One-year anniversaries.

One that's in the books. Another to build toward.

There will be a parade in downtown Los Angeles a couple hours from now, thrown by the Dodgers, who will show off a trophy as the centerpiece of the festivities. Somewhat poetically, perhaps, it lands on the anniversary of the birth of franchise legend Fernando Valenzuela, who passed away last week and who once helped the club win a World Series against the Yankees.

It also lands on the anniversary of this:

(Photo by Jamie Squire/Getty Images)

And, concomitantly, this:

A few days ago, I led off a story about Game 1 of Dodgers-Yankees off by suggesting “I wasn’t even sure I cared who won.” That vibe oddly stayed with me throughout this year’s Series; at my core, it’s hard for me to root for the Yankees unless they’re facing the Astros, but once we got to Game 5 on Wednesday night, I watched realizing that I was being held captive by a weird and almost uncomfortable urge to see each pitch, each play, each outcome go New York’s way. Maybe it was little more than a hope to stave off the end of the baseball season as long as possible.

Or maybe there was just a part of me wanting that feeling of the Rangers as reigning World Champions to keep being a thing, before necessarily being forced to settle in as an awesome and permanent memory.

Now we get on to the activated business of retooling for a new run at a title, which is something I’ve been more than a little restlessly waiting for to become a thing. It’s already begun, both actively (claiming reliever Roansy Contreras off waivers) and passively (losing associate manager Will Venable and hitting coach Tim Hyers to other teams). The list of notes I’ve got for this weekend’s TROT COFFEY segment of Sunday Hops is already quite lengthy in the rumor department.

There is a lot to get to. For Chris Young and his group, and for me in this space.

The Rangers’ ownership of the one true throne atop Major League Baseball lasted two days short of a calendar year. Maybe the reason Gerrit Cole’s mental fail, which will never not be played back as a historically significant Baseball Moment, gave me a little heartache instead of a silent fist-pump was that I wanted the series to get to a Game 6 — less so because having more days of baseball to watch is fun or because it would have been cool to see the Dodgers win it all in front of their own fans rather than in New York (or in Clayton Kershaw’s back yard) than because it would have been poetically cool for the Rangers’ reign to last at least until tonight, a full year.

Today’s parade will celebrate, in part, the Dodgers’ own “left-hitting, right-throwing, 5-wearing hitting machine [who] staved off a Game 1 loss at home with one majestic, unforgettable obliteration of a first-pitch 93-mph fastball on the inner half,” a player who has given the sport a second consecutive one of those who then proceeded to take home World Series MVP honors, perhaps through an injury that will also require offseason surgery.

We all remember, and I trust will never forget, what happened a year ago today. Now the business turns to seeing about what could happen a year from today.

Let’s go.