Think the St. Louis Cardinals and Los Angeles Dodgers got their playoff rivalry under way in 1985? Here's a history lesson.
Think 1946. Decades before Major League Baseball expanded its postseason the teams with numerous similarities met for the National League title.
They have met three times since postseason expansion arrived. But '46 set a tone for a half-century of rivalry between two of the three most successful teams in the NL. The other: the Giants.
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It was baseball's first pennant playoff, the result of the Cardinals and Dodgers tying for first place. The Cardinals, the residing power in the NL, met the rising Dodgers first at Sportsman's Park before moving to Ebbets Field that October.
As described by SI.com: "In baseball's first pennant playoff, St. Louis swept two games, 4-2 and 8-4, in the best-of-three format used by the National League before 1969. Rookie Joe Garagiola had three hits and two RBIs in the opener and an RBI triple by Enos Slaughter highlighted the clincher."
The playoff was the result of the Cardinals losing their last game of the regular season.
That year would be the final hurrah for a championship dynasty of the '40s that included Hall of Famers Slaughter and Stan Musial. The Cardinals had won the NL in 1942, '43 and '44, winning two of the three World Series and challenging in '41. The Dodgers won the NL that season.
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The Dodgers, having secured the services of team-builder Branch Rickey, were on the rise. The next season they would break baseball's color barrier by bringing Jackie Robinson to the roster. And Rickey, jettisoned by the Cardinals after building them into a juggernaut in the 1920, worked his magic in Brooklyn, where the Dodgers would be an NL goliath until the mid-1960s in Los Angeles.
The other playoff meetings:
1985: Meeting in the NLCS, the series was tied 2-2 until Game 5 in St. Louis. That's when Ozzie Smith hit a walkoff homer. The call was immortalized by Jack Buck ("go crazy, folks, go crazy"). In Game 6, Jack Clark delivered a game-winning homer in Los Angeles. Both homers were against Dodgers reliever Tom Niedenfuhr.
2004: Meeting in the first round, the Cardinals defeated the Dodgers 3-1.
2009: The Dodgers swept the series, handing the Cardinals their only first-round loss in the playoffs.
The Cardinals have been to the World Series 18 times, winning 11. They last won in 2011.
The Dodgers have been to the World Series 21 times, winning six. They last won in 1988, their most recent opportunity to win the championship series.
Now in their seventh decade of championship competition, the Cardinals and Dodgers remain elite organizations.
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