The Dodger Stadium ‘curse’ continues

The 2025 World Series continued this Tuesday with Game 4 of Major League Baseball’s grand finale. After the marathon showdown the night before – when Freddie Freeman’s dramatic 18th-inning homer sealed a win for the Los Angeles Dodgers – it was the Toronto Blue Jays who struck back, taking the fourth game of the series. That result guarantees the Fall Classic will return to the Rogers Centre in Canada, where the champion will now be decided.

When did Dodgers last win World Series at home?

This situation has revived talk of a lingering curse at Dodger Stadium. Despite decades of dominance, the Dodgers have celebrated just one championship at home. Whatever happens in Game 5, Dave Roberts’ team will have to chase its ninth title away from Los Angeles once more. The last time the club clinched the World Series at Dodger Stadium was in 1963, after sweeping the New York Yankees 4–0. Every title since has been won elsewhere.

After that 1963 triumph, the team defeated the Minnesota Twins 4–3 in the 1965 World Series, but the decisive game was played at Bloomington’s Metropolitan Stadium. In 1981, they once again toppled the Yankees 4–2 – though the clincher came in the Bronx, not California. Even the famed 1988 victory over the Oakland Athletics, which ended 4–1, was secured in the Oakland-Alameda County Coliseum, not under the Chavez Ravine lights.

Texas and New York: the Dodgers’ most recent triumphs

The pattern continued in 2020, when the COVID-19 pandemic forced MLB to stage its postseason in neutral venues. That year’s World Series was played at Globe Life Field in Arlington, Texas, where Los Angeles beat the Tampa Bay Rays 4–2. Four years later, in 2024, the Dodgers claimed their eighth championship by defeating the Yankees once again – and, once again, doing so in New York’s Yankee Stadium.

It marked the fifth straight time the Dodgers have clinched a title away from home, and the streak will extend to six if they manage to beat the Blue Jays this year.

Their earliest triumphs tell a similar story. The franchise’s first championship came in 1955, when the then-Brooklyn Dodgers beat the Yankees. By 1959, they had relocated to Los Angeles and were playing in the Memorial Coliseum – yet even that championship was sealed in Chicago, with a 4–2 win over the White Sox at Comiskey Park.

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