Perhaps the best analogy for the stunning 0-3 hole the Los Angeles Dodgers find themselves in comes from The Godfather – the third installment of the trilogy, that is.
Credit FS1 host Colin Cowherd for the comparison Wednesday.
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“The Dodgers trying to win a third World Series is starting to have Godfather III vibes to it,” he began. “Some of the names are familiar. Al Pacino. Diane Keaton. Francis Ford Coppola is still directing it. But it feels played. And the Dodgers feel played out.”
Brilliant.
Cuban-American actor Andy Garcia and American actor Al Pacino are on the set of The Godfather: Part III, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. (Corbis via Getty Images)
Now, for some ground rules before sharing the analogy widely.
Before you start assigning Dodgers players to actors, understand that Pacino was still excellent in The Godfather Part III. Shohei Ohtani, universally recognized as the greatest baseball player in the world, has not been.
Ohtani had batted under .200 in four straight postseason games. The Dodgers reportedly even considered benching him ahead of Game 3 because of his struggles and injuries.
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But if the Dodgers don’t somehow surge back from 0-3 and become just the second team in MLB history to overcome such a deficit in an LCS series, the Godfather analogy could hold up remarkably well.
The Godfather and The Godfather Part II are two of the greatest films ever made. The opinion here is that the original is the greatest movie ever and the sequel – which is also partly a prequel – is somewhere in the top 10, maybe the top five.
Part III isn’t nearly as bad as some movie buffs sometimes portray it. However, it was undoubtedly a profound disappointment compared to the first two films.
For one, Coppola cast his daughter Sofia as Mary Corleone. It didn’t work. The romance between Mary and her first cousin Vincent consumed too much screen time for how little it ultimately contributed to the trilogy’s conclusion.
The absence of Tom Hagen is glaring, as is the loss of Sonny Corleone, whose death in the original film deprived the third installment of another defining character from the Corleone family.
Actors Sofia Coppola, Diane Keaton, Al Pacino, John Savage, Don Novello, Andy Garcia and Talia Shire on the set of The Godfather: Part III, written and directed by Francis Ford Coppola. (Corbis via Getty Images)
In sum, The Godfather trilogy would be remembered even more favorably had there never been a third film. There’s a reason some Godfather marathons conveniently end after Part II.
Likewise, if the Dodgers don’t come back in this series, the 2026 team will be remembered as a stain on the legacy of the dynasty.
Still, The Godfather Part III had excuses.
The film was released 16 years after Part II. The principal cast had aged. Robert Duvall, who portrayed Hagen, did not return. And after nearly two decades, the first two films had been elevated to a standard that virtually no sequel could reasonably meet.
The 2026 Dodgers have no such excuses.
Their payroll exceeds that of the other three remaining teams combined. Los Angeles added Tarik Skubal and Kyle Tucker to a roster that was already considered one of the greatest ever assembled on paper.
Granted, the cast, like in the film, is aging. They are trying to recapture old magic. It’s not working.
Nonetheless, we enjoyed the analogy. The Godfather Part III and the Dodgers’ 2026 postseason are shaping up as two of the more memorable disappointments in their respective fields.
Los Angeles Dodgers’ Shohei Ohtani (17) reacts after fouling off a pitch against the Toronto Blue Jays during the fourth inning in Game 3 of baseball’s World Series in Los Angeles on Monday, Oct. 27, 2025. (Frank Gunn/The Canadian Press via AP)
Even depressed Dodgers superfan and OutKick reporter Ian Miller appreciated Cowherd’s comparison.
“There’s a case to be made that The Godfather Part 1 and Godfather Part 2 are two of the best movies ever made. Just like the 2024-2025 Dodgers are two of the best teams ever. If the price for that is getting pulled back in for the 2026 team, it was worth it,” Miller said of Cowherd’s analogy.
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He did, however, add one important qualifier:
“As long as they don’t make Megalopolis next year, of course.”