The Big One: A Clash of Titans
The Best Rivalry in Baseball Hits October
This past Wednesday night, Chris Taylor, widely known by Dodgers’ fans as “CT3,” blasted a 2-run walk-off homerun to send the St. Louis Cardinals packing. Enjoy your off-season. Chants of “Fuck the Giants” to the tune of “Let’s Go Dodgers” echoed from all corners of Chavez Ravine and down Sunset Boulevard. I was there to witness that blissful moment in Dodger history and feel the energy sizzling through the crowd. I’ll never forget it. The Dodgers survived a tense one-game playoff to earn the chance to face their bitter rivals up in the Bay, a best of five series that begins tonight.
This will be the first time ever that the Dodgers and San Francisco Giants, two titans of baseball, will face each other in a playoff series. How is it that they have never met in the postseason? It seems impossible, but that’s just the way the baseball has rolled. There have been plenty of intense games between the Dodgers and Giants, including some in-season elimination games, but the closest they’ve been to a postseason matchup were a pair of best of three series (in 1951 and 1962) to determine the National League champion. That was back in the day when teams either won their leagues or went home. There weren’t multiple rounds of playoff series to battle through, and those tiebreaker games the Dodgers and Giants played were simply an extension of the regular season. Those bastard Giants took both of those series. Lame.
These two franchises have a long history of winning. Most of that winning has been done by the Giants. Frenemies and family who root for the Giants often remind me of that fact, which leaves me with little to retort, but their smack talk is part of the fun of this rivalry. Beginning in the late 19th century in New York, representing Brooklyn (Dodgers) and Manhattan (Giants), the rivalry migrated to the West Coast in the late 50s and brought all of that bad blood with it. The hate that each franchise had for the other extended beyond the Burroughs and stretched across California. It’s a regional thing, punctuating the pride that homegrown Californians feel for either Nor Cal or So Cal. These are two states (and states of mind) within a state, divided somewhere around Fresno, and allegiances to either team say as much about the type of Californian you are as your area code.
Cheering for any team puts you in a community with other fans, and the collective jubilance you share when your team wins big is one hell of a high. Few things compare to that. Wednesday night was a reminder. It’s what makes watching sports so much fun. Sticking by your team’s side when they’re trash is worth the misery when they finally pull it off. That’s true love. For better and for worse. The ghost of ’88 haunts me no more, but it would feel damn good to win this Division Series against the Hated Ones. Giants’ fans can relate. They don’t want to lose any playoff series, but especially not one to the Dodgers, and definitely not the first time around. There are no guarantees these teams meet again any time soon. It’s taken 130 years for this to happen. It might take another 130 years for the planets to align like this again, so there’s a lot riding on this matchup — a trip to the NLCS and a step closer to the World Series. However, it’s the bragging rights that concern me the most. I want to stick it to every Giants fan I know. Feed my Dodger pride Blue Crew!
No easy task, though. These two teams are evenly matched, and the Giants had the edge over the Dodgers during the season (10 wins out of 19 games; 107 wins total to the Dodgers 106 wins). The Giants are the current NL West Champs, and they seem to have this magical aura surrounding them. They’ve had it all season long, but here’s to hoping that the clock strikes midnight in this series, and they turn into pumpkins.
