NEW TRIVIA CONTEST: You will still be required to enter the drawing as usual. However, through the end of 2024 you will get points depending on the complexity of the questions. Enter each week and correct answers will get those points-one guess per person per week. The reader with the most points after the years final column will get a $50 Starbucks Gift Card. Ties will be placed into a drawing. Questions will be worth anywhere from 10-25 points depending on degree of difficulty. Questions will be more difficult as the year goes on, so you are never really out of the mix. Tell your friends and sports fans who like trivia. We will keep track of your points. - YOU MUST ENTER VIA THE EMAIL AT THE END OF THIS COLUMN.
NEW TRIVIA QUESTION: Going Backward from 1950, how many times did the Yankees sweep the World Series and against whom did they do it the first time? TOTAL 15 POINTS.
It had been seven years since the Dodgers and Yankees last played in the World Series but 1963 was a new era of Dodger baseball. Long gone were the Brooklynites for the most part. The Jackie Robinson's, the Gil Hodges and the Roy Campanella's. Three of those holdovers WERE this World Series. Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, and Johnny Podres.
In1963, it would be something the Dodgers had never done to the Yankees, but the New Yorkers had done before. It was a four-game sweep and all the winning pitchers got their start in Brooklyn.
In Game 1, Koufax went the distance in limiting New York to six hits, 5-2. Game 2, had Podres (the hero of the 1955 World Series), down the Yanks 4-1. Don Drysdale shutout New York on 3 hits in Game 3, and drew a pair of walks himself in the days when pitchers did bat. He also struck out nine Yankees. It was all rapped up in Game 4 as Koufax again allowed only six NY hits. One of them was Mickey Mantle's only homer of the Series and the lone run. Koufax didn't walk a batter and struck out eight.
The series was such a dismal performance for the Yankees. Mantle and Tom Tresh hit the only homers for the losers, who collected just 22 hits and batted an anemic .171. Their only other extra base hits were a pair of doubles by Hector Lopez and another by Bobby Richardson.
The Dodgers on the other hand only hit .214 but did rack up eight extra base hits including three home runs. Frank Howard, John Roseboro and former Yankee Bill Skowron all went yard for Los Angeles. It was pitching which made the difference. Five of the seven Yankee hurlers had ERAs under 3.00. The Dodgers used only four pitchers in the entire series.
Probably the most interesting fact of the series was Dodger reliever, Ron Perranoski, was the only relief pitcher used by Walter Alston and he tossed just 2/3 of an inning to get a Save. He came in relief of Podres.
TRIVIA CONTEST;