1978 World Series

The 1978 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1978 season. The 75th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff played between the American League (AL) champion New York Yankees and the National League (NL) champion Los Angeles Dodgers. In a rematch of the previous year's World Series, the Yankees won, four games to two, to repeat as champions and to win their 22nd World Series. As of 2025, it remains the most recent World Series to feature a rematch of the previous season's matchup. The 1978 series was the first of 10 consecutive years that saw 10 different teams win the World Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers would break the string with a World Series win in 1988, having won in 1981. This series had two memorable confrontations between Dodgers rookie pitcher Bob Welch and the Yankees' Reggie Jackson. In Game 2, Welch struck out Jackson in the top of the ninth with two outs and the tying and go-ahead runs on base to end the game. Jackson would avenge the strikeout, when in Game 4 he singled off Welch which moved Roy White to second, from which White would score the game winning run on a Lou Piniella single to tie the series at 2–2. In Game 6, Jackson smashed a two-run homer off Welch in the seventh to increase the Yankees' lead to 7–2 and a Yankees' victory to win the series. The Yankees became the first team to lose the first two games of a World Series then win the next four. The Dodgers became the second vs. the Yankees three years later.