History of the World Series – 1963
Koufax, who struck out 306 batters in 311 innings in ’63 and threw 11 shutouts (he had one in ’59), had plenty of company in the super-pitcher class. Side-wheeling righthander Don Drysdale, a 25-game winner in 1962, had 19 victories and a 2.63 ERA in ’63. Crafty veteran Johnny Podres won 14 games and fired five shutouts, while relief ace Ron Perranoski made 69 appearances and went 16-3 with a 1.67 ERA.
Walter Alston’s Dodgers, rebounding from a late-season collapse in 1962, fought off St. Louis in 1963 and finished six games in front of the Cardinals. Los Angeles’ World Series opponent would be an old Dodger nemesis, the New York Yankees. In seven Series between the Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, the American Leaguers had won six times.
The Yanks had muscle, as usual, with four players hitting more than 20 homers. They had good pitching, too, in Whitey Ford (24 victories), Jim Bouton, Ralph Terry and Al Downing. Incredibly, they overcame injuries that would decimate most teams. Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle played in a total of only 155 games but the Yanks persevered and even prospered, as Manager Ralph Houk’s team captured the American League pennant by 10 1/2 games.
It was Koufax against Ford in the’63 Series opener at Yankee Stadium and Koufax quickly demonstrated just how far his star had risen. The first five Yankee batters — Tony Kubek, Bobby Richardson, Tom Tresh, Mantle and Maris — went down on strikes.
By the time the Yankees made contact against Koufax, Los Angeles already owned a 4-0 lead. Bill Skowron, obtained from the Yankees after the 1962 season, singled home a Dodger run in the top of the second and John Roseboro cracked a three-run homer later in the inning.
Skowron singled home another run in the third, and Koufax continued to cruise. Through four innings, the Yankees did not have a baserunner. After Mantle struck out and Maris fouled out as New York’s first two batters in the fifth, the Yankees loaded the bases on consecutive singles by Elston Howard, Joe Pepitone and Clete Boyer, but the threat passed when Hector Lopez, batting for Ford, became Koufax’s 11th strikeout victim of the afternoon.
Koufax struck out pinch-hitter Phil Lint to open the eighth, thereby moving within one of Carl Erskine’s Series strikeout record of 14 in one game. After Kubek beat out a slow roller, Koufax fanned Richardson for the third time and was record book-bound, but Tresh tempered any immediate elation by pounding a homer into the left-field stands.
With Koufax on the mound, a three-run lead was money in the bank, though. Outside of a walk to Mantle after Trash’s clout and a ninth-inning single by Pepitone, the Yankees went quietly the rest of the way. The first three of New York’s final four outs in Koufax’s 5-2 triumph came on a grounder, a liner and a fly ball. The last out of the game was record-breaking strikeout No. 15, with pinch-hitter Harry Bright being victimized.
Koufax’s World Series strikeout mark, like Erskine’s, had come in a Dodgers uniform against the Yankees in a game played October 2 (10 years apart). The only common strikeout victim for Dodgers pitchers was Mantle, who fanned four times against righthander Erskine and twice against Koufax.
Podres, with two-out relief help from Perranoski, beat the Yankees, 4-1, in Game 2. Willie Davis’ two-run double in the first inning got Los Angeles rolling, and Skowron provided Podres with another run on a homer in the fourth. Maris, who had a chance to catch Davis’ drive but slipped on the Yankee Stadium grass, injured his knee and elbow in the third when he ran into a railing while pursuing Tommy Davis’ triple and left the game. New York’s slugging right fielder never played another inning in the Series.
Los Angeles took its two games-to-none lead to Dodger Stadium, the palatial estate that had supplanted the Coliseum as the Dodgers’ home grounds the previous year. Drysdale made the first Series game at the glittering park one to remember, foiling the Yankees on three hits and striking out nine batters in a 1-0 triumph. Tough-luck loser Bouton yielded the game’s only run in the first inning on Jim Gilliam’s walk, a wild pitch and a single by Tommy Davis, who had just captured his second straight NL batting championship
Ford and Koufax went at it again in Game 4, a scoreless contest until the fifth when Frank Howard, the Dodgers’ 6-foot-7, 250-pound right fielder, blasted a mammoth homer to left. Mantle got the run back in the seventh when, having managed only one hit in 13 Series at-bats, Mantle rocketed a homer to left-center against Koufax.
Los Angeles, a speed-oriented team offensively (Maury Wills, the man of 104 steals in ’62, was the catalyst) and quite content to scrounge for runs, regained the lead in the bottom of the seventh. Gilliam led off with a high bouncer that was speared by third baseman Boyer, but first baseman Pepitone lost Boyer’s on-target throw amid the white-shirted crowd and Gilliam scooted all the way to third base. Willie Davis then stroked a sacrifice fly to deep center field.
A one-run lead is hardly money in the bank under any circumstances, but Koufax — despite the fact his club collected only two hits all day — made it stand up in a six-hit, 2-1 triumph. He struck out eight Yankees and walked none.
The Dodgers had done to New York what the Yankees, in all their dominant years, had never been able to do to them. In baseball parlance, they had swept ’em.
