The New York Yankees and the Los Angeles Dodgers will resume the greatest of the World Series rivalries starting Friday, in which legends such as Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson and the Mexican Fernando Valenzuela wrote memorable episodes.
The two franchises in the largest American cities They have faced each other 11 times in the Major League Baseball finals, the last of them in the distant 1981.
This duel is the most repeated in the history of the World Series, far surpassing the seven played by the team themselves. Yankees and the Giants.
‘The Bronx Bombers’the most successful team (27 titles), dominate the balance against the Angelenos with eight victories, the first of them in 1941, when the Dodgers were still installed in Brooklyn.
The Yankees They defeated their then neighbors 4-1. It was the fifth of the legendary Joe DiMaggio’s nine titles and the third final that the Dodgers lost.
The New York team repeated its victory in 1947, the historic campaign in which Jackie Robinson He broke the barrier of racism and became the first African-American player to debut in the Major Leagues, wearing the Dodgers uniform.
Robinson played in all seven games of that World Series that they ended up winning. DiMaggio’s Yankees by a tight 4-3.
Yankees dominate historic series
The Yankees’ dominance continued in the finals of 1949 (4-1), 1952 (4-3) and 1953 (4-2). In these last two, Mickey Mantle, another icon of the New York franchise, had an outstanding performance.
The Dodgers’ first victory came in 1955 (4-3), the only crown before they moved to Los Angeles in 1958.
The series was defined with a 2-0 visiting victory at Yankee Stadium with two runs from Gil Hodges.
The rematch came just a year later. On that occasion, it was the Yankees who won the seventh game at home at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn by a resounding 9-0 and two home runs by Yogi Berra.
The fifth inning of that tie recorded the only perfect game by a pitcher in a World Series, when Don Larsen retired 27 Dodgers batters.
Already in Los Angeles, the Dodgers achieved their second victory in 1963 with a 4-0 sweep in which they only allowed four runs to the Yankees.
Fourteen years passed until the next reunion, with a 4-2 New York victory and an exhibition by Reggie Jackson, who hit three home runs in the sixth and decisive game.
Jackson repeated the feat with a two-run homer in Game 6 of the Yankees’ 4-2 victory in 1978.
The last chapter occurred in 1981, a year remembered for the ‘Fernandomania’ phenomenon. Mexican Fernando Valenzuela, a hitherto unknown pitcher, won his first eight games of that season, leaving five of his rivals blank.
His performances attracted thousands of Mexican and American fans to Dodger Stadium and other Major League fields.
The ‘Bull’ Valenzuela propelled the Dodgers to the World Series, in which he was also key to the necessary victory in the third game after two initial Yankee victories.
The Dodgers took the title by winning the next three games. Dominican Pedro Guerrero was the big star of the final duel in the Bronx with three hits, including a home run.
Valenzuela, 63, has suffered health problems that forced him to abandon his work as a radio commentator for Dodger games in October.
