October 25, 1981: Dodgers complete home sweep of Yankees to take driver’s seat in World Series

On October 19, 1981, the Los Angeles Dodgers came from behind to defeat the Montreal Expos in the rubber match of the National League Championship Series. The next day, they found themselves in New York for Game One of the World Series against their longtime “bitter” adversary, the Yankees.1 The well-rested Yankees had swept the Oakland A’s in the ALCS five days earlier.

The Yankees held an 8-2 lead over the Dodgers in Series matchups, with each team boasting more October appearances than any other team in its league. The “wildest, most exciting World Series rivalry” dated back to 1941, when the then-crosstown Brooklyn Dodgers were “just a nickel subway ride” away from the Bronx.2 The ’81 Series would be the third time in the past five campaigns that the two teams battled for baseball’s biggest prize, with the Yankees having won the previous two. No two teams had met in the fall classic more times.

Due to an extra playoff series added to the strike-shortened season, the 78th World Series was pushed later than ever into October. The home teams held serve in the first four contests to deadlock the Series at two games each. The critical Game Five, scheduled for Sunday, October 25, would be the last of a three-game set at Dodger Stadium before the Series headed back east to wrap up in the “city and venue that had not been all that kind to [the Dodgers] on many occasions in the past.”3 Dodgers shortstop Bill Russell said of playing in Yankee Stadium: “The fans unnerved us. They never let up on you. They have no courtesy at all. They’re obnoxious. The worst.”4

The Game Five pitching matchup featured Ron Guidry of New York against Jerry Reuss of Los Angeles. The same pair of fine southpaws had faced off in the Series opener, with the hard-throwing Guidry besting Reuss, who was knocked out of the box in the third inning. Despite his “tottering troops” – including prized free-agent acquisition Dave Winfield, who was hitless in the first four Series contests – having lost two in a row, demanding Yankees team owner George Steinbrenner delivered a pregame pep talk that was not of the expected fire-and-brimstone variety.5 “It was more of a positive nature than anything,” said slugging right fielder Reggie Jackson. “It was stressed on us that we haven’t played well these past couple of days and that it was time we got back to doing the things that got us here. Time to start playing ‘Yankee baseball.’”6

Pregame excitement was at a fever pitch in Chavez Ravine. “Breezy tailgate parties sprouted like weeds throughout the acres of parking lots,” while many “frantic” fans were seen in desperate pursuit of tickets.7 “It’s very nice, actually,” said Dodgers fan John Staves of the atmosphere outside the ballpark. “You get to meet a lot of nice people and throw food at Yankee fans.”8 However, some Angelenos’ enthusiasm was perhaps tempered by their heroes’ coming close but failing in several recent attempts to capture a championship with the same but now aging core talent. Indeed, Los Angeles’s starting lineup was now chock full of veterans in their 30s. “If these Dodgers – in their current iteration, anyway – were going to win a title, they’d have to do it soon,” wrote baseball author Jason Turbow.9 With hope springing eternal, the third largest crowd in Dodger Stadium history to that point, 56,115 – including many Hollywood celebrities – packed the stands for the afternoon tilt.10

The visitors opened the scoring in the top of the second inning. Jackson led off with an opposite-field ground-rule double down the line in left field. He went to third when Bob Watson reached base on a bouncing ball that second baseman Davey Lopes bobbled for an error – his first of three fielding miscues in the game. Lou Piniella delivered a single to score Jackson. Despite the Yankees still threatening with no outs, Reuss escaped potential big trouble by getting Rick Cerone to hit into a double play and Aurelio Rodríguez to ground out.

New York’s 1-0 lead held until the bottom of the seventh as Reuss and Guidry treated the crowd to a pitchers’ duel. Considering that Guidry had not completed a game all season, Yankees manager Bob Lemon reportedly game-planned to pull his starter after seven innings and summon future Hall of Fame reliever Rich Gossage to begin the eighth.11 In the end, Lemon did indeed stick to his plan but not before the Dodgers finally broke through against Guidry in his final scheduled frame. With one out and the bases empty, All-Star Pedro Guerrero homered and the next batter, catcher Steve Yeager, deposited a fastball into nearly the same spot in the left-center-field seats to give the Dodgers a 2-1 lead. “Guidry’s tired,” broadcaster Howard Cosell declared during the ABC telecast. “He’s been tiring all year in the late innings.”12 After Yeager’s blast, neither team scored the rest of the way to give Los Angeles a three-games-to-two lead as the Series returned to New York for Game Six.

Postgame commentary from Steinbrenner suggested that he and Lemon were not on the same page on how to handle the slightly built Guidry. “Ron Guidry pitched a great game,” the owner said. “But I went over some numbers with Lem, and Guidry’s earned-run average over the last three innings is 10-plus. We had a strategy – not to let him go more than six – and Lem didn’t choose to go with it.”13

Guidry’s mound competition, Reuss, scattered five hits and three walks in going the distance to pick up the win. Deciding to “return to simplicity” after overthinking a mix of pitches in his ugly Series opener, the Dodgers’ lefty went with his strength in giving the Yankees a “steady diet of fastballs.”14 “When I got out on the mound here in Dodger Stadium, I said to myself, ‘This is my valley and no one is going to tread on my valley,’” Reuss said after the game.15

The game’s unlikely offensive hero, Reuss’s weak-hitting batterymate Yeager, played so sparingly behind Mike Scioscia during the regular season that he requested a trade earlier in the year. “Their catcher [Yeager] had the game-winning hit and my catcher [Cerone] took us out of two game-winning rallies,” Steinbrenner said in praising his opposition’s backstop while being highly critical of his own.16 Yeager had homered off Guidry in Game One and knocked in a key late-inning tiebreaking run a day earlier en route to Series co-MVP honors with teammates Guerrero and third baseman Ron Cey.

Nicknamed “Penguin” due to his waddling gait, Cey was involved in a frightening moment in the eighth inning when an errant 94-MPH fastball from Gossage struck him on the batting helmet. Cey fell to the ground as a “startled hush” swept through the ballpark.17 “I was scared to death,” admitted Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda.18 Gossage was also “troubled by what his pitch had caused,” despite being “booed heatedly” by the fans.19 Cey never lost consciousness and was coherent during the few minutes he was down. Eventually he walked off with minimal assistance and was later diagnosed with a concussion. “No way was I throwing at him,” Gossage said. “It was supposed to be down the middle. I usually try to throw my fastball down the middle, and against him I wanted to keep it up. Whew, it scares you.”20

After the game, the colorful Lasorda sat in his office and joked about Cey with Tonight Show host Johnny Carson and “seemingly half of Southern California’s show-business community,” indicating that Cey was okay.21 “He’s coherent now,” Lasorda laughingly said when asked about Cey’s condition. “He was incoherent the last three weeks!”22

Drama was not limited only to the diamond, as Steinbrenner suffered a broken hand, swollen lip, and “an assortment of lumps and bruises” allegedly inflicted in a reported postgame scuffle with a pair of mouthy Dodger fans in a hotel elevator.23 “I know he’s missing three teeth and he’s probably still looking for them,” boasted The Boss of the supposed damage he inflicted on one of the assailants.24

However, Steinbrenner’s victory in the elevator, if real, was his last during the baseball season; Los Angeles’s momentum from its three-game sweep in Dodger Stadium could not be stopped.25 The Dodgers marched into Yankee Stadium and cruised to a 9-2 Game Six win to take home the 1981 World Series trophy. It was their first Series title since 1965 and their first over the Yankees since 1963. “It wasn’t just beating the Yankees, it was doing it with [Steve] Garvey and Lopes, Russell, Cey, the people I had been with for so long,” Lasorda said of the first of his two titles. “We started together in the lowest minor leagues, and together we became world champions.”26

Sources

The author accessed Baseball-Reference.com (https://www.baseball-reference.com/boxes/LAN/LAN198110250.shtml) for box scores/play-by-play information and other data, as well as Retrosheet.org. (https://www.retrosheet.org/boxesetc/1981/B10250LAN1981.htm). In addition to the sources cited in the Notes, the author also accessed GenealogyBank.com, NewspaperArchive.com, Newspapers.com, Paper of Record, and Stathead.com.

Notes

1 Burton A. Boxerman and Benita W. Boxerman, Ebbets to Veeck to Busch: Eight Owners Who Shaped Baseball (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2003), 116.

2 Dan Hafner, “Dodgers-Yankees Rivalry Is Made for World Series,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1981: Part III-3.

3 Richard J. Shmelter, The Los Angeles Dodgers Encyclopedia (Jefferson, North Carolina: McFarland & Company, 2017), 107.

4 Ross Newhan, “The Dodgers Say Bring on the Yankees, but Are They Ready for New York Fans?” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1981: Part III-3.

5 Bill Madden, “Yanks Get Pep Talk from Steinbrenner,” New York Daily News, October 26, 1981: C34.

6 Madden.

7 Mark A. Stein and Frank Spotnitz, “Outside Stadium, L.A.’s Faithful Party and Celebrate Ticket Deals,” Los Angeles Times, October 26, 1981: Part II-8.

8 Stein and Spotnitz.

9 Jason Turbow, They Bled Blue: Fernandomania, Strike-Season Mayhem, and the Weirdest Championship Baseball Had Ever Seen: The 1981 Los Angeles Dodgers (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2019), xiii.

10 Glenn Schwarz, “Dodgers’ Saga Like a Movie,” San Francisco Examiner, October 26, 1981: F1. Games Three and Four of the 1981 World Series had drawn the two largest baseball crowds in the history of Dodger Stadium until they were topped by the 56,268 fans who attended Game Four of the 2004 National League Division Series.

11 Phil Pepe, “LA Lightning,” New York Daily News, October 26, 1981: 53.

12 ABC television broadcast of the game as posted on YouTube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BVDDAurAwWc, accessed August 31, 2023.

13 Murray Chass, “Steinbrenner Is Critical of Strategy in 5th-Game Loss,” New York Times, October 26, 1981, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/26/sports/steinbrenner-is-critical-of-strategy-in-5th-game-loss.html, accessed on September 3, 2023.

14 Joseph Durso, “Dodgers Defeat Yankees, 2-1, and Take 3-2 Lead in Series,” New York Times, October 26, 1981, https://www.nytimes.com/1981/10/26/sports/dodgers-defeat-yankees-2-1-and-take-3-2-lead-in-series.html, accessed on September 3, 2023; Jack Lang, “Turning Deaf Ear to Scouts, Reuss Has Fastball Festival,” New York Daily News, October 26, 1981: 53.

15 Lang.

16 Chass.

17 Ross Newhan, “Cey Takes 94 M.P.H. Shot to the Head and Walks Away,” Los Angeles Times, October 20, 1981: Part III-1.

18 “Cey Takes 94 M.P.H. Shot to the Head and Walks Away.”

19 Joe Gergen, “Scary Reminder of the Unspoken,” Newsday (Long Island, New York), October 26, 1981: 70; Newhan, “Cey Takes 94 M.P.H. Shot to the Head and Walks Away.”

20 Gergen.

21 Schwarz, “Dodgers’ Saga Like a Movie.”

22 Dick Young, “Lasorda a Cutup – and That’s No Baloney,” New York Daily News, October 26, 1981: 51.

23 Eric Malnic, “Steinbrenner Claims a Victory,” Los Angeles Times, October 26, 1981: Part II-8.

24 Dick Young, “Steinbrenner: Bloody but Unbowed,” New York Daily News, October 27, 1981: C29.

25 Murray Chass, “Tales of ’81: A Yankee Choke, a Boss Brawl,” New York Times, June 17, 2004, https://www.nytimes.com/2004/06/17/sports/on-baseball-tales-of-81-a-yankee-choke-a-boss-brawl.html, accessed on September 3, 2023.

26 Tommy Lasorda and David Fisher, The Artful Dodger (New York: Avon Books, 1985), 293.