The New York Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers first shared a field on October 1, 1941 at Yankee Stadium to kick off that year’s World Series . The Yankees took that initial matchup as well as the title. Over the next four decades, the two teams would square off in 10 more Fall Classics in a hard-fought crosstown rivalry that continued when the Dodgers forsook Brooklyn for Los Angeles in 1958.
Despite the advent of interleague play in 1997, the two teams didn’t face each other in the regular season until a 2004 series at Dodger Stadium. Remarkably, the Dodgers wouldn’t make their way back to the Bronx until 2013, a series recent enough that our own Andrew Mearns helped cover it for this very website . With the Dodgers back in town this weekend for a three-game set, let’s take a look back at that historic 2013 series.
The former Subway Series was scheduled to be rekindled on June 18th of that year but was delayed a day due to a rainstorm, meaning that June 19th would mark not just the first regular-season action at Yankee Stadium in Yankees-Dodgers history but also the first-ever doubleheader between the two teams. In the lead-up to that series, the players for both teams took a backseat to the Dodgers’ manager. In 2013, Don Mattingly was in his third season as LA’s manager after being spurned for the same role with the Yankees in favor of Joe Girardi in 2008.
Mattingly, of course, is a Yankee icon whose No. 23 was retired by the team in 1997 and who had never worn a bi.
