Tiebreaker games have given us some of baseball’s memorable moments
5) The Giants win the Battle of California
The New York Giants beat their crosstown rival Brooklyn Dodgers in a three-game tiebreaker in 1951 (more on that later). By the time the two teams met again for another playoff 11 years later, they had both relocated to California. There was a new setting for the rivalry, but the result remained the same as the Giants once again prevailed in 1962 to advance to the World Series.
The Giants featured a powerful lineup that included Willie Mays, Orlando Cepeda and Willie McCovey. The Dodgers, by contrast, were led by Hall of Fame pitchers Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale. The Dodgers led the Giants by four games in the last week of the season but lost six of their last seven games. Both teams finished with identical 101-61 records after 162 games and would need at least two more to decide who won the National League pennant.
The Giants shutout the Dodgers in the first game of the best-of-three tiebreaker, scoring eight runs off Koufax while the Dodgers failed to score for their third straight game, a stretch of 35 innings that was finally broken in the sixth inning of the second game. After the Giants scored four runs off Drysdale in the top of the inning, the Dodgers broke through with seven runs of their own in the bottom half. The Giants would tie the game in the eighth before Maury Wills scored on a sacrifice fly by Ron Fairly in the bottom of the ninth to force a third and deciding game in Los Angeles. The marathon game at Dodger Stadium lasted four hours and 18 minutes, setting a record for longest nine-inning game that wasn’t broken until 1996.
San Francisco went with their own Cooperstown-bound pitcher, Juan Marichal, to start game three while the Dodgers sent 1955 World Series hero Johnny Podres to the mound. Both pitchers kept the opposing side scoreless through the first two innings before the Giants took advantage of three Dodgers errors to score two runs in the third. The Giants kept the lead until the sixth, when Tommy Davis hit a two-run homer off Marichal to put Los Angeles up 3-2. The Dodgers added an insurance run in the seventh when Maury Wills stole third and scored on a throwing error by the catcher.
Los Angeles took their two-run lead into the top of the ninth, but it would not last. With the bases loaded and only one out, Mays lined a single up the middle that pitcher Ed Roebuck was just able to knock down, scoring Harvey Kuenn from third. Pinch-runner Ernie Bowman came home with the tying run when Cepeda hit a sacrifice fly to right, sending Felipe Alou to third with the potential go-ahead run. Ed Bailey was then intentionally walked, loading the bases once again for Jim Davenport. Stan Williams, who came in to relieve Roebuck, walked Davenport on five pitches to score Alou and give the Dodgers the lead. Mays would come in to score on an error at second base, giving the Giants four runs in the inning to take a 6-4 lead to the bottom half of the inning.
The Giants brought in Billy Pierce, who pitched a three-hit shutout in game one, to close out the Dodgers. Pierce retired all three batters he faced, getting Lee Walls to fly out to center for the final out to send the Giants to the World Series.
San Francisco would lose the World Series in seven games to the New York Yankees when McCovey lined out to Bobby Richardson with runners at third and second and two out in the bottom of the ninth. The Giants wouldn’t win another championship until 2010. The Dodgers, meanwhile, went on to win the World Series the next year and again in 1965.