From the Bronx to Brooklyn to Los Angeles, the Yankees-Dodgers rivalry has produced some of baseball’s most memorable moments: spectacular catches, batting fireworks, even a perfect game. The franchises have met 11 times in the World Series, the most of any two teams.
It remains to be seen if Ohtani vs. Judge and Yamamoto vs. Rodón can match Robinson vs. Berra and Koufax vs. Mantle. But after 43 years without a matchup, one of baseball’s most storied rivalries is back on the biggest stage.
Here is a look at the 11 previous World Series matchups.
1941: No Joy in Flatbush
Yankees win, four games to one. The rivals’ first World Series meeting is most famous for, of all things, a dropped third strike (which must be caught, or the batter can try to run to first base). The Yankees led, two games to one, but Brooklyn (now the Los Angeles Dodgers) was set to equalize, leading by 4-3 in the top of the ninth. With two outs, the Yankees’ Tommy Henrich swung and missed at a curveball. The game was over.
Or was it? The ball bounced off the glove of catcher Mickey Owen and skittered away. Henrich dashed to first. A single, two doubles and two walks later, the Yankees were ahead, 7-4. The demoralized Dodgers went down quickly in the bottom half of the inning.
A brief item by The Associated Press summed up the reaction the next day: “Fans lined the ramp above the dressing room door as the Dodgers marched in and gave them a rousing Brooklyn hoot, with ‘Yeah Owen, ya bum!’ the chief jeer.”
The incident prompted The New York Times to poetry, running a parody of “Casey at the Bat” the next day, with lines like: “There is no joy in Flatbush.”
When the Yankees won Game 5 the next day to take the series, the Times’s article on the victory, written by John Drebinger, was not exactly dripping with understatement.
“Sweeping irresistibly toward their goal in a manner to which they had long been accustomed, the Yankees vanquished the Dodgers once more at Ebbets Field yesterday, and with this victory, achieved by a score of 3 to 1, again established themselves as undisputed baseball champions of the universe.”
But something obviously, and appallingly, was missing: Black players. That would be rectified by the next time the teams met.
1947: Welcome, Jackie Robinson
Yankees win, 4-3. The Series was the first with six umpires, and the first with a pinch-hit home run (by Yogi Berra). But more important, it was the first World Series to be desegregated, with the rookie Jackie Robinson starting at first base for the Dodgers.
In Game 4, the Yankees’ Bill Bevens pitched eight and two-thirds innings of no-hit ball, only to give up a walkoff double to Cookie Lavagetto that cost him his no-hitter and his team the game, 3-2.
In Game 6, the Dodgers’ Al Gionfriddo made a spectacular catch of a Joe DiMaggio blast in the sixth inning to help preserve an 8-6 win that sent the Series to a decider.
“Dashing almost blindly to the spot where he thought the ball would land and turning around at the last moment,” Gionfriddo “leaned far over the bullpen railing and, with his gloved hand, collared the ball,” The Times wrote, contending that the catch “stunned the proud Bombers” and led DiMaggio to begin “walking inconsolably in circles, doubtless wondering whether he could believe his senses.”
But Joe Page pitched five innings of crack relief in Game 7 in the Bronx, and the Yankees sent the Dodgers to their fourth World Series loss. There would be more.
1949: Casey at the Helm
Yankees win, 4-1. A split of 1-0 games to start promised a taut Series, but the Yankees got three runs in the top of the ninth to win Game 3 and took over from there.
The Times praised the winners, saying they were “not the old-time Yankee powerhouse that overawed its opponents into meek submission. It was a team that had to do it the hard way, battle injuries and illness as well as the opposition on the field. It came through as a team, not as a steam roller.”
Joe DiMaggio had missed much of the season with a heel injury and later viral pneumonia, but he had a homer in the clincher. Yankees Manager Casey Stengel, in his first season, won the first of his seven World Series titles.
The Times also lauded the gentlemanliness of the Series: “There was an agreeable scarcity of ‘beefs’ and ‘rhubarbs.’”
1952: Billy Martin Saves the Day
Yankees win, 4-3. Brooklyn got the drop on the Yankees and came home to Ebbets Field with a three-games-to-two lead, only to lose the Series. Duke Snider’s 24 total bases, a Series record, were not enough.
The Yankees’ 4-2 win in Game 7 included homers by Gene Woodling and Mickey Mantle, but is most remembered for a catch. In the seventh inning, Jackie Robinson popped up the ball. The result was far from routine.
“It looked simple enough as Billy Martin, Yank second sacker, stalked in for it,” The Times reported. “But the ball seemed to get caught in a wind eddy that sent it back toward the plate, and Martin, now racing at top speed, since no one else could interfere in such a ticklish spot, just about made it with a headlong dive.”
The catch potentially saved several runs, as the three base runners were all going with two outs.
1953: Five in a Row for the Yankees
Yankees win, 4-2. The Yankees polished off their fifth straight World Series title, still a record.
A 14-strikeout effort by Carl Erskine in Game 3 was the Dodgers’ highlight. Billy Martin was at the center of it again, stroking a walkoff single in the clincher. He hit .500 for the Series with eight runs batted in, both tying Series records at the time.
For the Dodgers faithful, it was another bitter pill, although The Times put a brave face on it: “Even the most sorely disappointed Flatbush fan could not complain,” it said, noting the team “fought off defeat until the last gasp.”
But those Flatbush fans wanted more. Would they ever get their World Series championship?
1955: Brooklyn Beats the Bronx at Last
Dodgers win, 4-3. Finally, Pee Wee Reese, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson and the Brooklyn Dodgers were the World Series champions. The team had lost its seven previous trips to the classic, beginning in 1916.
One of the Series’ most famous moments, Robinson’s steal of home at Yankee Stadium, actually came in a losing effort in Game 1. Every game in the Series was won by the home team until the fateful Game 7 at Yankee Stadium. Johnny Podres gave up eight hits, but no runs to the Yankees, and Gil Hodges drove in both runs with a single and a sacrifice fly in the Dodgers’ 2-0 victory.
Telephone company officials reported that the volume of calls into Brooklyn between 3:44 and 4:01 p.m. was the largest since V-J Day. “Most were just floods of plain hosannas,” The Times speculated.
It was especially satisfying because Brooklyn Dodgers fans always felt a little overshadowed by their more storied counterparts, just as Brooklyn felt a little overshadowed by the bright lights of Manhattan. The Dodgers’ victory produced one of the most famous Daily News front pages, a cartoon of a nearly toothless vagrant, epitomizing the rough-hewed Dodgers fans, proclaiming, “Who’s a Bum!”
1956: Perfection for the Yankees
Yankees win, 4-3. Normalcy was restored the next year, as the Dodgers failed to repeat. Don Larsen’s famous perfect game gave the Yankees a three-games-to-two lead.
Larsen’s gem was saved by three excellent fielding plays. In the second inning, Jackie Robinson stroked a shot that caromed off third baseman Andy Carey’s glove. But Gil McDougald, the shortstop, snatched the ball up and made the throw to first.
In the fifth, Mickey Mantle atoned for some spotty fielding earlier in the Series by making a running catch on a Gil Hodges shot. In the eighth, Carey made a diving catch on another Hodges bid for a hit. The game concluded with Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms.
The Dodgers fought back with a 1-0, 10-inning victory on a Jackie Robinson walkoff single to force a Game 7. It was the last hit of his career. But the Yankees rolled in the finale, 9-0, behind two Berra homers.
Brooklyn would face a greater indignity. The next May, National League owners agreed to allow the Dodgers to move to Los Angeles.
1963: Sandy Koufax Shines
Dodgers win, 4-0. The Dodgers took to Los Angeles quickly, winning the World Series over the Chicago White Sox in their second year there. Four years later, they were facing their old nemesis again. It was a new rivalry, but still the old one, in a way.
The Dodgers had a nuclear weapon for this series: Sandy Koufax. He won Game 1 with 15 strikeouts, then returned for the sweep-clinching Game 4. Thanks to him and his fellow starters, Johnny Podres and Don Drysdale, the Yankees scored only four runs in the entire series.
In the final game, first baseman Joe Pepitone wore the goat horns for the Yankees. With the score tied at 1-1 in the seventh inning, a throw from third baseman Clete Boyer went through Pepitone, and Junior Gilliam’s speed turned a groundout into a three-base error. He scored on a sacrifice fly for the 2-1 final margin.
1977: Enter Reggie Jackson
Yankees win, 4-2. When a rivalry has the history of the Yankees-Dodgers, the heroics of the past can make it hard for the present to match up. Cue Mr. October.
Reggie Jackson produced one of the most famous World Series performances ever, smacking five home runs, three of them in the deciding Game 6. Belying his reputation for self-aggrandizement, Jackson said afterward: “Babe Ruth was great. I’m just lucky.”
Perhaps he was rattled by having to sprint off the diamond after the game, body-checking several fans. Hundreds of Yankees supporters had poured onto the field after the game, overwhelming security. It was a fitting ending for a turbulent year in New York City, including the Son of Sam killings, and a boisterous baseball season in which Yankees players, Manager Billy Martin and ownership feuded with one another as often as they won. But they claimed the franchise’s 21st championship, and its first since 1962.
1978: Bouncing the Yankees’ Way
Yankees win, 4-2. The Yankees lost the first two games, before reeling off four wins in a row for back-to-back titles. Reggie Jackson, or more precisely his hip, was at the center of it.
The Yankees trailed, 3-1, in the sixth inning of Game 4 and were looking at a potential three-games-to-one deficit. They had men on first and second, with Lou Piniella at the plate. Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell fielded the ball and stepped on second, then fired to first for the possible inning-ending double play. But the ball hit Jackson, who was standing between first and second, and ricocheted away, allowing a run to score.
Replays seemed to show that Jackson was more than an innocent bystander. He had stuck out his hip to encourage the ball to sail away. The Yankees won in 10 innings on a Piniella walkoff single and routed the Dodgers in Games 5 and 6.
1981: The Battle of Steinbrenner
Dodgers win, 4-2. A strange strike-shortened year brought a split season and an extra round of the postseason. But it ended with the familiar: a Yankees-Dodgers World Series, the 11th one.
This time it was the Yankees who won the first two games before the Dodgers won three straight at home, all by one-run margins. Fernando Valenzuela, the 20-year-old rookie of the year and Cy Young Award winner, won his start for the Dodgers in Game 3. Yankee ace Ron Guidry won Game 1 but lost Game 5.
In a strange incident after Game 5, the Yankees owner George Steinbrenner said that he encountered two drunk Dodgers fans in a hotel elevator. The fans, he claimed, derided the Yankees as “chokers” and New Yorkers in general as “animals.” Steinbrenner said he was hit with a bottle and fought back, breaking his hand in the process.
“There are two guys in this town looking for their teeth,” he boasted afterward.
The men were never found, leading some to wonder about the story’s veracity.
In any case, Game 6 was a blowout, 9-2, giving the Dodgers their first title since 1965.
For 2024, the bar is high. Here’s hoping the Yankees and the Dodgers can produce another crop of memories.
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