When the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the Milwaukee Brewers in the National League Championship Series to advance to their second straight World Series, one lifelong fan was celebrating and dreaming of what it would be like to see his team play in the Fall Classic again.
John Duarte, a 72-year-old contractor from Thousand Oaks, has spent a lifetime bleeding Dodger Blue. His devotion to the Dodgers runs as deep as the Pacific Ocean. He was just a boy when the Dodgers announced they were moving from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in 1957. But from that point forward he became an obsessed fan.
His mind is a scrapbook of memories— dusty ticket stubs, transistor radios, and the golden voice of Vin Scully echoing through the crackle of AM static. He went to countless games throughout the 1970s and 1980s. After his two children were born, his extended family got season tickets in the Loge section at Chavez Ravine, and he spent the next few decades taking his wife and kids to a handful of games a year.
But the Fall Classic was always a hopeful dream. Tickets for the World Series in 1981 and 1988 were too expensive to take his family so he watched Kirk Gibson’s improbable walk-off homer in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series from the friendly confines of his home.
It would be 29 years before the Dodgers would make it back, and once again the astronomical price of tickets made it difficult to get a seat.
The last time John attended a World Series game was 1978, when Reggie Jackson and the Yankees silenced Dodger Stadium and broke a city’s heart in six. He’s carried that memory for nearly half a century — the ache and the awe intertwined.
This October, fate decided he’d waited long enough.
Thanks to Destination Toronto, Canada’s premier tourism company, John Duarte was chosen for a once-in-a-lifetime experience — an all-expenses-paid trip to Toronto for Games 1 and 2 of the 2025 World Series between the Dodgers and the Blue Jays. A gift wrapped not in ribbon, but in maple leaves and miracle dust.
For John, this wasn’t just a trip north of the border. It was a journey through time — a crossing between the boy who fell in love with baseball and the man who never stopped believing in it.
He wandered through Toronto like a wide-eyed traveler rediscovering youth. The CN Tower pierced the clouds like a monument to wonder. Ripley’s Aquarium shimmered with color and light. Casa Loma stood regal and still, whispering stories from another century. And Centre Island, calm and quiet against the hum of the city, gave him space to breathe it all in.
But it wasn’t until he walked into Rogers Centre, dome closed and crowd roaring, that his heart found its familiar rhythm again. The Dodgers — his Dodgers — playing for it all on foreign soil. When Los Angeles claimed victory in Game 2 to even the series, John stood there in tears, the sound of the final out washing over him like the ocean’s tide.
And the best part?
He wasn’t alone.
John Duarte is my father, and I have covered the Dodgers for the last 12 seasons, traveling on the road during the playoffs each and every year. So to get to experience Games 1 and 2 of the World Series with him after 12 years of him rooting and watching myself and the Boys in Blue from home, was nothing short of amazing.
Two generations of Dodgers fans, bridging the years between us with a once in a lifetime memory.
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Source: NBC Los Angeles
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