Reusse: A trip down memory lane ahead of Friday’s coast-to-coast World Series showdown between the Dodgers and Yankees

The World Series that opens on Friday night at Chavez Ravine will be the 12th in which the Yankees have faced the Dodgers. Seven of those were played between 1941 and 1956, when the Dodgers were located 20 miles from Yankee Stadium in Brooklyn. This will be the fifth since the Dodgers increased that distance to 2,795 miles by moving to Los Angeles in 1958.

There is complaining that all we get are the huge-spending teams in the no-salary-cap world of baseball, yet this is the first time since 1981 that Yankees vs. Dodgers will be deciding the MLB champion.

I ran across an online site attempting to rate the 11 previous Yankees-Dodgers World Series by drama, and they placed that previous one — the 1981 six-gamer won by L.A. — a meager No. 7 on the list.

This must be vehemently disputed. I could put it below the Yankees’ seven-game win in 1956, since that included Don Larsen’s perfect game for the Yanks. And it definitely goes below the Dodgers’ first title in 1955, when Johnny Podres, just turned 23, beat the Yankees on their home turf, 2-0, in Game 7.

Yet, a personal embrace is required for the 1981 World Series. It was the first one I was assigned to cover as a reporter, among what would become 25 as a representative of the St. Paul Pioneer Press, and then what, way back when, was called the Minneapolis Star Tribune.

That series came after perhaps baseball’s zaniest season. The players association went on strike June 12, didn’t settle until the end of July and play resumed after an All-Star Game was held in Cleveland on Aug. 9. The season was split between pre-strike and post-strike, with separate division winners that would advance to MLB’s first-ever eight-team postseason.

The extra postseason series caused the latest start to a World Series in history: Oct. 20, in the second version of Yankee Stadium.

The Dodgers lost the first two in Yankee Stadium, then won the next four. Three L.A. hitters — Ron Cey, Steve Yeager and Pedro Guerrero — shared the Series MVP award. Yet, for the sportswriters covering this coast-to-coast event, the unanimous MVP of the competition was Yankees owner George Steinbrenner.

The Yankees won the opener 5-3. Bobby Castillo, a future Twin, contributed by coming out of the Dodgers bullpen and walking four batters in a row. The Yankees also won Game 2, as lefty Tommy John — seven years after undergoing the world’s most famous elbow surgery — cruised through seven innings and the Yankees won 3-0.

Steinbrenner had signed Dave Winfield as his new outfield star to a 10-year, $21 million contract, and was at crossed swords with Reggie Jackson. Allegedly on George’s order to manager Bob Lemon, Reggie was not in the lineup for Game 3.

Fernando Valenzuela, the architect that summer of “Fernandomania,” started for L.A. He gave up nine hits, seven walks, four runs — and threw a 149-pitch complete game in a 5-4 Dodgers win. The losing pitcher as a Yanks reliever was future Twin George Frazier.

Valenzuela died this week at age 63 and will be honored during this series.

Reggie returned to the lineup for Game 4, and hit his 10th and last World Series home run. Future Twin Ron Davis gave up a two-run, pinch-hit home run to Jay Johnstone to help wipe out a 6-3 Yankees lead. Frazier would take an 8-7 loss.

Then came Sunday, Oct. 25: Winfield, 0-for-16 with a few walks, singled into left field and asked for the baseball as a remembrance of his first World Series hit. Winny’s 1-for-22 in that series caused Steinbrenner to later label him “Mr. May,” as opposed to Reggie’s “Mr. October.”

Jerry Reuss’ stout pitching gave the Dodgers a 2-1 win in Game 5 and a 3-2 lead in the series. And that’s when the fun started.

Reporters had noted Steinbrenner had a damaged right hand, a cut lip and another bruise or two. There were suggestions that something had caused George to trip — perhaps rage after another defeat.

The Yankees were pressed for answers on George’s wounds, and a late-night news conference was held at the Hyatt-Wilshire Hotel. And this is George’s tale of what he said was an elevator ride:

Two young Dodger fans recognized him and said, “You’re Steinbrenner, aren’t you? … You’re going back home to those animal fans with that choke-up team of yours, aren’t you?”

And George snapped, telling reporters he was “tired of all this stuff about New York, smart-aleck remarks about my team.”

One youth with a bottle tried swinging, George said, so he punched him and sent the punk to the floor. When the elevator door opened, one youth was on his knees and other was huddled in the back of the elevator.

Sadly, when George returned with a security guard, the youth were gone, never to be apprehended.

For years, I had in my possession a column written by the Boston Globe’s Leigh Montville, in which he offered a version where he was in the elevator with George:

They were confronted by Nazis on one floor and laid out them, a biker gang with weapons on another floor and did the same, and then a large group of terrorists were dealt with severely on another floor. As for the smart-aleck youth, Montville wrote he had gotten out of the elevator before it reached that floor.

That stands as the greatest World Series column ever written, even if Montville was writing it from Boston.

Back in New York, there was a rainout, and the Dodgers whipped the Yankees 9-2 in Game 6, with the late, lovable Frazier taking the loss.

Poor George was the second pitcher to lose three games in a World Series. The first, Claude “Lefty” Williams in 1919, was trying to do so as a conspirator with the Chicago Black Sox.