Series treat: Dodgers vs. Yankees

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CORRECTION: *A column in the Sports section Thursday misstated how many times the Yankees and Dodgers have met in the World Series and their records against each other. They have played 11 Series, and the Yankees have won eight times.

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The 105th World Series could be decided between the Los Angeles Angels and Philadelphia Phillies, but it sure would be a lot of fun if yet another generation of baseball fans got treated to a week of Yankees-Dodgers theater.

What was once considered by some as the best and most compelling rivalry in sports hasn't played for a World Series title since 1981.

Waddling Ron Cey, a good-natured third baseman nicknamed the "Penguin" by his teammates, led the Dodgers to a rare win over the Yanks that season.

That Series lasted six games, at the end of which then-Dodgers manager Tom Lasorda almost instantly proclaimed the outcome "the greatest day in the history of world."

Needless to say, Lasorda was given to hyperbole. But when it comes to a World Series win over the Yankees, millions of Dodgers fans fully understood what he meant. It marked the 10th Series between the two, and the Yanks had won seven of the previous nine.

Lasorda was a little-used Dodgers pitcher in the early and mid-50s, when the team was winding down its long love affair with Brooklyn, Ebbets Field and a legion of national fans who gradually became entranced by the team's annual fruitless attempt to overcome their more powerful, richer, more glamorous cross-city New York rival.

When the 1955 Dodgers finally broke one of the sport's longest periods of frustration and stunned the Yanks in Game 7, it was celebrated as something just sort of a national holiday.

Brooklyn pitcher Johnny Podres, a hard-throwing, harder-partying young left-hander, became the non-anointed patron saint of underdogs everywhere. In the cheerful aftermath of World War II, there was a feeling that if the Dodgers could beat the Yankees in the World Series, then anything was possible. Pawns could become corporate royalty, the little guy driving the Ford might soon upgrade to a Cadillac.

Just a year later, reality hit the Dodgers when the Yanks' Don Larsen pitched a perfect game in Game 5 and teammate Johnny Kucks almost matched it with a 3-hit, 9-0 shutout in Game 7.

After one more season, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles

In the years since, it's become more stylish to be a Boston Red Sox and/or Chicago Cubs fan. But day for day, the Yankees and Dodgers have maintained their fan base from generation to generation as consistently as two teams in the aging, sometimes awkward, sport.

Largely as the result of mismanagement and neglect throughout its framework, baseball has surrendered much of its popularity. TV ratings have slumped, and ticket prices for most of the successful franchises have skyrocketed. Many top stars have totally lost respect for fans, not to mention their own bodies and reputations.

There's one line of thought that baseball won't even be recognized as a primary team sport by the 100th anniversary of Larsen's 1956 achievement.

If so, that would be a humiliating fate for a game that has weathered wars, depressions, labor strife and an early gambling scandal that didn't completely fade from the public consciousness until the arrival of a players like Ted Williams, Mantle, Willie Mays and Duke Snider.

It was at that '56 Series than then president Dwight Eisenhower described baseball as a grand survivor and a priceless diversion for the country. No teams played a bigger role in that movement than the dramas provided by the Yankees and Dodgers.