Yanks Mag: Supreme Showdown

No sport celebrates its history better than baseball, so when it comes to rivalries, the contests between the Yankees and Dodgers over the past 85 years have brought with them the excitement, suspense, thrills and intensity that fans of the national pastime have come to expect.

A true rivalry isn’t born; it’s created organically. In the case of the Yanks and Dodgers, it began when the two franchises occupied disparate boroughs of New York City. They have clashed for baseball supremacy a dozen times -- 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955, 1956, 1963, 1977, 1978, 1981 and 2024 -- five more than any other matchup in World Series history, and their October battles have provided some of the greatest drama in the colorful history of the game.

Over the 10-year period from 1947 to ’56, their six Subway Series showdowns were epic struggles, with four going the full seven games. In September 1955, The Sporting News referred to this as “the last word in baseball vendetta, a rivalry beyond which there can be nothing more vehement.”

Much like in the golden days of Hollywood, when movie studio Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer claimed as its motto “more stars than there are in heaven,” the big names attached to the Yankees-Dodgers rivalry have included some of the brightest lights in the game. Legends such as Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Yogi Berra, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson, Reggie Jackson, Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge -- as well as lesser known but hardly forgotten names like Al Gionfriddo, Johnny Podres, Mickey Owen, Don Larsen, Sandy Amoros, Tommy Henrich, Cookie Lavagetto and Bill Bevens -- all played a role in putting this storied matchup on everyone’s radar.

When the rivalry started in 1941, the Yankees were a dynasty, defeating Brooklyn in five games for their fifth World Series title in six years. Afterward, their manager, Joe McCarthy, foreshadowed what was ahead.

“You know, baseball is a romance,” Marse Joe philosophized. “You can’t buy this with money. You have to feel something inside you to appreciate the world championship the way we do. Baseball is my life. I love it. I would want to be in it if I didn’t make a dime. It’s a grand game and sometimes the spirit of it overwhelms you.

“I am very happy to be the manager of a great ballclub. The Yankees are a game club, and I think we beat a good, game club.”

As of 2026, the two franchises have played a total of 71 World Series games against each other, with the Yankees holding a 38-33 advantage. Since the introduction of Interleague Play in 1997, the Dodgers hold a 13-12 regular-season advantage over the Yankees prior to 2026, when New York will host Los Angeles for a three-game series July 17-19. What follows are some of the most memorable clashes and storylines between the Yankees and Dodgers over the years.

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‘A Nickel’s Worth of Dog Meat’

With two outs in the top of the ninth inning in Game 4 of the 1941 World Series, the Dodgers were poised to beat the Yankees and tie it at two wins apiece. Trailing, 4-3, the Yankees were down to their last strike, and with Tommy Henrich at the plate, Hugh Casey threw a nasty curveball that fooled Henrich, who swung and missed for strike three, ending the game.

But wait! Dodgers catcher Mickey Owen let the ball get past him, and Henrich raced to first base, reaching safely. The play unglued the Dodgers, who then allowed four runs in the inning and lost, 7-4. The next day, Brooklyn lost Game 5, 3-1, and the first Yankees-Dodgers World Series was over.

“It was all my fault,” Owen lamented afterward. “It wasn’t a strike. It was a great breaking curve that I should have had. But I guess the ball hit the side of my glove. It got away from me, and by the time I got hold of it near the corner of the Brooklyn dugout, I couldn’t have thrown anybody out at first.

“It isn’t being the ‘goat’ that bothers me, though. That doesn’t worry me in the least. What I’m really broken up about is the other boys on our club who did so well and certainly deserved to win.”

Even Henrich felt a bit sorry for Owen: “That was a tough break for poor old Mickey to get. I bet he feels like a nickel’s worth of dog meat.”

“In poker,” said Dodgers president Larry MacPhail, “there’s a saying when you try to do something the hard way, like filling an inside straight, that you’re ‘trying to catch lightning in a bottle.’ Well, the Yanks had the luck. They caught the lightning in the bottle.”

On a perhaps happier note, Owen said that his suspicions that he would be persona non grata for Dodgers fans proved incorrect. “I got about 4,000 wires and letters,” he told The Saturday Evening Post on the 25th anniversary of the passed ball. “I had offers of jobs and proposals of marriage. Some girls sent their pictures in bathing suits, and my wife tore them up.”

Bevens’ near no-no

Yankees right-hander Bill Bevens started Game 4 of the 1947 World Series, and despite walking 10 batters, he had held Brooklyn hitless and led, 2-1, through 8 2/3 innings. But then Cookie Lavagetto’s pinch-hit double off the right-field wall at Ebbets Field in the bottom of the ninth broke up the no-hitter and ended the game by driving in two runs.

“It wasn’t even a strike that guy hit,” Bevens said after the game. “It was high and away from Lavagetto. I threw a fastball, but it wasn’t even in the strike zone. I was just wild, that’s all. I should have got beat with all those walks. Not only that, but that ball Lavagetto hit would have gone into the seats in the Stadium, anyway. It would have been a homer.

“What the heck, I lost the ballgame, didn’t I? They were hitting my fastball pretty far in the eighth and ninth. One of them was bound to go up there for a hit.”

Walk-Off History

In Game 1 of the 1949 Fall Classic -- a Series the Yankees would go on to win in five games -- Tommy Henrich hit the first walk-off home run in postseason history, providing a dramatic end to a tense, scoreless pitching duel. His ninth-inning homer off Dodgers starter Don Newcombe capped a 1-0 triumph.

“Heck, I don’t even know what I hit. I was just looking at the ball, and it looked pretty good to me,” Henrich said after the game. “All I know is I hit it, and I know I feel mighty good. Gosh.

“I never saw a World Series game that had the pitchers so much in charge. The players on our bench all were saying that Newcombe gave them very few good ones to hit. He really was the boss, and so was [Allie] Reynolds.”

Newcombe was more succinct afterwards: “It was a low curveball. It was a good pitch, he just hit it, that’s all.”

A 36-year-old veteran who would spend his entire 11-season career with the Bronx Bombers, Henrich had acquired the nickname “Old Reliable” for just such occasions. In the final game of the 1949 season, he homered at Yankee Stadium in the Yankees’ pennant-winning victory over the Boston Red Sox.

“Tommy was the steadiest ballplayer I’ve ever seen because he’s smarter than the average player,” longtime teammate Joe DiMaggio said upon Henrich’s retirement following the 1950 campaign. “He’s a man who took advantage of everything he saw.”

In a 1949 profile of Henrich in The New Yorker, Yankees manager Casey Stengel said, “He’s a fine judge of a fly ball. He fields grounders like an infielder. He never makes a wrong throw, and if he comes back to the hotel at 3 in the morning when we’re on the road and says he’s been sitting up with a sick friend, he’s been sitting up with a sick friend.”

Safe or Out?

In 1955, the familiar refrain from Brooklyn Dodgers fans, “Wait ’til next year,” could be put to bed: “Dem Bums” finally won it all. And who should Brooklyn -- in existence since the 1890s without a title -- defeat in the World Series but their crosstown rivals who had brought them so much heartache over the years.

Sandy Amoros played a pivotal role for the Dodgers in Game 7. It was the bottom of the sixth inning, and Brooklyn held a 2-0 lead when Amoros, a defensive replacement in left field, caught a Yogi Berra drive near the line and assisted in doubling Gil McDougald off first base.

But in Game 1, Brooklyn’s Jackie Robinson pulled off the ultimate thrill by stealing home -- a moment immortalized in World Series lore.

With two outs in the top of the eighth inning and the Yankees leading by two runs, Robinson broke from third against left-hander Whitey Ford. The “Chairman of the Board” threw home, where Berra was ready to lay the tag on Robinson. The speedy second baseman slid in feet first and was quickly called safe by home-plate umpire Bill Summers. Berra was incensed. Although the Yankees won that game, 6-5, Berra forever maintained that Robinson was out.

“Here’s how it happened,” Robinson said in the clubhouse afterward. “Ford wasn’t giving me too much of a look. I suppose he figured I wouldn’t do it, being two runs behind. A steal of home like that in the eighth is usually not a good play. I was safe -- no doubt in my mind at all. I could see the plate when I slid in. Yogi was back of the plate. I suppose Yogi figured he had me or he wouldn’t have raised such a fuss. In my opinion, it wasn’t close. Probably in Yogi’s it was.”

Ford had a slightly different take: “I had my eye on him from the start. Frankly, I didn’t think he’d try it with his team two runs behind. But once he started, I took my time and threw a low fast one in what I thought was plenty of time. I think we got him.”

Berra, as was the case throughout the rest of his long life, claimed after the game, “It was a close play, but I had him easy.

“I went out to Whitey. I reminded him Brooklyn was two runs behind, and I said I didn’t think Robinson would try to steal home when he got to third base. Sure, we were surprised. It was a dumb play with his team two runs behind, but it worked, and so it was a good one.”

‘The imperfect man pitched a perfect game’

In one final matchup between the two rivals before the Brooklyn Dodgers moved to Los Angeles after the 1957 season, the Yankees used the momentum of a pitching masterpiece to capture yet another World Series title. On Oct. 8, 1956, Don Larsen carved his name into the American sports landscape by pitching the first perfect game in postseason history.

“I was so weak in the knees out there in the ninth inning, I thought I was going to faint,” Larsen said after his 97-pitch Game 5 gem. “I didn’t get nervous -- my main object was to win the game. The thing I wanted to do was get out of the ninth inning. Once I mumbled a little prayer to myself. I said, ‘Please help me through this.’

“The only word said to me was by Yogi Berra. Yogi hit me on the seat of the pants and said, ‘Go out there, and let’s get the first batter.’ I was pitching fastballs and sliders mostly, but mainly, I had good control. I only shook off a couple of Yogi’s signals, but he stuck with them, so I went ahead and pitched what he called. I’m glad of it.”

The Washington Post’s Shirley Povich crafted a memorable lede in the next day’s newspaper: “The million-to-one shot came in. Hell froze over. A month of Sundays hit the calendar. Don Larsen today pitched a no-hit, no-run, no-man-reach-first game in a World Series.”

Larsen was attempting to bounce back from a horrible effort in Game 2, in which he had allowed four runs on one hit and four walks in 1 2/3 innings. During the perfect game, he went to a three-ball count just once and effortlessly zipped through a Dodgers lineup that featured future Hall of Famers Pee Wee Reese, Gil Hodges, Duke Snider, Jackie Robinson and Roy Campanella.

In the top of the ninth, Larsen retired Carl Furillo on a fly ball to right and got Campanella to ground out to second. Dodgers manager Walter Alston then sent up pinch-hitter Dale Mitchell, who took a called third strike to end the game. After retiring Mitchell, Larsen walked off the mound and, in a reversal of roles, caught Berra leaping into his arms.

“The imperfect man pitched a perfect game yesterday,” Joe Trimble wrote in the New York Daily News. “Don Larsen, a free soul who loves the gay life, retired all 27 Dodgers in the classic pitching performance of all time as the Yankees won the fifth game, 2-0, at the Stadium and took a 3-2 edge in the set.”

Mr. October

Reggie Jackson forever earned his famous nickname when, on baseball’s biggest stage, “Mr. October” slugged three homers in a deciding World Series game nearly 50 years ago.

The sixth game of the 1977 Fall Classic took place at Yankee Stadium on Oct. 18. Just nine days after Jackson had been benched in the deciding fifth game of the ALCS against the Royals, what baseball fans were about to witness left even the most strident critics of one of the sport’s most polarizing stars in awe. The lefty-swinging Jackson, batting cleanup and coming off a tumultuous first regular season as a member of the Yankees, swatted homers on the first pitch to him from three different Dodgers right-handers in the fourth, fifth and eighth innings.

“Nothing can top this,” said the 31-year-old right fielder after his historic game in “The House That Ruth Built” helped the Yankees claim their 21st World Series title in 31 appearances. “Who in hell’s ever going to hit three home runs in a deciding World Series game? I won’t.”

Yankees president Gabe Paul, a man intimately involved in signing Jackson to a five-year, $2.9 million free-agent contract in November 1976, explained, “The difference between a fine player and a great one is his ability to rise. Great players rise. And tonight, Reggie Jackson showed he was a great player.”

Jackson, in an unprecedented display of power, hit a two-run round-tripper off a Burt Hooton fastball in the fourth inning into the right-field seats, another two-run shot against an Elias Sosa fastball in the fifth frame into the right-field seats, and a solo homer off knuckleballer Charlie Hough leading off the eighth, a tape-measure shot far beyond the center-field fence that was estimated in news reports to have flown between 450 and 500 feet. The monstrous blast brought with it raucous cheers from the crowd of “REG-GIE! REG-GIE! REG-GIE!”

“The general consensus on how to pitch to me is hard and in,” Jackson said. “On the first one, I knew Hooton would pitch me there, but I had an inkling I’d hit one. As soon as they brought in Sosa, I got on the phone to Stick [Yankees scout Gene Michael] upstairs and asked him about Sosa because Sosa popped me up with a fastball in Spring Training. Stick told me he throws hard stuff -- fastball, slider, good curve. I hit another fastball. I hit the second one even better than I hit the third, the one off Hough’s knuckler. Brooks Robinson taught me how to hit a knuckler: just time the ball.”

“That was the greatest performance that I’ve ever seen in a World Series,” said Dodgers manager Tommy Lasorda. “Would I have done anything different? I wouldn’t have gotten up this morning.”

Prior to Jackson, the only other player to homer three times in a World Series game was Babe Ruth, who did it twice, in the fourth game of the 1926 Series and again in the Game 4 clincher of the 1928 Series, both coming in St. Louis against the Cardinals.

“I’m no Babe Ruth. Let’s face it. Ruth was great. I was just lucky,” said Jackson. “Right now, I just feel jubilation, relief, pride and joy. This was my greatest game as a Yankee.”

Since Jackson, the only other players to hit three homers in a single World Series game are the Cardinals’ Albert Pujols against the Rangers in 2011 (Game 3) and the Giants’ Pablo Sandoval against the Tigers in 2012 (Game 1).

Best of the Best

On May 30, 2025, in the first game competing against each other since the previous year’s World Series, Aaron Judge of the Yankees and Shohei Ohtani of the Dodgers put on a show for the 53,276 fans at Dodger Stadium. The pair made history by becoming the first reigning Most Valuable Players to homer in the same inning -- both going deep in the opening frame of Los Angeles’ 8-5 victory.

“I feel like he was copying me,” Judge said with a grin. “He’s impressive. He’s one of the best players in the game for a reason. What he can do in the box, on the basepaths, once he gets back on the mound -- it’s special. I like playing against the best. You want to play against the best teams, the best players. Ohtani is definitely one of the best players in the game, and he has been for a long time.

“I like playing on the West Coast. I like playing in big games like this. It’s always fun.”

Judge’s shot to deep center field was his 19th of the season; Ohtani’s to deep left-center his 21st (he’d homer again in the sixth). Both would capture another MVP Award later that year.

“I think both teams started on a really good note,” Ohtani said through interpreter Will Ireton. “I really thought it was important to be able to score another run in that situation, knowing that momentum is really important in a game like today.

“We try to win each and every game, of course, but I think it’s a special atmosphere [against the Yankees].”

The opposing skippers were amazed by what they saw.

“We love superstars,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said, “and to start the game off with Judge hitting a homer and Shohei answering in the bottom half was pretty exciting for everyone. [Ohtani] would probably say it’s just like any other game, but I do think that when you see the reigning MVP on the other side, and going out there and performing, that brings out even more of a competitor in Shohei. And obviously, it brought up a lot of excitement from the fans.”

Said Yankees manager Aaron Boone: “They were kind of similar home runs … right out of the gate, a couple of big haymakers. You certainly marvel at some of the players on this field tonight. There’s a number of MVPs and All-Stars, great players. Some of the stars really showed tonight.”

Bill Francis is a contributing writer for Yankees Magazine. This story appears in the July 2026 edition. Get more articles like this delivered to your doorstep by purchasing a subscription to Yankees Magazine at www.yankees.com/publications.