Mike DiGiovanna Los Angeles Times (TNS)
LOS ANGELES — With the Dodgers set to face the Yankees in the World Series starting at 8 p.m. Friday, here are the five most iconic moments in Dodgers-Yankees World Series history.
27 up, 27 down
Don Larsen was a mediocre pitcher at best, going 81-91 with a 3.78 earned-run average in 14 seasons, and he was so bad in his first World Series start in 1956 that he was pulled in the second inning after giving up four runs in a 13-8 Game 2 loss to the Brooklyn Dodgers.
But in Game 5, the right-hander did what no other pitcher has ever done — retire all 27 batters, seven by strikeout, for baseball’s only World Series perfect game.
The lasting image of that afternoon in Yankee Stadium is catcher Yogi Berra leaping into Larsen’s arms and onto the front page of every sports section in the nation after Dale Mitchell struck out to end a 2-0 Yankees victory.
But the perfecto would not have been possible without the stout defense of third baseman Andy Carey, who got enough of his glove on Jackie Robinson’s second-inning smash to deflect the ball to shortstop Gil McDougald, who threw to first for the out, and caught a Gil Hodges low liner to his left about an inch above the ground in the eighth.
“It was a fantastic thing to be a part of,” Carey, who lived in Newport Beach for 55 years before his 2011 death, told The Los Angeles Times in 1986. “I don’t think we realized what a great game it was until many years later.”
A legend is born
Reggie Jackson, the self-proclaimed “straw that stirs the drink,” the slugger who joined Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron as one of a handful of players to have candy bars named after them, capped a tumultuous debut 1977 season in the Bronx with a game that earned him the nickname “Mr. October.”
In a Game 6-clinching 8-4 win over the Dodgers, Jackson hit three first-pitch homers off three pitchers — Burt Hooten in the fourth inning, Elias Sosa in the fifth and knuckleballer Charlie Hough in the eighth, his final drive bouncing off the black-painted batter’s eye and into the waiting hands of a fan in center field.
“Goodbye! Oh, what a blow,” broadcaster Howard Cosell proclaimed as Jackson’s third blast left the yard. “Forget about who the most valuable player is in the World Series. How this man has responded to pressure!”
Jackson, who had signed a mammoth (at the time) five-year, $2.96 million free-agent deal with the Yankees before 1977, hit .450 (9 for 20) with five homers and eight RBIs in the Series to win MVP, as the Yankees won their first title in 15 years.
It takes a thief
The Dodgers trailed the Yankees 6-4 in the eighth inning of the 1955 Series opener when Robinson bolted for home as Whitey Ford began his windup. Robinson slid into the plate as Berra made the tag, but umpire Bill Summers called Robinson safe, Berra immediately turning around to give Summers an earful.
Berra insisted until the day he died at age 90 in 2015 that Robinson was out, so much so that every time he ran into Rachel Robinson, Jackie’s widow, Berra would say, “Out,” and Rachel would say, “Safe,” before the two embraced.
The Yankees held on for a 6-5 Game 1 win, but the Dodgers won the Series, with Johnny Podres throwing an eight-hit shutout in a 2-0 Game 7 victory that gave Brooklyn its first championship after losing to the Yankees in five World Series from 1941 to ’53 and finally ended the annual “Wait ’til next year” lament of Dodgers fans.
Sandy a dandy
In a battle of eventual Hall of Famers, Dodgers left-hander Sandy Koufax outdueled Yankees left-hander Ford in Game 4 of the 1963 World Series, Koufax giving up one run and six hits, striking out eight and walking none, in a complete-game 2-1 victory, the only time the Dodgers clinched a World Series title in Chavez Ravine.
Koufax also struck out a then-World Series-record 15 batters in a 5-2 Game 1 victory in which he gave up two runs and six hits in nine innings, the dominant bookend performances earning him MVP. It marked the first time the Yankees, who never had a lead in the four games, had been swept in a World Series.
Little Al the homewrecker
An unlikely star stole the spotlight and a home run from legendary Yankees slugger Joe DiMaggio in 1947 with one of the greatest catches in World Series history.
The Dodgers led 8-5 in the sixth inning of Game 6 when, with two outs and two on, Al Gionfriddo, a 5-foot-6, 165-pound reserve outfielder, raced into the left-field corner to make a twisting, lunging catch of DiMaggio’s potential game-tying drive on the tip of his glove above the short chain-link fence in front of the bullpen, 415 feet from home plate.
A stunned crowd of 74,065 in Yankee Stadium fell silent while DiMaggio kicked the dirt between first and second base in frustration, a rare on-field show of emotion for the Yankee Clipper. The Dodgers held on for an 8-6 victory to force a Game 7, which the Yankees won 5-2. That turned out to be the last big-league game Gionfriddo played.
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