1965 World Series

Lore & Background

The series is best remembered for the heroics of Sandy Koufax, who was named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Koufax did not pitch in Game 1, as it fell on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur. He pitched well but lost Game 2 before going on to toss shutouts in Games 5 and 7 (with only two days of rest in between) to win the championship. The Twins had won their first pennant in Minnesota and the franchise’s first since 1933 when the team was known as the Washington Senators. The Dodgers won their second title in three years, and their third since moving to Los Angeles in 1958.

In Their Own Story

The October air over Metropolitan Stadium was sharp enough to cut. You could feel it in your lungs as you climbed the concrete steps to the upper deck, the smell of cold beer and hot dogs mixing with the smell of cut grass. The Twins' red-and-blue jerseys blurred into a single wave as the crowd roared, and for a moment the stadium felt less like a building and more like a living thing breathing in unison.

Down on the mound, Kaat wound up, and the whole world narrowed to the white leather leaving his fingers. The crack of the bat, the thud of the glove, the long exhale of a crowd that had waited four years for this. You didn't need to understand the box score. You just needed to feel the vibration in the bleacher seat beneath your hands and know, with absolute certainty, that this was the year. This was the one. Minnesota had won.

Reader's Guide

The Twins won the first two games of the series against Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, but once Claude Osteen shut out the Twins in Game 3, things turned around. Willie Davis of the Dodgers tied a World Series record stealing 3 bases in one game, Game 5; the record was set by Honus Wagner in 1909. The Dodgers proceeded to win the three middle games at Dodger Stadium and Koufax would pitch two shutouts including a three-hitter with ten strikeouts to clinch. Ron Fairly hit two home runs for the Dodgers, both in losing efforts.

Did You Know?

• This was only the second World Series where both teams were located west of the Mississippi River. The first occurred in 1944, when the St. Louis Browns faced their Sportsman's Park tenants, the St. Louis Cardinals.
• This was the first of 11 consecutive World Series that did not have the New York Yankees playing in it.
• It was also the first series in which both teams had had losing records the previous year. This has since been repeated two other times, both times also involving the Twins—in their championship seasons of 1987 and 1991.
• This World Series was the first in which all games were played in cities that did not have National League or American League teams in 1903, the year of the first modern World Series.
• It is the earliest World Series whose telecasts are known to survive in their entirety; the CBC has complete kinescopes of all seven games in its archives.