Blue Beginnings

In the fall of 2020, I started watching baseball with my then-6-year-old son for the first extended period of time.

As his dad is a Yankees fan, he of course absorbed that they were the good guys, and he quickly picked up on the starring figures in this spectacle: The twin towers of Aaron Judge and Giancarlo Stanton, the fireballing ace Gerrit Cole, the feisty Brett Gardner.

And because this was his first real exposure to the sport, he was also impressed by some of the non-Yankees who also starred in that postseason. For weeks afterward, whenever we played ball in the parking lot, he pretended to be Randy Arozarena as often as Judge.

Back in the fall of 1981, I was approximately the same age as my son in 2020, and I too was just embarking on my first steps as a baseball fan. Coincidentally, that year had an expanded playoff format – due to the midseason strike – that would later become the norm. It was also the last year before this one that the Yankees and Dodgers met in the World Series.

As my dad is also a Yankees fan (albeit a transplanted one from Philadelphia), I had cast my lot with the wonderfully nicknamed Bronx Bombers by that point. We had the great Reggie Jackson, the towering Dave Winfield, the intimidating Goose Gossage, and Tommy John when he was still known more as a pitcher and not an operation.

And because this was my first extended exposure to the sport, I also became familiar with the names that populated the Dodger roster and still loom large in my memory of those innocent days. Steve Garvey was a big star, rookie Fernando Valenzuela was seemingly everywhere that year, and even manager Tommy Lasorda was well-known to us kids from New York.

Game 1 went almost exactly the way you’d want it to as a Yankees fan. The Bombers got a three-run homer from Bob Watson in the first and drove L.A. starter Jerry Reuss from the game after 2.2 innings. Meanwhile, ace Ron Guidry went seven strong, and while Ron Davis had a bit of a hiccup in relief, Goose polished things off with two solid innings for the save.

Game 2 brought more outstanding pitching from the home team, this time from John (7 IP) and Gossage (2 IP), while one RBI each from Larry Milbourne, Watson and Willie Randolph provided all the offense the Yankees needed. Reggie still hadn’t played yet in the series due to a strained calf muscle, but it didn’t matter – we were rolling!

I had a feeling Game 3 would be a little different. Despite my tender years, I had enough of a sense of narrative storytelling to grasp that the good guys didn’t always romp to victory so easily – usually they took a couple of punches in return. And with Fernando on the mound for L.A., this felt like the time they would start landing some solid blows.

The Dodgers did come out swinging with Ron Cey’s three-run homer in the first, but the Yankees got two back in the second and then a two-run blast from Rick Cerone in the third to take a 4-3 lead off Valenzuela. Unfortunately, our own rookie sensation, Dave Righetti, lasted just two batters into the third, and reliever George Frazier got his first taste of the bad luck that would plague him all series when a couple of high choppers fueled a Dodger rally in the fifth that gave them the lead.

Meanwhile, Fernando kept returning to the mound inning after inning, never quite collapsing despite all the traffic on the bases. After getting out of one final jam in the eighth, on a Bobby Murcer-popped-bunt turned-double play, the lefty set the Yankees down in order in the ninth to finish with nine hits and seven walks allowed over nearly 150 pitches to claim the hard-earned win.

Now it was time for the Yankees to punch back, I was sure of it. Reggie was finally good to go, and his first-inning single sent his old nemesis Bob Welch to an early shower. A steady supply of offense gave them a seemingly comfortable 6-3 lead by the sixth, but Jay Johnstone cranked a pinch-hit, two-run shot off Ron Davis in the bottom of the frame, and Davey Lopes scored the tying run soon after Reggie lost his pop fly in the sun.

Frazier was victimized by more bad luck the following inning when a dribbler produced one baserunner and a catchable fly ball led to another. Of course, both runners came around to score after John entered in relief. Although Reggie tried to atone for his mishap with his 10th and final home run of World Series play, L.A.’s one-run lead held up to knot the series at two games apiece.

Following the chaos of the day before, Game 5 was a tight affair with both Guidry and Reuss in top form. The Yanks struck first when the hot-hitting Reggie doubled and scored in the second. Guidry was in control for most of the night, until Pedro Guerrero and Steve Yeager ambushed him for back-to-back jacks in the seventh. A scary moment occurred when Gossage drilled Cey in the helmet in the eighth, but there were otherwise no more notable incidents as the Dodgers took a 3-2 series lead.

That is, there was nothing notable until after the game, when George Steinbrenner allegedly beat up two drunk Dodger fans in a hotel elevator. Now, I knew at this impressionable age that there was nothing to be gained by fighting, but perhaps the famously outspoken owner was sending a message to his team that it was time to stop getting pushed around.

Or maybe he was just full of you know what – no witnesses ever stepped forward to corroborate his story. Still, point taken, Boss. It was time to stop getting pushed around!

With a day off baked into the series as it shifted back to New York, the two teams got another day to rest as rainy weather forced the postponement of Game 6. This provided Cey with extra time to clear the cobwebs from his noggin, as well as another day for his slick-fielding Yankees counterpart, Graig Nettles, to recover from a “jammed” (actually broken) thumb, seemingly leaving both sides at equal strength.

The teams were tied at one when the Yanks made the apparently curious decision to lift John for a pinch-hitter with two on and two out in the fourth. It was a defensible move, except Murcer flew out to end the inning, and Frazier proceeded to once again pitch like a man who’d kicked a black cat while walking beneath a ladder on Friday the 13th. Cey collected a bad-bounce single, Dusty Baker dunked a flare into center, and Guerrero delivered the only hard-hit ball of the inning with a blast that fell in front of the 430-foot-marker(!) in left-center to plate two. The Dodgers then put the game out of reach with four in the sixth off Davis and Rick Reuschel, before Guerrero capped a five-RBI day with a homer in the eighth.

Not that I saw most of it. The game started after 8 p.m., and this first-grader was in bed beneath his Sesame Street blankets by the time the Dodgers started piling it on. I do remember finding out about it the next day, and being sad and confused about the outcome. What happened? How could the Yankees lose four in a row?

As my son would discover for himself with the Yankees-Rays ALDS 39 years later, this was an early lesson in how the good guys don’t always pull out the victory. There were those who performed valiantly in defeat (Watson hit .318 with seven RBI), those who couldn’t catch a break (Frazier tied a Series record with three losses), and those who outright stunk (Winfield went 1-for-22).

Adding to the agony, although I didn’t know it at the time, was that these first lucid memories of October baseball would be the high-water mark of my Yankees fandom for another 15 years.

At least my son didn’t have to wait so long for the Bombers to return to the playoffs. He also didn’t have to endure a celebration like this, which serves to remind why the Yankees-Dodgers blood feud still runs deep after all these years.

Thanks to The New York Times article archives as well as Baseball Reference and its extraordinary research database, Stathead, for help in assembling this piece.