The 1965 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1965 season. The 62nd edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff that matched the National League champion Los Angeles Dodgers against the American League champion Minnesota Twins. The Dodgers won in seven games. It is best remembered for the heroics of Sandy Koufax, who was named the World Series Most Valuable Player. Koufax did not pitch in Game 1, as it fell on the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur, but he pitched in Game 2 and then tossed shutouts in Games 5 and 7 (with only two days of rest in between) to win the championship. The Twins had won their first pennant in Minnesota and the franchise’s first since 1933 when the team was known as the Washington Senators. The Dodgers won their second title in three years, and their third since moving to Los Angeles in 1958. Background Both teams improved from sixth-place finishes in 1964; the Twins won the A.L. pennant with relative ease while the Dodgers were locked in a season-long five-way battle in the N.L. among themselves, the Giants, Pirates, Reds, and Braves. After the Giants won their 14th-consecutive game to take a -game lead on September 16, the Dodgers went on a 13-game winning streak over the final two weeks of the season to clinch the pennant on the next to last day of the season over the second place rival Giants. During the 1965 season, the Dodgers relied heavily on the arms of Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale, and would rely on them even more in the World Series, as the Dodgers only used seven pitchers. The Dodgers' strong core of pitchers, which also included Claude Osteen and Ron Perranoski, kept them in the pennant race and into the Series. Koufax, surviving on a steady diet of Cortisone and pain killers for his arthritic left elbow, pitched five times in 15 days down the stretch, winning four (three shutouts), including 13 strikeouts in the pennant winner against Milwaukee. Dodger hitting however remained strictly popgun, especially after Tommy Davis went down in late April for the season with a broken ankle. Manager Walter Alston promptly called up 12-year minor league veteran Lou Johnson from Spokane. Johnson led the Dodgers, along with ROY Jim Lefebvre, in home runs with just 12. The Twins, managed by Sam Mele, had