October 28, 1981: The Last Night of My Yankee Dynasty

October 28, 1981: A dark day in my life. One might even say a blue day... Dodger Blue.

No two franchises have played each other in the World Series as often as the New York Yankees and the Dodgers. They played each other in 1941, 1947, 1949, 1952, 1953, 1955 and 1956, when the Dodgers were in Brooklyn. The Dodgers won in 1955, but the Yankees won all the rest.

After the 1957 season, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles. They beat the Yankees in 1963. They didn't play each other again until 1977, and the Yankees won. The Yankees beat them again in 1978.

By this point, I was old enough to watch baseball on television, and these were the Yankees of Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, Catfish Hunter, Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles and Goose Gossage. And these were the Dodgers of Steve Garvey and Don Sutton, with a young Dusty Baker in left field. And while the Yankees had replaced their managers periodically -- Billy Martin managed the 1977 title, Bob Lemon the one in 1978 -- Tommy Lasorda had been their manager since late in 1976.

This Dodger team had also won the National League Pennant in 1974, while still managed by the man who'd led them since 1954, Walter Alston. They lost that World Series to the Oakland Athletics, then including Jackson, Hunter, and Ken Holtzman, who would also pitch for the Yankees in 1977, but was traded in 1978. The Yankees had also won the American League Pennant in 1976, losing the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds.

Pretty much everybody outside each team's market hated both teams. The Yankees were seen as New York gangsters, rough and nasty, ready to run over your grandmother if she got in their way; the Dodgers as L.A. nice guys, All-American Boys, a little too clean, too good to be true (which turned out to be the case). No longer the beloved underdogs, a.k.a. "Dem Bums," as they were in Brooklyn, the Los Angeles Dodgers were popular from the Pacific Ocean to Las Vegas, but not east of there.

But when they played each other in the World Series, even people who hated the Dodgers rooted for them, because they hated the Yankees more.

In 1978, the Dodgers had won the 1st 2 games of the Series in Los Angeles. Then the Yankees took the next 4, 3 at Yankee Stadium and Game 6 at Dodger Stadium, to win the title.

Both teams had done a little retooling. In 1979, neither made the Playoffs, and Munson, the Yankees' catcher and Captain, was killed in a plane crash. Hunter retired due to a shoulder injury. Roy White also retired. Sparky Lyle (a season earlier), Ed Figueroa, Mickey Rivers and Chris Chambliss were traded. Lemon, Oscar Gamble and Rudy May had left, and returned. Bobby Murcer, the popular center fielder traded after the 1974 season, had also returned. The Yankees signed pitcher Tommy John away from the Dodgers, and brought in Bob Watson, Jerry Mumphrey and Rick Cerone.

In 1980, the Yankees won the AL Eastern Division again, but lost the AL Championship Series to the Kansas City Royals, whom they had beaten in the ALCS in 1976, '77 and '78. The Dodgers finished in a tie with the Houston Astros for the NL Western Division title, but lost a Playoff game to the Astros.

The Dodgers traded Sutton, but benefited from the arrival in 1981 of Fernando Valenzuela, a chubby Mexican lefthander with a sensational screwball that allowed him to win his 1st 8 decisions. Even people who didn't like the Dodgers were gripped by "Fernandomania," and, for the first time, the huge Mexican-American community in Southern California found a reason to root for the Dodgers instead of a team from Mexico. Valenzuela finished 13-7, and was named the NL's Rookie of the Year, just as their reliever Steve Howe had been in 1980, and their starting pitcher Rick Sutcliffe in 1979.

The Yankees signed San Diego Padres star Dave Winfield to their 1st contract worth more than $1 million a year. Remembering how he wasn't exactly welcomed as the big free agent signing 4 years earlier, Reggie showed Dave the courtesy he'd wanted.

The strike that interrupted the 1981 season meant that a team had to finish 1st in either half of the season to qualify for the Playoffs. The Yankees won the AL East in the 1st half; beat the 2nd-half winners, the Milwaukee Brewers; and finally the A's for the Pennant. The Dodgers won the NL West in the 1st half, beat the Astros, and then beat the Montreal Expos for the Pennant.

*

October 20, 1981: Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium. A banner is hung from the upper deck: "DON'T THE DODGERS EVER LEARN"?

Not yet, they don't, as Watson's 1st-inning homer and the pitching of Guidry and Gossage shut the Bums down, 5-3.

October 21, 1981: The Yankees take a 2-0 lead, as John and Gossage combine on a 3-0 shutout. Watson has 2 hits and an RBI.

The Yankees are 2 wins away from their 23rd World Championship. No one can imagine it now, but the team will not win another competitive game until April 12, 1982 (the next season opened later than it should have, due to a late snowstorm postponing a week's worth of games), and it will take them 15 more years to get that 23rd title.

The Yankees also make a trade on this day, sending 22-year-old outfielder Willie McGee to the St. Louis Cardinals for pitcher Bob Sykes. It will be one of the worst trades in Yankee history, as Sykes, a native of nearby Neptune, New Jersey, is already damaged goods, and never appears in another big-league game, finished at 27. McGee helps the Cards win the next year’s World Series and 3 of the next 6 NL Pennants.

October 23, 1981: Despite an uncharacteristically poor performance (9 hits‚ 7 walks), Valenzuela goes the distance in the Dodgers' 5-4 come-from-behind win in Game 3. The deciding run scores on a double play.

Yankee starter Dave Righetti lasts just 2 innings‚ walking 2 and allowing 5 hits‚ but it is reliever George Frazier who takes the loss. Ron Cey hits a 3-run homer for the Dodgers. Starters Valenzuela and Righetti are the 1st 2 Rookies of the Year, of any position, to oppose each other in the World Series since Willie Mays and Gil McDougald in 1951.

October 24, 1981: The Dodgers tie the World Series up at 2 games apiece, 8-7, thanks to some poor Yankee fielding. Jackson and Willie Randolph hit home runs for the Bronx Bombers -- Reggie's last in a Yankee uniform, as it turned out -- but Jay Johnstone, who'd helped the Yankees beat the Dodgers in the 1978 World Series, returns the favor for the Dodgers.

Johnstone would later write, in his memoir Temporary Insanity (a title based on his quirky personality), that George Steinbrenner stormed into the locker room and demanded that Ron Davis (Yankee reliever and future Met player Ike's father) tell him why he threw Johnstone a fastball.

October 25, 1981: The Dodgers win Game 5, as back-to-back homers by Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager off Guidry give the Dodgers their 3rd consecutive win, 2-1. Winfield singled in the 5th, but that turned out to be his only hit in the Series. Even then, he didn't score, as he was eliminated when Reggie grounded into a double play.

After this game, George said he'd scuffled with 2 Dodger fans in a hotel elevator, and that explained his fat lip and his broken hand.

*

October 28, 1981: Game 6 of the World Series is played at Yankee Stadium, having been postponed a day due to rain. John started for the Yankees, Burt Hooton for the Dodgers, and both of them got through the 2nd inning without allowing a run.

The Yankees, needing to win to force a Game 7, got on the board first: With 2 out in the bottom of the 3rd, Randolph hit a home run. They got 2 more men on, and that brought up Mr. October. But Reggie flied to left. The Dodgers tied it in the top of the 4th, on singles by Baker, Rick Monday and Yeager.

With 1 out in the bottom of the 4th, Nettles doubled, and Cerone struck out. Lasorda ordered the weak-hitting shortstop, Larry Milbourne, walked intentionally, to bring the pitcher's spot in the order up. Lemon gambled, and sent Bobby Murcer up to pinch-hit for a pitcher who'd allowed only 1 run in 4 innings. Having made his major league debut 16 years earlier, this was the biggest plate appearance that Murcer would ever have. He nearly hit it out to right field, but not quite long enough.

Lemon, himself a Hall of Fame pitcher and a pitching coach before becoming a manager, might have been justified in pinch-hitting for John. But he couldn't get the pitching right afterward. He sent Frazier out for the 5th, and he had nothing, allowing an RBI single by Cey and an RBI triple by Guerrero, giving the Dodgers a 4-1 lead.

It got worse in the 6th, as Davis walked Hooton, walked Davey Lopes, and allowed an RBI single to Bill Russell. Lemon replaced him with Rick Reuschel. When Lopes and Russell advanced on a double steal, Lemon ordered Garvey walked to set up the double play. It didn't work: Derrel Thomas hit a grounder to 3rd that got Lopes home. Baker reached on an error, and Guerrero singled home 2 runs. It was 8-1 Los Angeles.

Lou Piniella singled home a run in the bottom of the 6th, but that would be it for the Bronx Bombers, no further bombing. In the top of the 8th, Guerrero hit a home run. In the bottom of the 9th, Howe walked Randolph, struck Mumphrey out, and got Winfield to fly to left.

Mr. October came to bat as a Yankee one more time, and grounded to Lopes at 2nd. Lopes had driven the Yankees crazy in all 3 World Series. This time, he bobbled the ball, and Reggie reached base in Pinstripes one last time. It made no difference, as Watson made the last out, flying to Lee Lacy in center.

Dodgers 9, Yankees 2. The L.A. Bums had finally beaten the Yankees in the World Series. For the 1st time, the Series' Most Valuable Player award was split, awarded to 3 players: Guerrero, Cey and Yeager.

Winfield was just 1-for-21‚ while Frazier tied a Series record by losing 3 games. The record was set by the White Sox' Lefty Williams in 1919‚ but Williams‚ one of the 8 "Black Sox‚" was losing on purpose. Frazier was trying to win, and didn't.

The long-term effects on the Yankees were as follows:

* This was the last time that Reggie Jackson suited up as a player for the Yankees, and George Steinbrenner refused to exercise the option for a 6th year on his contract. Reggie happily accepted an offer from Gene Autry to return to the West Coast and play for the California Angels.

* Winfield's performance contrasted so much with Reggie's Mr. October persona that George eventually nicknamed him Mr. May, never gave him the respect he deserved, and ended up chasing Dave out of town – coincidentally, also to the Angels, although Reggie was retired by that point – and getting himself in trouble with how he did it.

While George gave Dave a "Day" after he was elected to the Hall of Fame, to this day, Dave's Number 31 has not been retired, along with those of his Yankee teammates Jackson (44), Ron Guidry (49) and, later, Don Mattingly (23), and his occasional manager Billy Martin (1). Nor has he gotten a Plaque in Monument Park like those 4, and also like teammates Randolph and Gossage.

* George went through various experiments in managers and styles of play (booming bats one year, speed the next, and so on) to get the Yankees back on top, but they wouldn't reach the World Series again for 15 years, giving the new ownership of the Mets the chance to become from 1984 to 1992 what they have not been since '92, New York's first team. (Despite their 2015 Pennant, they still aren't.)

Blowing that lead, to the evil O'Malley Bums and their fat hypocritical slob of a manager, Tommy Lasorda, losing the Series at home, and when I was just 11 going on 12...

More than any other Yankee defeat, this one sticks in my craw. As bad as the 2001 and 2003 World Series losses were (I don't really remember the 1976 sweep loss); or the 1980 and 2012 ALCS sweeps; or the 2010, 2017, 2019 and 2022 ALCS folds; or the ALDS losses of 1995, 1997, 2006, 2011, 2018 and 2020; or the 1985 and 1988 regular-season near-misses; or the complete bottle-jobs in the Wild Card Games of 2015 and 2021. Even the 2004 ALCS collapse doesn't bother me as much as the 1981 World Series.

And, unlike with the 2004 Red Sox and the 2017, '19 and '22 Astros, I can't even rationalize it away by saying the Dodgers cheated! That I know of. There are some people who have alleged that the mound at Dodger Stadium was actually less than 60 feet 6 inches from home plate in the Lasorda era, but I don't think this was ever seriously challenged.

In 1998, the Yankees celebrated the 20th Anniversary of the '77 and '78 World Champions by inviting the Dodgers of that period to Old-Timers' Day. The Old-Timers' Game usually goes 3 innings, but since it was tied, it went to a 4th inning, and Willie Randolph hit a home run off Tommy John to win it for the Yankees. So not only did John pitch on the losing side in all 3 of these Yankee-Dodger World Series, but he lost this Old-Timers' Game as well.

Among the interviews done on WPIX-Channel 11, Bobby Murcer, by then a broadcaster, and wearing a special hookup on his belt so he could announce a game he was playing in, talked to Lasorda. The man who liked to say, "I bleed Dodger Blue," and referred to God as "the Big Dodger in the Sky," talked about the '77 and '78 Series, but brought up '81, Murcer's only World Series in 17 seasons in the major leagues, 13 of them with the Yankees, and said, "We brought that World Championship trophy back to Los Angeles where it belongs!"

The fat bigoted slob forgot: Los Angeles isn't even where the Dodgers belong. Brooklyn is.

Buster Olney titled his book about the 2001 Yankees, with a focus on their loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks in Game 7 of the World Series, The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty. Peter Golenbock, in Dynasty: The New York Yankees, 1949-1964; David Halberstam, in October 1964; and Philip Bashe, in Dog Days: The New York Yankees' Fall from Grace and Return to Glory, 1964-1976 have all written about how the Yankees' loss to the St. Louis Cardinals in Game 7 of the 1964 World Series was the last day of the old Yankee Dynasty.

October 28, 1981 was the last day of my Yankee Dynasty. That wasn't apparent at the time. But the team's collapse in 1982 made it clear.

The Yankees were now 8-3 in World Series against the Dodgers, 2-2 in their Los Angeles period. In the 41 years since, the teams have never played each other in another World Series. In Interleague Play, yes; in the World Series, no.

They've both made the Playoffs in 1995, 1996, 2004, 2006, 2009, 2015, 2017, 2018, 2019, 2020, 2021 and 2022. They've both reached their respective League Championship Series in 2009, 2017 and 2019. But, since 1981, they've never again met in the World Series.

And at the rate Brian Cashman is going, it looks like it won't happen again for years to come, through no fault of the Dodgers and their management.

UPDATE: They did face each other in the 2024 World Series. The Dodgers won in 5 games.

*

October 28, 1981 was a Wednesday. The baseball season was over. It was midweek for football. The NBA season started 2 days later. There were 7 games played that night in the NHL:

* The New York Rangers lost to the Edmonton Oilers, 5-3 at Madison Square Garden. The Broadway Blueshirts blew leads of 2-0 and 3-1, as Wayne Gretzky had 2 goals and 2 assists.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the St. Louis Blues, 6-2 at the Buffalo Memorial Auditorium.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 5-3 at the Civic Arena in Pittsburgh.

* The Chicago Black Hawks beat the Winnipeg Jets, 7-6 at the Chicago Stadium.

* The Minnesota North Stars beat the Calgary Flames, 6-1 at the Metropolitan Sports Center in the Minneapolis suburb of Bloomington, Minnesota.

* The Quebec Nordiques beat the Colorado Rockies, 3-1 at the McNichols Arena in Denver. The Rockies became the New Jersey Devils the next season.

* And the Vancouver Canucks beat the Washington Capitals, 3-0 at the Pacific Coliseum in Vancouver.

Also, Milan Baroš, a Czech soccer player who helped Liverpool FC win the 2005 UEFA Champions League, was born on this day.