LOS ANGELES – The Brut and the Budweiser pooled in the middle of the Dodgers’ clubhouse Sunday afternoon as players, coaches, trainers and executives arrived to celebrate their fourth straight National League West title. Their families stood outside in a hallway, safely separated from the squalor by two sets of double doors.

Manager Dave Roberts briefly stepped outside to kiss his wife and daughter. Then he looked up to see rows of wives, girlfriends, children, mothers and fathers standing on dry ground.

“You guys come in! Families are in,” Roberts shouted above the clamor.

With that declaration, the clubhouse became even more crowded – the Dodgers’ season in a nutshell.

Forty players were active for a 4-3 win over the Colorado Rockies on Sunday. That’s happened before according to Major League Baseball, but it’s rare.

It’s also uncommon for a team to cycle through 55 players (only the San Diego Padres and Atlanta Braves have used more this season), but the 2016 Dodgers did that too.

The story of why the Dodgers needed so many players has been told: 28 men spent time on the disabled list at various times, a record since at least 1987. Those injuries required 15 pitchers to start a game and 24 position players to swing a bat.

Of the 40 active players Sunday, 10 were not in the Dodgers’ spring training camp – either because they were on the minor league side of Camelback Ranch or in another organization.

But the lines between veteran and rookie, between newcomer and holdover, blurred when the division was clinched. The story of how so many players felt at home in one clubhouse is difficult to appreciate from the outside, and perhaps an underrated part of the club’s success.

“You saw the injuries happen and they didn’t let it factor into anything,” pitcher Jesse Chavez said. “They just picked those guys up who were on the DL. That’s something you saw from the other side before I got here. It’s impressive to watch.”

Chavez, 33, was acquired from the Toronto Blue Jays on Aug. 1. The Dodgers are the eighth organization he’s played for in a professional career that began in 2003. He said he felt at home in the clubhouse immediately, noticing quickly that the Dodgers avoided the trap of splintering into cliques.

“Just the conversations you have in passing – the walking-bys, the hellos – just simple stuff,” Chavez said. “The acknowledgment of everybody, the communication we have, is beyond what you could imagine.

“To come here, it feels like I was in spring training with this group.”

A few minutes later, standing on the opposite side of the room, veteran catcher Carlos Ruiz said the same thing.

The Dodgers are Ruiz’s second organization. His 18-year run with the Philadelphia Phillies ended when he was traded for A.J. Ellis on Aug.25. Ruiz was just as beloved in Philadelphia as Ellis was in Los Angeles.

And yet, Ruiz said, “it took me two or three days just to fit into the group. They tried to make me feel like I was here since the beginning of the season. That was big.”

Two of the biggest contributors Sunday weren’t in the clubhouse for vast portions of the season.

The game’s hero, Charlie Culberson, hadn’t started in four days. That was typical for him.

A non-roster invitee to spring training, Culberson made the Dodgers’ opening-day roster, then wound up on the Oklahoma City-to-Los Angeles express. He spent roughly half of the season in Triple-A.

On Saturday, Roberts told Culberson he would be in the lineup Sunday. That was typical too. Culberson had a day to prepare and, by extension, a way to feel like part of the team.

“He does a good job of that,” Culberson said of Roberts.

The starting pitcher, Brandon McCarthy, was two weeks removed from his lowest point in the season if not his career. Technically, he’d been on the disabled list with a sore hip. In reality, he had been battling a case of the yips.

“You kind of forget how to throw a ball,” McCarthy said, “at least in a competitive situation.”

For a moment, McCarthy feared his career might be over at age 33. A mechanical adjustment in the bullpen changed that. He re-discovered his fastball command and threw 51/3 innings against the Rockies, holding them to two runs.

“This last month, I couldn’t have felt more removed,” McCarthy said. “That wasn’t by people excluding me. Everybody gave me the widest berth I could have to go figure things out. A couple weeks ago, I was praying that someone would call from the front office and say, ‘shut this down, we’ll see you next year, let’s get things figured out.’ And you can’t feel farther away from the team at that point.

“The last two weeks, it was like, ‘hey, I feel like I’m part of this again.’ I wanted to get back into a game.”

In the middle of the clubhouse Sunday, pitcher Kenta Maeda lifted his interpreter off the ground and dumped him into a beer cooler. The damp elbows of data analysts brushed against those of minor league coaches.

Several players dispatched the clichéd metaphor about clubhouse as family, but it was never more appropriate. Roberts had already invited everyone’s families into the room.

Contact the writer: jphoornstra@scng.com