This is the story of the 1959 Dodgers, a team that rose above its disastrous first season on the West Coast for an out-of-nowhere World Series title. One of baseball's greatest underdog champions, the '59 Dodgers were a rag-tag team made of long shots salvaged from the minor leagues and over-the-hill ballplayers who reached back for one final triumph. After surviving a thrilling three team pennant race, they met fellow long shots the Chicago White Sox in an underdog World Series. Here, the team's story is recounted in detail, with game-by-game highlights, and set against the cultural backdrop of the civil rights movement, the Cold War, and the rock and roll cultural revolution.

The conclusion of the Sandy Koufax Era 1964-1966 was a wild roller coaster ride for the Los Angeles Dodgers. Overly dependent on the fragile left arm of their brilliant Hall of Fame left-hander, they careened from their worst season since WWII in 1964 after losing him to injury in mid-August, to a World Series Championship in 1965 on the strength of his heroic shutout performance on short rest in Game 7 of the World Series with the Twins, to an ignominious World Series collapse to the Orioles in 1966 after he single-handedly saved the season for them on the last day of the regular season. After putting together one of the most prolific final 2-year runs in baseball history in which he averaged 27 complete games, 27 wins, and 350 strikeouts-and sixteen days after winning his second straight unanimous Cy Young Award- Koufax shocked the Dodgers and Major League Baseball by announcing his retirement. Like a brilliant supernova that had lit up the sports world for six years he flamed out and was gone at the age of thirty.