to the bag, per instructions from his coaches, to avoid the possibility of being doubled off.

One step from Valhalla! Oh, the humanity.

Then came the fly ball from Ernie Clement that went sailing over the head of left fielder Enrique Hernández, who was playing so shallow, it looked like he was in a Little League game. But center fielder Andy Pages raced over and stole the catch from Hernández in an outfield collision, saving the Dodgers once again.

That was when I realized the baseball gods were in the Dodgers’ corner, manning the spit bucket and yelling encouragement when they were on the ropes. This was like the ending to “Rocky,” with the Blue Jays losing just like the Sylvester Stallone character but gaining respect for the way they battled.

We probably deserve a sequel in 2026, but this could’ve been the Blue Jays’ best chance. The Yankees figure to reload, and nothing is guaranteed even if they don’t.

The Dodgers, meanwhile, already are favored to three-peat, and everyone but the rebuilding teams will be scheming to prevent that in 2026, beginning with next week’s general managers meetings in Las Vegas.

“The season starts too early and finishes too late, and there are too many games in between,” Bill Veeck proclaimed in 1976 when he owned the White Sox.

That’s truer than ever now, especially after a season that began March 18 in Tokyo — when Yamamoto threw the opening pitch to Cubs leadoff hitter Ian Happ — and ended Nov. 1 when Yamamoto induced Alejandro Kirk to hit a broken-bat, double-play grounder to end Game 7 in Toronto.

But the collective moments that made up the season are what mattered most, and baseball gave us more than we could’ve asked for in 2025.

Still, it’s never too early to start thinking about next year.

We can hardly wait.

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