Spotlight-1955 World Series: Dodgers and Yankees

The World Series gets underway this week as the New York Yankees face the Los Angeles Dodgers. Regardless which home team you root for during the regular season, anyone who enjoys history should enjoy the series between these two iconic baseball teams. They've played each other twelve times for the baseball world championship, beginning in 1941, when the Dodgers were still playing in Brooklyn.

Today we spotlight Game One of the 1955 World Series between the two teams, with this release from Volume 28, Release 714 from our Universal Newsreel holdings.

Players included baseball greats Roy Campanella, Pee Wee Reese, Don Newcombe, Gil Hodges, Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Walton Alston for the Dodgers, and Yogi Berra, Whitey Ford, Phil Rizzuto, Elston Howard, Mickey Mantle and Casey Stengel for the Yankees.

By 1955, the two teams had already met five times in the World Series, with the Yankees winning all five "Subway Series." Game One featured Jackie Robinson's steal of home plate in the 8th inning. The umpire's call on the play (that Robinson was safe) has been debated by Yankees and Dodgers fans for years. Safe or out? You make the call!

While the Yankees won that game, the series stretched to an exciting seven games, with the "The Bums" victorious in a 2-0 shutout win to become World Series champions, their first and only championship while the team was in Brooklyn. The two teams met again in 1956, with the Yankees winning that rematch. It was the last World Series the Dodgers would play in Brooklyn, as the team relocated to Los Angeles in 1957, the same year the New York Giants left for San Francisco. There wouldn't be another "Subway Series" for 44 years, when the Yankees and New York Mets played in the 2000 fall classic.

View and download Universal Newsreel Volume 28, Release 713 in the National Archives Catalog or view on The National Archives YouTube channel.