Sports Illustrated Cover of the Week

December 20th 1965

Sportsman of the Year

1966 World Series

The 1966 World Series was a matchup between American champion Baltimore Orioles and National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers.
On paper the Orioles pitching was not as deep or commanding as the Dodgers twosome of Don Drysdale and Sandy Koufax.  Koufax was the 1966 Cy Young Award Winner as baseball's best pitcher and Drysdale had won the Cy Young Award in 1962.
The Orioles however had one of the greatest hitters in major league history in Frank Robinson, whom they obtained in a trade from the Cincinnati Reds before the season started.
Robinson had won the National League MVP in 1961 with the Reds and then became the first player to win the award in both leagues when he won the American League MVP in 1966.  This was a "triple crown" year for Frank Robinson as he led the AL in batting average (.316), runs batted in (122) and home runs (49) and powered the Orioles to their first league championship since moving to Baltimore.

The Series was a four game sweep by the Orioles that no one expected as the Orioles pitchers limited the Dodgers to 2 runs in the 4 games.  The Dodgers bats went silent after game 1 and they were shut out in the last 3 games (6-0,1-0 and 1-0) facing Jim Palmer, Wally Bunker and Dave McNally.   Frank Robinson, fittingly, won the World Series MVP.

The Orioles became the first non-Yankees american league team to win the World Series since the 1948 Cleveland Indians.

1965 World Series - Game 7

Game 7 of the 1965 World Series featuring the Los Angeles Dodgers facing the Minnesota Twins.  This game is in Minneapolis at the old Metropolitan Stadium.  NBC would carry all 7 games with the announce team of Twins announcer Ray Scott and and Dodgers legendary announcer (who just signed up to be in the booth for the Dodgers for a 65th season in 2014) Vin Scully.

This final game of the 1965 series would be the only game that the visiting team would win and it was the 3rd time the Twins were shut out in the 7 games.
This was the last time the Twins would be in the World Series before 1987 and this was only the second World Series in which both teams were west of the Mississippi river, the previous was 1944 when the St.Louis Browns faced off against the St. Louis Cardinals.