Their MLB cameos led to World Series rings. Are they happy? Well, it’s complicated

The one man who cannot lose this World Series sat at home, watching the playoffs unfold when a friend forwarded an online post that gave him a shock.

“Because I’m with the Yankees now, I completely forgot,” said Taylor Trammell, a 27-year-old Yankees minor-league outfielder who appeared in five games this season for the big league team. “If the Dodgers win it, I can get a ring as well.”


That’s because before landing with the Yankees, Trammell played in five games earlier this season for the Dodgers. No matter what happens in the Fall Classic, he is guaranteed to be a champion, despite the fact that his seven at-bats between the two teams resulted in just one hit.

Trammell is an extreme example of a phenomenon that happens almost every season: players spend brief stints with World Series teams, and, regardless of the breadth of their contributions, are later given rings.

Not every great major-league player will earn a World Series ring. But most every player who appears on a team that wins the World Series receives a token of that accomplishment. It doesn’t matter if you are Yordan Alvarez, who hit 37 home runs for the 2022 champion Astros, or Taylor Jones, who took one at-bat. You could be David Ortiz, who drove in 139 runs for the iconic 2004 Red Sox — or you could be Phil Seibel, who pitched the only 3 2/3 innings of his big-league career that season for Boston.

The World Series between the Yankees and Dodgers will start on Friday, and with it will come rings for players long forgotten by fans. If New York wins, so too do Clayton Andrews and Clayton Beeter. If Los Angeles wins, Connor Brogdon and Zach Logue will get the same rings as Mookie Betts and Shohei Ohtani.

For nearly all of these fringe players, the emotions are complicated. They have technically achieved their goal, receiving one of the most coveted items in all of sports — a World Series ring — but they are faced with a quandary: Did they really earn it?
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