The 1980 World Series was the championship series of Major League Baseball's (MLB) 1980 season. The 77th edition of the World Series, it was a best-of-seven playoff played between the National League (NL) champion Philadelphia Phillies and the American League (AL) champion Kansas City Royals.[1][2][3]
The Phillies defeated the Royals in six games to secure the teams first World Series championship in their franchise history.[1][4][5] Third baseman Mike Schmidt was named the World Series MVP.[6] The series concluded with Game 6 in Philadelphia, which ended with closer Tug McGraw striking out Willie Wilson at 11:29 pm EDT on Tuesday, October 21. Wilson set a World Series record by striking out 12 times in the six-game set (after 230 hits (and 81 strikeouts) in the regular season).
Game 6 is also significant because it stands as the most-watched game in World Series history, with a television audience of 54.9 million viewers.[7]
The Kansas City Royals became the second expansion team, and the first from the American League, to appear in the World Series. The AL had to wait until 1985 before one of their expansion teams—the Royals—won a World Series.
This was the first of five World Series played entirely on artificial turf (1985, 1987, 1993, 2020).
This was also the first World Series since 1920, and the most recent, in which neither team had a previous World Series title. As of 2022, this can only happen again if the Tampa Bay Rays, Seattle Mariners, or Texas Rangers face the Milwaukee Brewers, San Diego Padres, or Colorado Rockies in a future series.
With their victory, the Phillies became the final team out of the original 16 MLB teams to win a World Series. However, a Philadelphia team had won a World Series before, the last being the Athletics in 1930, exactly a half-century earlier; in a twist of fate, the Athletics played 13 years in Kansas City (1955–1967) before relocating to Oakland.
