10 greatest pennant chases in Major League Baseball history
8. 1962 National League: Giants over Dodgers
Sometimes 162 games just isn’t enough to determine a winner.
With a record of 41-18, the 1962 Los Angeles Dodgers moved into first place on June 8 and spent all but six days atop the standings until losing nine of their final 12 games. That slide allowed the hard-charging San Francisco Giants to close a late four-game gap on the final day of the regular season.
After finishing with identical 101-61 records, the Giants and Dodgers were forced to play a three-game tiebreaker series to determine who would face the New York Yankees in the World Series. Remarkably, both the Dodgers and Giants had to survive another team that was even better than the AL pennant winners – the 98-64 Cincinnati Reds. But, because divisions would not exist for another seven years, the Reds were shut out of the postseason.
Playing the first game at Candlestick Park, the Giants clobbered Sandy Koufax for three runs in only one inning of an 8-0 victory. In Los Angeles the following day, the Dodgers trailed 5-0 before they exploded for seven runs in the sixth inning. The Giants tied the game in the eighth, but the Dodgers survived with a walk-off sacrifice fly in the ninth to force a deciding Game 3.
With the pennant on the line at Dodger Stadium, Los Angeles took a 4-2 lead into the top of the ninth inning before imploding and allowing four runs in a 6-4 Giants victory. The pennant was the first for the Giants since moving from New York, though San Francisco would go on to lose to the Yankees in a seven-game World Series.
Next: 1967 American League