1962 Major League Baseball postseason

The 1962 Major League Baseball season resulted in a tie for the National League pennant between the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers. Both finished the regular season with identical 101-61 records.

The tie thus required a three-game playoff to be held between the two teams. This series was played from October 1-3, 1962 at Candlestick Park in San Francisco and Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles. The Giants defeated the Dodgers and advanced to the 1962 World Series, where they lost to the American League champion New York Yankees in seven games.

The tiebreaker playoff for the pennant between San Francisco and Los Angeles was the last for the MLB, as in 1969 the league would split both the American and National leagues into two divisions each, and create an official playoff field to determine pennant winners the same season.

San Francisco won the series, 2–1.

The Giants defeated the Dodgers in three games to advance to the World Series for the first time since 1954, when the team was still based in New York City.

Billy Pierce pitched a three-hit complete game shutout as the Giants blew out the Dodgers in Game 1, handing Sandy Koufax one of the worst defeats of his career. Game 2 in Los Angeles was an offensive slugfest that was won by the Dodgers as they forced a decisive third game. In Game 3, the Dodgers led 4-2 going into the top of the ninth and were three outs away from the pennant, but the Giants put up four unanswered runs to take the lead for good, and Pierce earned a save as he clinched the first pennant for San Francisco.

The Giants would make the NLCS in 1971, but they fell to the eventual World Series champion Pittsburgh Pirates in four games. They would eventually win the pennant again in 1989 over the Chicago Cubs in five games before falling in the World Series.

The Dodgers and Giants would face off in the NLDS in 2021, which was won by the Dodgers in five games. This was the last time a league pennant was contested between two teams from the same state until the ALCS in 2023, which featured an all-Texas matchup between the Texas Rangers and Houston Astros.

New York won the series, 4–3.

NOTE: the series was originally scheduled to begin October 3, but was moved back one day due to the three-game playoff between the Giants and Dodgers to determine the National League pennant.
†: postponed from October 9 due to rain
††: postponed from October 11 due to rain

This was the seventh World Series matchup in the history of the Yankees-Giants rivalry. They last met in 1951, which the Yankees won in six games en route to completing a World Series three-peat. The Yankees defeated the Giants in seven games to win their twentieth championship in franchise history, becoming the first team in North American sports history to win twenty or more championships.

In the first World Series game ever played in the San Francisco Bay Area, Whitey Ford pitched a complete game as the Yankees stole Game 1 on the road. Jack Sanford pitched a three-hit complete game shutout as the Giants took Game 2 by a 2-0 score to even the series headed to the Bronx. In Game 3, Bill Stafford pitched a complete game and stopped a late rally by the Giants in the top of the ninth as the Yankees regained the series lead. In Game 4, six years to the day in the same stadium where he threw his perfect game in the 1956 World Series for the Yankees, Don Larsen earned a win in relief as the Giants evened the series at two. In Game 5, Ralph Terry pitched another complete game for the Yankees as they took a 3–2 series lead headed back to San Francisco. In Game 6, Billy Pierce outdueled Ford on the mound as he pitched a three-hit complete game in a Giants victory that forced a seventh game. In Game 7, Terry pitched a four-hit complete game shutout as the Yankees edged out the Giants 1-0 to clinch the championship.

As of 2026, this is the last time the Yankees won a World Series Game 7, as the next two seven-game World Series to feature the Yankees (1964, 2001) were won by their opponents. The Yankees returned to the World Series the next year in hopes of completing another three-peat, but they were swept by the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees would eventually win the World Series again in 1977 over the aforementioned Dodgers in six games.

This was the first of three consecutive defeats in the World Series for the Giants. Following the 1962 loss to the Yankees, the Giants returned to the World Series in 1989, but were swept by the Oakland Athletics in the only all-Bay Area Fall Classic. They then made it back in 2002, but they fell to the Anaheim Angels in seven games after being six outs away from the championship in Game 6. The Giants would then end their long championship drought and the Curse of Coogan's Bluff in 2010 with a win over the Texas Rangers in five games, which marked the start of a dynasty for the team.

This was also the first New York–California matchup in the World Series. This would happen again in 1963, 1973, 1977, 1978, 1981, 1998, and 2024.^{[12][13][14][15]}

• League Baseball Standings & Expanded Standings - 1962