After losing to the Yankees in the 1977 and 1978 World Series, the 1981 Dodgers share how they erased a deficit to earn redemption and win a title.
The Dodgers lost the first two games of a 1981 National League playoff series in Houston, both in walk-off fashion, before storming back to win three straight over the Astros in Los Angeles to win the series, which pitted the first-half and second-half division winners from the strike-interrupted season.
That earned them a spot in the best-of-five NL Championship Series, where the Dodgers erased a two-games-to-one deficit by winning twice in frigid Montreal, including a 2-1 Game 5 thriller in which Rick Monday hit a game-winning two-out homer in the ninth inning of what Expos fans still refer to as “Blue Monday.”
So when the Dodgers lost the first two games of the 1981 World Series in Yankee Stadium, there was no panic, no sense of dread, on the five-hour flight from New York to Los Angeles for Games 3, 4 and 5.
“We were actually feeling pretty confident,” said Ron Cey, now 76 and the third baseman on that 1981 team. “It was like, OK, our backs are against the wall … again … and we need to respond.”
Cey provided a haymaker of a counter-punch, slugging a three-run home run in the first inning of Game 3, a series-turning two-out shot that propelled the Dodgers toward four straight wins and a championship in the last World Series meeting between two of baseball’s most iconic franchises, who will resume one of baseball’s oldest October rivalries when they open the 120th Fall Classic in Dodger Stadium Friday night.
“Anyone who discounts momentum has probably never competed on a big stage, because that [Cey homer] was momentum right there,” said Monday, now 78 and in his 31st year as a radio broadcaster for the team.
“Our club was just goofy enough to believe that even though we were down 2-0 in the series, we could come back and win this thing. I see a lot of the 1981 club in this year’s team, where they just don’t believe, at any time, that it’s impossible to win a ballgame.”
It took a series of clutch hits, some dazzling defense, a gutsy pitching performance from a 20-year-old phenom who spawned the “Fernandomania” craze that spring, a stout start from a veteran left-hander and a deep reservoir of resilience for those Dodgers to avenge World Series losses to the Yankees in 1977 and 1978.
“Most of us still had a sour taste in our mouths from 1977-78, and I think that was an added incentive for us,” Monday said. “It was a chance for redemption.”
Fernando Valenzuela was a teenager in Mexico when Yankees slugger Reggie Jackson clubbed three Game 6 homers to clinch that 1977 series and swung the 1978 series toward New York with his controversial hip-check of a potential double-play relay throw to first base in Game 4.
