The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games of All Time

by J.P. Hoornstra

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The Dodgers have played more than 10,000 games as a franchise. Their 50 greatest games span two coasts and three centuries worth of baseball. They include:

•   A doubleheader that lasted six and a half innings combined
•   A single game that featured three teams on the field
•   A game in which the Dodgers didn’t record a hit – and won
•   The games in which the single-season and career home run records were broken
•   Three perfect games and two no-hitters
•   The longest game in major league history
•   The first major league game ever televised
•   A game in which the Dodgers’ pitcher lost consciousness on the field
•   An exhibition game that drew 93,103 spectators
•   The first integrated game in major league history

The 50 Greatest Dodgers Games features all the best players to don the uniform: Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, Kirk Gibson, Zack Wheat, Fernando Valenzuela, Orel Hershiser, Duke Snider, Roy Campanella, Clayton Kershaw, Steve Garvey, Don Drysdale, Pee Wee Reese and more. It also features some of the unsung heroes of baseball history, like Cookie Lavagetto, Vic Davalillo, Sandy Amoros, Al Gionfriddo and Joe McGinnity.

For the first time, their performances are laid side-by-side in this account of the greatest Dodgers games ever played. Which game ranks number one?

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The ending is enough to make game 4 of the 1947 World Series one of the Dodgers’ greatest. But it was extraordinary for reasons beyond the Dodgers walking off the New York Yankees in the bottom of the ninth inning. For one, it remains one of the finest gatherings of baseball talent ever assembled on a diamond. Five future Hall of Famers had a hand in the outcome: Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Phil Rizzuto, Jackie Robinson and Pee Wee Reese. The Dodgers drew ten walks against the opposing starter, a World Series record. The Dodgers’ 3-2 win tied the series at two games apiece.

Yet these are all historical footnotes. To achieve immortality, the game required superlative contributions from three fairly ordinary major leaguers: Lavagetto, who clubbed the game-winning hit; Yankees pitcher Bill Bevens, who took a no-hitter into the ninth inning; and the Dodgers’ Al Gionfriddo, who stole second base with two outs in the ninth inning and scored the game-tying run. None of the three played a major-league game after the series was over. Like a star going supernova, each player saved his best for last. The 33,443 fans in attendance at Ebbets Field couldn’t have known that Bevens, Gionfriddo and Lavagetto were at the end of the road, but there was a strong sense of the moment. The New York Times reported that some fans resolved never to attend a baseball game again, knowing they would never see a better one.

Copyright © 2015 J.P. Hoornstra

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J.P. Hoornstra

J.P. Hoornstra reports on the Dodgers for the Los Angeles News Group. He has written about sports and travel for more than a dozen newspapers and several periodicals since he was an undergraduate psychology student at UCLA. His interview subjects include some of the most famous names in sports, music and entertainment, as well as experts in medicine, psychology, architecture and business. When he is not writing at the ballpark, he is at home in Los Angeles ... writing.