Los Angeles Dodgers played in the hottest World Series game ever

It all comes full circle for the Los Angeles Dodgers, favorites from Opening Day to win it all, now back to defend their 2024 championship.

There are plenty of storylines in their World Series matchup with the Toronto Blue Jays. It’s the first time the Jays have hosted a World Series north of the border since 1993, when Jurassic Park ruled the box office and The Fugitive was in every VHS player.

There’s another subplot here, too: the heat. Games 1 and 2 open in Toronto under cool weather, with highs in the low 50s. Then the action shifts west, where Los Angeles is forecast to sizzle in the 80s and possibly even 90s during the final days of October.

Add in an offshore flow and Santa Ana wind component here, too, and the series will be one of the stranger climate contrasts in recent memory. Los Angeles, one of the few places in the Northern Hemisphere where it can be warmer in late October and early November than in May.

Before the first pitch is thrown, records are threatened (looking at you, Ohtani) and a champion is crowned, here’s a look back at some of the hottest World Series games ever played.

2017 World Series — Astros at Dodgers (Los Angeles) — 103 F

After the first inning of Game 1 of the 2017 World Series between the Houston Astros and Los Angeles Dodgers, announcers cut through the buzz for a different kind of update. It wasn’t about the score, or even the hot dogs, but the weather. It was just after 5 p.m., and the temperature still hovered at 103 F, sun beating down on 54,000 fans packed shoulder-to-shoulder in what would go down as the hottest World Series game ever played.

The culprit? A powerful dome of high pressure parked over the Great Basin in late October 2017, driving hot, dry Santa Ana winds down into Southern California. As the air descended from the mountains, it compressed and heated, sending temperatures in Los Angeles soaring past 100 F. The result was a record-breaking autumn heat wave.

Though the Dodgers won Game 1, they ultimately fell to the Astros 4-3.

2020 World Series — Dodgers vs. Rays (Arlington, Texas) — 90 F

In the midst of the pandemic, the Fall Classic also brought the heat. Though technically played indoors at the newly minted Globe Life Field, outside temperatures in Arlington before Game 1 on Oct. 20 soared from typically fall weather to a more summerlike 90 F.

Much of North Texas had spent the month under a broad ridge of high pressure, which kept the sky clear and allowed warm air to pool over the region — more than 10 degrees above the city’s October average high of 77. The “bubble” format during the pandemic meant limited travel, but the hot conditions were still a reminder that baseball’s postseason isn’t always sweater weather.

The Dodgers beat the Rays 4-2 in the series.

2001 World Series — Yankees vs. Diamondbacks (Phoenix) — 94 F

When Game 1 of the 2001 World Series opened in Phoenix on Oct. 27, the thermometer outside Bank One Ballpark read a scorching 94 F — the kind of dry desert heat that laughs at the calendar. The roof stayed closed, keeping players cool, but outside the ballpark, the Valley of the Sun simmered under a clear sky and high pressure typical of an Arizona autumn that refuses to quit.

For the newly minted Diamondbacks, it felt like home-field advantage and set the tone for a series they won in dramatic fashion with a walk-off in Game 7.

1959 World Series — Dodgers vs. White Sox (Los Angeles) — 86 F

During an age when the World Series was played earlier, when the Dodgers hosted the Chicago White Sox at the Los Angeles Memorial Coliseum in Game 3 on Oct. 4, it was firmly in the 80s. Temperatures were likely exacerbated by the Coliseum’s vast concrete bowl — a setup that trapped and amplified the warmth well beyond official readings.

For players and fans alike, it was nice and warm, and the first World Series ever played in Los Angeles proved as memorable for its warmth as for the Dodgers’ first championship since moving west.

1975 World Series — Reds vs. Red Sox (Cincinnati) — 84 F

Finally, we move away from the West and South for some unusual mid-October warmth in the Midwest.

Before the rain delays and Carlton Fisk’s legendary Game 6 homer, the early games between the Red Sox and Reds in Cincinnati were unseasonably warm. Before Game 3 on Oct. 14, 1975, the high temperature in the city reached 84 F, well above the seasonal norm and with no rain in sight.

Players later recalled the turf at Riverfront Stadium feeling unusually soft and warm underfoot.