{"id":4636,"date":"2026-05-25T21:12:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:12:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/?p=4636"},"modified":"2026-05-25T21:13:09","modified_gmt":"2026-05-26T02:13:09","slug":"1961-new-york-yankees-clinch-1960s-world-series","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/?p=4636","title":{"rendered":"1961 New York Yankees Clinch 1960s World Series"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

The 1961 New York Yankees used their relentless offense to top the 1962 San Francisco Giants 7-3, clinching the Best of the 1960s World Series in 5 games. Through 6 innings, the ending was in question as fans watched a pitcher’s duel between Whitey Ford and Billy O’Dell. Roger Maris hit an RBI single in the 3rd, but the Yankees grounded into 3 double-plays, erasing other opportunities. Ford held the Giants to 4 hits before Willie Mays hit an RBI double in the 6th to tie the game 1-1. New York finally broke through in the 7th with back-to-back 2-out RBI base hits from Bobby Richardson and Tony Kubek. Bob Cerv hit a 2-run homer in a 3-run 8th off Bobby Bolin to signal the end for the Giants. Yogi Berra added an insurance run with an RBI single in the 9th, putting the Yankees up 7-1, with 6 of those runs scored in the final 3 innings. Willie McCovey and Orlando Cepeda hit back-to-back homers to lead off the 9th to end Ford’s night, but Luis Arroyo retired the next three batters to end any comeback hopes. While skewed by a massive Game 3, the Yankees had a World Series team batting average of .330, compared to .257 for the Giants, out homering San Francisco 12-10 and outscoring them 39-23. The ’61 Yankees become the 1st Yankees team to win a Best of the Decades Tournament, after the 1939 and 1998 Yankees failed to make the World Series in those decades, despite being a #1 seed. The Best of the Best Tournament is now guaranteed to have a Yankees representative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

’61 Yankees @ ’62 Giants – 10\/20\/25<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The 1961 New York Yankees used their relentless offense to top the 1962 San Francisco Giants 7-3, clinching the Best of the 1960s World Series in 5 games. Through 6 innings, the ending was in question as fans watched a pitcher’s duel between Whitey Ford and Billy O’Dell. Roger Maris hit an RBI single in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[72],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4636","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-botd-60s"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4636"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4639,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4636\/revisions\/4639"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4636"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4636"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baseballmaelstrom.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4636"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}