March 5 – In what will prove to be one of the more influential off-the-field events in Major League history, representatives of the players elect
Marvin Miller to the post of executive director of the Major League Players Association (MLPA).
March 17 – Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale escalate their threat of retirement by signing movie contracts.
March 30 – Sandy Koufax and Don Drysdale end their 32-day holdout, signing for $130,000 and $105,000 respectively.
April 3 –
USC pitcher
Tom Seaver signs with the
New York Mets. He had been drafted by the
Atlanta Braves, but they had signed him to a minor league contract while he was still in college. This voided Seaver's remaining eligibility, and voided the contract. The Mets won a special lottery over
Cleveland and
Philadelphia to win the right to sign him.
July 3 –
Atlanta pitcher
Tony Cloninger hits two grand slams in a game against the
Giants, the first
National League player and first pitcher in history to do so. His nine
RBI in a game is a record for pitchers.
September 22 – The
Baltimore Orioles beat the host
Kansas City Athletics 6–1 to clinch their first American League pennant since moving to Baltimore. Both
Brooks Robinson and
Frank Robinson have two RBIs. Frank Robinson will end the year as the
Triple Crown winner, the first to achieve the feat since
Mickey Mantle in 1956. He clinches with a batting average of .316, 49 home runs and 122 RBIs.
September 22 – In a one-game series delayed two days by rain, the
New York Yankees lost to the
Chicago White Sox 4-1. [22] The game was played in front of just 413 fans in
Yankee Stadium I, the smallest crowd in the history of any version of Yankee Stadium and the fifth-smallest crowd in Major League Baseball history. Four days after this game was played (September 26, 1966),
Red Barber, long considered a pioneer in broadcasting baseball was told his contract would not be renewed by then-Yankees owner CBS. This has been disproven since but the belief still was (and according to him, was the case) that he was fired for reporting the small crowd of that infamous game on television [23][24] (the game aired locally on WPIX-TV, Channel 11 that was the Yankees TV home at that time and continued to be for many years after). Barber would never broadcast another game (he was allowed to finish his contract for 1966, however, what were to be his final three games for the Yankees in Washington against the Senators were all rained out and he was not scheduled to work the season-ending series in Chicago against the White Sox).
October 9 – In Game Four of the
World Series,
Dave McNally wraps up a brilliant pitching display, and the first World Championship for the
Baltimore Orioles, with a four-hit, 1–0 shutout against the
Los Angeles Dodgers. Series MVP
Frank Robinson hits a home run off
Don Drysdale for the only run of the game and gave Baltimore a surprising sweep of the defending World Champion Dodgers. The shutout completes a World Series record 33+2⁄3 scoreless innings pitched by Orioles pitchers, beginning with
Moe Drabowsky pitching 62⁄3 innings in relief of McNally in Game One, followed by shutouts by
Jim Palmer and
Wally Bunker. The Orioles are the last of the original eight
American League franchises to win their first World Series.
Television coverage
For the first time,
NBC became exclusive national TV broadcaster of MLB. The network replaced
ABC as the holder of the Games of the Week package. The
New York Yankees and
Philadelphia Phillies, which had instead sold their TV rights to
CBS in prior seasons, also joined NBC's package. The new package under NBC called for 28 games, as compared to the 123 combined among three networks during the 1960s. NBC also continued to air the
All-Star Game and
World Series.