A Yankee-Dodger World Series

Finally.

We haven’t had this renowned matchup since 1981.

It brings together the most prominent teams from both coasts.

They are going at it as we speak, with the Yankees behind the 8-ball after losing the first two games at Dodger Stadium.

It may be over by now, or still going, but that’s not the point.

The point is, the Yankees and Dodgers got back to the Fall Classic, the 12th time the two have clashed for baseball’s world championship.

When the two clubs won their respective pennants it brought a smile to my face.

Well, a brief smile.

As many of you might know, I was a rabid New York Giants fan growing up, so when the Dodgers and Yankees met in the World Series I wasn’t pleased.

In fact, I was miserable.

Of course, now, it’s the Los Angeles Dodgers and the New York Yankees, not the Brooklyn Dodgers, as I knew it in the 50’s when I was a youngster.

The Dodgers moved to L.A. along with my Giants who went to San Francisco in 1958. This year’s Series is the fifth time the L.A. Dodgers and Yankees have faced each other.

But when the two got there this season, my thoughts rewound back to the 50’s.

The impressionable years for me in baseball.

New York had three major league teams and all three were either champions or strong contenders every season.

I always felt the National League was the stronger league. Stronger teams that had rosters made up with a lot more African-Americans than the American League teams had, and many, if not most of them were high-level, talented athletes. The National League had more speed as well. I always thought it was the superior league. But the Yankees always wound up as world champions.

From the ten year span starting in 1947 until 1956, the Yankees and Dodgers met six times in the World Series.

The Yankees prevailed both in ‘47 and again in ‘49.

I recall two things from following baseball and the World Series.

First of all, all the games back then were played in the daytime, and there were no travel days. All the games were played on consecutive days. That was the case even when the opponents were from two different cities.

During classes at school, the public address system would come on interrupting the teacher to announce, “in the World Series after three innings, the Yankees lead the Dodgers three-to-one”.

This would go on several times during an hour’s period.

I waited with bated breath for the next scoring update.

When I was home  on the weekend to watch the game on television, I sat inches away from the screen when the announcer said, “the Gillette Cavalcade of Sports presents the World Series between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers”, with the Gillette song playing behind the announcement, as the camera panned the capacity crowd at either Yankee Stadium or Ebbets Field, where the Dodgers played.

All in black and white, of course. This was before color television.

I wouldn’t move for the entire game.

I can still see Billy Martin charging in to make a game-saving catch on an infield fly to preserve the Yankees fourth consecutive World Series title in 1952.

A year later, Martin again was the hero, batting .500, with a record-tying 12 hits and a single to drive in the winning run in the deciding Game 6. Martin, a slim, but embattled second-baseman who later managed the Yankees, was named World Series Most Valuable Player.

It was the Yankees 5th consecutive world championship, a mark that has never been equaled.

Two years later they were at it again.

But this time the Dodgers finally won a World Series after coming up short seven previous times. They beat the Yankees in seven games with lefthander Johnny Podres shutting down the pinstripes in the deciding contest at Yankee Stadium.

The Dodgers, at last, got the monkey off their backs, and the borough of Brooklyn went crazy.

The following season the Yankees turned the tables on the Dodgers in another battle that went the distance.

What distinguished that Series was the first and only perfect game ever pitched in a World Series.  The Yankees’ Don Larsen retired all 27 batters he faced to win Game 5.

They used to call those classic Yankee-Dodger duels the Subway Series for obvious reasons. All you had to do was get on the subway and take ride to either the Bronx or Brooklyn and see the Fall Classic.

You have to go back to that era to understand the impact the great players on both teams made in the sport.

You can name Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Gil Hodges as just a few of the stars who were on display fighting for the championship.

After the Dodgers moved out west, the teams competed in five more World Series including this one.

In 1963, the  Dodgers, behind the great southpaw Sandy Koufax, and other superior pitchers, Don Drysdale and that man again, Johnny Podres, swept the New Yorkers in 4 straight, the only sweep between the teams. Then, after a 14 year absence, the Yankees and Dodgers collided three times in a five-year span beginning in 1977, with the Yanks taking two of the showdowns.

So now, the rivalry resumed.

The big guns were Aaron Judge of the Yankees, and Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers. Ohtani injured his shoulder in game 2, but returned after the travel day, avoiding a more serious consequence.

Judge, couldn’t find the groove in the two games in Los Angeles, hitting a paltry .120.

Judge’s bounce-back was essential if the Yankees would have a shot at getting black into the Series.

By now, you know whether Judge and the Yankees rallied back at home, or whether the Dodgers continued their roll.

Whatever, the most famous World Series rivalry in history emerged once more.

East versus West. N.Y. against L.A.

But when a youngster from Queens was in his formidable years, Dodgers and Yankees meant Brooklyn and the Bronx.

The Subway Series!