| 1962 National League tie-breaker series | ||||||||||
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| Dates | October 1–3, 1962 | |||||||||
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| Umpires | Al Barlick (Games 2–3), Augie Donatelli, Dusty Boggess, Jocko Conlan, Stan Landes (Game 1) | |||||||||
| Hall of Famers | Giants: Dodgers: | |||||||||
The 1962 National League tie-breaker series was a best-of-three playoff series that extended Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1962 regular season to determine the winner of the National League (NL) pennant. The games were played from October 1 to 3, 1962, between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. The Giants won the series, two games to one. The first game took place at Candlestick Park and the second and third were played at Dodger Stadium. The tie-breaker series was necessary after both teams finished the season with identical win–loss records of 101–61. The Dodgers won a coin flip late in the season, which gave them home field advantage. The series was broadcast nationally by NBC television, with Bob Wolff, George Kell (Game 2), and Joe Garagiola (Game 3) announcing,[1] and NBC Radio, with Al Helfer and George Kell (Game 3) announcing.
The Giants won the first game in an 8–0 shutout by starting pitcher Billy Pierce over Sandy Koufax. The Dodgers evened the series with an 8–7 victory in Game 2, breaking their 35-inning scoreless streak in what was then the longest nine-inning game in MLB history. However, the Giants closed out the series in Game 3 with a 6–4 victory to clinch the NL pennant. This victory advanced the Giants to the 1962 World Series in which the defending champion New York Yankees defeated them in seven games. In baseball statistics, the tie-breaker series counted as the 163rd, 164th, and 165th regular season games for both teams, with all events in the series added to regular season statistics.
The 1962 series was the fourth tie-breaker playoff in the National League's 87 years of operation, with the previous ones having taken place in 1946, 1951 and 1959. Moreover, all four involved the Dodgers' franchise, which won one of those series (1959) and lost the other three. This was also the last MLB tie-breaker to use a best-of-three games format, as the NL subsequently adopted the single-game format used in the American League (AL).