Dodgers At Giants Notes

Tonight at 9 P.M. or so Eastern Time on TBS, an epic, albeit only a “quarter,” decisive game between the 107 wins San Francisco Giants and 106 wins, Los Angeles Dodgers at “The city by the bay.”

Some notes will follow:

In route to their first 5 and until 2010, only titles, the Giants faced no must win games, going an incredible (25-5) (Sandy’s ’63 record), in those 5 winning World Series (three of the losses were in a best of 9, (5 games to 3) W.S. win vs the Yankees in 1921.

In winning the three consecutive “even year” titles in 2010, 2012 and 2014, as S.F. (the 5 previous crowns were as the New York Giants), they faced and won 5 must games, also in which victory meant advancing or in the case of the Madison Bumgarner brilliant relief pitching stint led #7/’14 W.S. an actual crown.

Those other four “must win”/advance with a win games were in the 2010 decisive 5th of the bastardized/division series vs Atlanta (The Braves, to be in their 13th NLCS (5-7) in previous and sans a victory in such since 1999, await the winner of tonight’s tilt), the 2012 division series at Cincinnati and its then manager Dusty Baker (his Astros are over 7 to 5 favorites to represent the A.L. in the World Series for the third time in 5 seasons), the 2012 decisive 7th/NLCS at S.F. vs the Cardinals, and the 10/8 game at Pittsburgh in ’14 (Brandon Crawford’s big belt/H.R. there is no injured Brandon Belt for the Giants).

Meanwhile the Dodgers, sans a title until 1955, have faced and obviously won 6 “must games” en route to 5 of their 7 crowns. They won #7/W.S. behind John Podres in ’55 and Sandy Koufax in 1965. They did not face a must game, though they were in a best of 3, unscheduled ‘off vs Milwaukee (Braves) in route to their second title in ’59 nor in ’63 when they swept the two time champion (also an insane 20 titles in 40 seasons going into that ’63 World Series, the last of the tragically too few 47 with John F. Kennedy on the earth) Yankees.

In winning their 3 other titles, the Dodgers won “must”/”Win and advance” games (two in ’81, the strike caused extra round decisive 5th at home vs the then N.L. team, Astros and the decisive 5th/NLCS at Montreal on Rick Monday’s home run, T9. The Montreal Expos became the Washington Nationals and won an all road 7 game World Series vs the Astros in 2019).

L.A.  bombed Ron Darling and won game 7 of the ’88 NLCS vs the Mets and also won #7 of the 2020 NLCS.