Wikipedia
The 1965 World Series featured the National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers against the American League champion Minnesota Twins. It is best remembered for the heroics of Sandy Koufax, who was named the series MVP. Koufax did not pitch in Game 1, as it fell on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, but pitched in Game 2 and then tossed shutouts in Games 5 and 7 (with only two days of rest in between) to win the championship.
The Twins had won their first pennant in 1933 when the team was known as the Washington Senators. The Dodgers, prevailing in seven games, captured their second title in three years, and their third since moving to Los Angeles in 1958.
Both teams improved from sixth-place finishes in 1964; the Twins won the A.L. pennant with relative ease while the Dodgers were locked in a season-long five-way battle in the N.L. among themselves, the Giants, Pirates, Reds, and Braves. After the Giants won their 14th-consecutive game to take a 4
1⁄2-game lead on September 16, the Dodgers went on a 13-game winning streak over the final two weeks of the season to clinch the pennant on the next to last day of the season over the second place rival Giants.
During the 1965 season, the Dodgers relied heavily on the arms of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, and would rely on them even more in the World Series, as the Dodgers only used seven pitchers. The Dodgers' strong core of pitchers, which also included Claude Osteen and Ron Perranoski, kept them in the pennant race and into the Series. Koufax, surviving on a steady diet of Cortisone and pain killers for his arthritic left elbow, pitched five times in 15 days down the stretch, winning four (three shutouts), including 13 strikeouts in the pennant winner against Milwaukee.
Dodger hitting however remained strictly popgun, especially after Tommy Davis went down in late April for the season with a broken ankle. Manager Walter Alston promptly called up 12-year minor league veteran Lou Johnson from Spokane. Johnson led the Dodgers, along with ROY Jim Lefebvre, in home runs with just 12.
The Twins, managed by Sam Mele, had a more balanced attack, equally strong in pitching and hitting, although their defense committed 173 errors including 39 by shortstop Zoilo Versalles. Offensively Mele again had balance with good hitting, power and speed up and down his lineup that included the AL's leading hitter (Tony Oliva, at .321), and 20-plus home runs from five different players, including top-level slugger Harmon Killebrew, normally good for 40+ per year, though limited to 25 in 1965 due to missing nearly two months of the season with an injury. Pitching was spearheaded by 21-game winner Mudcat Grant, Jim "Kitty" Kaat, and Camilo Pascual.
This was only the second World Series where both teams were located west of the Mississippi River. The first occurred in 1944, when the St. Louis Browns faced their Sportsman's Park tenants, the St. Louis Cardinals.
This was the first of 11 consecutive World Series that did not have the New York Yankees playing in it; it was the longest such streak until 1993, when the Toronto Blue Jays claimed the second of their back-to-back World Series championships by defeating the Philadelphia Phillies.
It was also the first series in which both teams had had losing records the previous year. This has since been repeated two other times, both times also involving the Twins—in 1987 and 1991.
This World Series was the first in which all games were played in cities that did not have National League or American League teams in 1903, the year of the first modern World Series.
Also, it is the earliest World Series whose telecasts are known to survive in their entirety; the CBC has complete kinescopes of all seven games in its archives.
The Twins won the first two games of the series against Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax, but once Claude Osteen shut out the Twins in Game 3, things turned around. Willie Davis of The Dodgers tied a World Series record stealing 3 bases in one Game, game 5, the record was set by Honus Wagner in 1909. The Dodgers proceeded to win the three middle games at Dodger Stadium and Koufax would pitch two shutouts including a three-hitter with ten strikeouts to clinch. Ron Fairly hit two home runs for the Dodgers, both in losing efforts.
NL Los Angeles Dodgers (4) vs. AL Minnesota Twins (3)