It is Yankees versus Dodgers, so maybe before the game you can sip a Nedick’s and have lunch at the Automat while perusing your Daily Mirror and your Herald-Trib. Maybe afterward you can catch a show at the Paramount at 1501 Broadway, or a late dinner at the Copa (after a few pops at Toots Shor’s, natch), and on the subway ride over you can read Jimmy Cannon tell you all about that afternoon’s game in The Post.
It is Yankees versus Dodgers, so maybe when the game is over you can try to slip to the good side of the velvet rope outside Studio 54 (after putting the world to bed over a few beers at Runyan’s, of course). Maybe on the off day you can go watch Nell Carter do her thing in “Ain’t Misbehavin’” at the Longacre, and after that maybe catch a late set by the Talking Heads or Elvis Costello downtown, at CBGB, or by Blondie or Patti Smith at Max’s Kansas City.
It is Yankees versus Dodges, and so the baseball world will stand at attention as it regularly did in the ’40s and ’50s, as it regularly did in the ’70s. The flyover cities may roll their eyes about all of this, and they’re entitled to that. Maybe it was too much when the Yankees and the Dodgers seemed to make their reservations in October before they ever left spring training every year.
Somehow, though, it’s been 43 years since the last one.
So Friday night, when Jack Flaherty throws the first pitch of the 120th World Series to Gleyber Torres, we will return to a familiar place again. The Yankees and the Dodgers, the Dodgers and the Yankees: Close your eyes and half the Hall of Fame goes flying by with many others who sure played at that level when these teams got together:
Mickey and Duke … Whitey and Newk … Pee Wee and Scooter … Reggie and Dusty … Dixie and DiMaggio … Yogi and Campy … Jackie and Billy … Thurman and Fernando … Leo the Lip and Ol’ Case …
“It was a thrill to play in those games,” one of the last Boys of Summer, Carl Erskine, said a few years ago. “It was a privilege. What games. What players. What friends. What rivals.”
Erskine passed at 97 back in April, but he surely would have been delighted by the renewal of this ancient baseball feud. All of them would. Yankees-Dodgers used to decorate October when they were all ours, when it was Brooklyn against The Bronx just about every year, and so many of the old feelings returned in 1963 and ’77, in 1978 and ’81, when an entire country separated them now instead of a couple of subway lines.
And here again, and it seems right that when they meet this time they come at each other as the undisputed best teams in baseball: the Dodgers, with 105 wins so far on the season, tops in the National League; the Yankees at 101 wins, the gold standard in the American League. They are 1A and 1B, prepared to duke it out for 1 undisputed.
These series were always dominated by the stars, and gravitated to the stars, and so will this one, as well: Aaron Judge and his sure-to-be-close-to-unanimous MVP numbers (.322, 58 home runs, 144 RBI) sharing the top billing alongside Shohei Ohtani and his guaranteed-to-be-near-consensus output of .310/54/130, with 59 steals tossed into the pot for good measure.
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Aaron Judge can rid himself of Dodger Stadium and playoff demons in one fell swoop
- Sherman: Gerrit Cole pitching for his Yankees — and baseball — legacy
- Heyman: Dodgers had to take a chance the Yankees couldn’t stomach
- Yankees outfielder has extra World Series motivation: ‘I was upset’
Both players toyed with Triple Crowns this year; now they wrestle for the only crown that truly matters and for the right to hold long-awaited parades. For the Yankees, it would be the first in 15 years; for the Dodgers, the first in 36, since the 2020 champions never did get feted due to pandemic restrictions.
But there are also the wingmen: Juan Soto on the Yankees, Mookie Betts on the Dodgers. There are the two managers, both of whom have overcome some disenchantment among their own fans to get here, both of whom share eternal ties to past Yankees history: Aaron Boone as the man who kept Boston’s curse alive for another year in 2003 with an ALCS-winning home run, Dave Roberts as a co-conspirator in ending it at last, his Game 4 stolen base in ’04 being the match that lit the fuse that powered an epic Red Sox comeback.
All of these nuggets, all of these items, two teams that are very much a product of today. And yet when Flaherty goes into his windup, he will wear the same outfit Dodgers have worn forever: blue cap, white uniform with blue lettering and a quirky red number in the front. And Torres will wear the road grays the Yankees reintroduced this year for the first time since 1973 where there’s no white shadow around the blue “NEW YORK.”
It really could be 1941, or 1949, or 1956. You really could hop on a trolley on Flatbush Avenue. You really could be listening to Mel Allen or Vin Scully or Red Barber, coming to you from the catbird seat. Yankees-Dodgers is back. Yeah. Let’s get started already.
