Bücher von Brian M. Endsley

This is the story of the 1959 Dodgers, a team that rose above its disastrous first season on the West Coast for an out-of-nowhere World Series title. One of baseball's greatest underdog champions, the '59 Dodgers were a rag-tag team made of long shots salvaged from the minor leagues and over-the-hill ballplayers who reached back for one final triumph. After surviving a thrilling three team pennant race, they met fellow long shots the Chicago White Sox in an underdog World Series. Here, the team's story is recounted in detail, with game-by-game highlights, and set against the cultural backdrop of the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and the rock and roll cultural revolution.

The conclusion of the Sandy Koufax Era was a wild roller coaster ride for the LA Dodgers. Overly dependent on the fragile left arm of their to-be Hall of Fame left-hander, they careened from their worst season since World War II in 1964 after losing Koufax to an injury in mid-August, to a World Series Championship in 1965 on the strength of his shutout performance on short rest in Game 7 with the Twins, to an ignominious World Series collapse to the Orioles in 1966 after he single-handedly saved the Dodgers' 1966 regular season in the final game. In the last two seasons of his career, Koufax averaged an impressive 27 complete games, 27 wins and 350 strikeouts. Yet 16 days after winning his second straight unanimous Cy Young Award, he shocked Major League Baseball by announcing he was going to retire. Like a supernova that had lit up the sports world for six years, he flamed out and was gone by age 30.