The 1959 World Series featured the National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers beating the American League champion Chicago White Sox, 4–2. Each of the three games played at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum drew record crowds, Game 5's attendance of 92,706 continues to be a World Series record to this day, and one that cannot feasibly be broken in any modern ballpark.
It was the first World Series played on the West Coast of the United States, outside Major League Baseball's traditional territory that stretched from Boston to Washington, D.C. in the East and to St. Louis in the Midwest from 1876 through 1955, when the Athletics franchise moved to Kansas City. A West Coast World Series became a reality only one year after the Dodgers and the Giants relocated to Los Angeles and San Francisco from Brooklyn and New York City after the 1957 season.
For the White Sox, which had last won the World Series in 1917, it was the first American League pennant in 40 years, since the 1919 Black Sox Scandal), when the team lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. They would have to wait until their championship season of to win another pennant.
The Dodgers won their first National League pennant since moving from Brooklyn after the 1957 season by defeating the Milwaukee Braves (another franchise that had moved out of its original city during the 1950s) 2–0 in a best-of-three pennant playoff. The Dodgers' first world championship in Los Angeles, the win was their second World Series victory in franchise history and its second in five seasons, since it beat the New York Yankees in 1955, its first win in the October classic after seven losses between 1916 and 1953 (the Brooklyn Dodgers had gone 1–8 in the World Series, while in Los Angeles, the Dodgers have won six in twelve tries between 1959 and 2020).
The first championship for a West Coast team, it was also the first World Series in which no pitcher for either side pitched a complete game. As Vin Scully remarked in his narration for the official World Series film, "What a change of scenery!" This was the only Fall Classic played during the period from 1949 through 1964 in which no games were played in New York City.
Route to the World Series
Dodgers
After finishing seventh in 1958, the Dodgers rebounded in 1959. The National League pennant race was a season-long three-way battle between the Dodgers, the two-time defending N.L. champion Milwaukee Braves and the San Francisco Giants. The Dodgers never led by more than two games (and that was at the end of a tie-breaker) and never trailed by more than five. On September 20, the Dodgers completed a three-game sweep in San Francisco so that, with five games to play, they had a game lead on the Braves and a one-game lead over the Giants. Going into the final day, the Dodgers and Braves were tied for first and the Giants were games back; the Giants needed to sweep a doubleheader from the Cardinals and have the Dodgers and Braves both lose to force a three-way tie. But the Dodgers won in Chicago 7–1 and the Braves won at home against the Phillies 5–2; this made the fact that the Giants lost both games of their doubleheader irrelevant.
In Game 1 of the best-of-three playoff in Milwaukee, the Dodgers took a 3–2 lead in the top of the sixth inning. Dodger reliever Larry Sherry then retired 12 of the last 13 Braves hitters to secure the win.
Games 2 and 3 (if necessary) were scheduled for Los Angeles. In Game 2, the Dodgers trailed 5–2 in the ninth inning, but rallied to tie the game with five singles and a sacrifice fly. In the top of the 11th, the Braves loaded the bases with two out, but Stan Williams got pinch hitter Joe Adcock to ground out to end the threat. In the bottom of the 12th, Gil Hodges drew a walk with two out and nobody on. Joe Pignatano singled Hodges to second. Carl Furillo hit a ground ball to shortstop Félix Mantilla; Mantilla's throw to first base was in the dirt and skipped past Frank Torre, allowing Hodges to score all the way from second with the pennant-clinching run.