With the Dodgers set to face the Yankees in the World Series starting 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.
Read more: 1981 Dodgers say they never doubted they would beat the Yankees, win the World Series
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 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…