LOS ANGELES – Aaron Judge, friendly and cooperative as he generally is with the media, is not prone to especially memorable quotes.

Much in the same way his predecessor as Yankees’ captain, Derek Jeter, was not.

But Judge delivered one last October after the Yankees fell in five games to the Dodgers in the World Series, coughing up a five-run lead in Game 5 at the Stadium. The Yankees did so in calamitous fashion in a fifth-inning from hell that featured two errors, including one by Judge, and Gerrit Cole failing to cover first base on a ground ball.

“I think falling short in the World Series will stay with me until I die,” Judge said in the silent home clubhouse after the 7-6 loss in Game 5.

The Yankees start a three-game series against the Dodgers Friday night at Dodger Stadium in what may well be a preview of this year’s World Series.

The Yankees, winners of five straight games and 16 of their last 20, are among the hottest teams and come into the series with the second-best record in the American League at 35-20 (the Tigers are 37-20).

The Dodgers, crowned by many before the season as 2025 champions because of an offseason in which they, even after winning the title, still aggressively upgraded their roster, haven’t completely taken off yet but still lead the rugged NL West at 34-22.

Though Yankees manager Aaron Boone said the series will “feel big,” no one should confuse that with it being a true World Series “rematch” or a chance for the Yankees to exact “revenge” on the Dodgers. Those things, and some of the other hyped verbiage that has been spilled going into the series, can only occur if there is a title on the line and that can’t happen until this October.

Still, as Boone likes to say, these are the kind of series he likes his team to play in during the 162-game regular season when, at times, a feeling of the mundane can settle in.

“We won’t go in treating it any different, but playing the Subway Series last week, a lot went into that, a lot of hype for that. I think those are good things for our guys to play in and experience,” Boone said. “I’ve talked about in the regular season, you have those handful of series or games – whether we go to London to play [in 2019] or Field of Dreams [in 2021] or those big rivalry series where there was ‘a lot on the line.’ I think when there’s a lot more eyeballs and attention and hype around it, I think those are good for us to play in.”

Judge said earlier in the week he didn’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the Yankees’ World Series loss to the Dodgers. And that includes Game 5 because, for him, that isn’t necessarily where the series was lost.

Dodger Stadium, where Judge’s 2023 season all but came to an end in June of that year when he suffered a severe right toe injury making a running catch at the base of the bullpen wall in right, was where the 2025 World Series may well have been decided as the Yankees dropped both Games 1 and 2. They were Kirk Gibson’d in a 6-3 loss in Game 1 when Freddie Freeman hit a walk-off grand slam off Nestor Cortes and came out flat in a 4-2 loss in Game 2. All of that before coming out flat again in a 4-2 loss in Game 3 that more or less sealed the series for the Dodgers, the reason Judge didn’t spend the winter asking himself “what if?” when it came to Game 5.

“I go back to Game 1, you gotta win Game 1,” Judge said. “You can talk about what happened in Game 5, but you drop the first two games … you can talk about all those games, but I’m not really much of a what-if guy. Did it happen or did it not? Did you do the job or did you not? And go from there.”

What did Judge hope his teammates took away from not doing the job on the sport’s biggest stage?

“Taking away the experience of how bad it hurt getting all the way there to the end and not getting the final prize, I think that is something that will stick with guys forever,” Judge said. “Just trying to do everything you can from spring training to the regular season to the start of the postseason and try to put yourself in a better position so you don’t have that sour taste in your mouth again.”