THE SAN FRANCISCO GIANTS and the Los Angeles Dodgers are neck-and-neck in the National League West.
This offers the perfect moment to introduce the next generation to one of the greatest rivalries in American sports.
“The rivalry here when the Giants play the Dodgers, it’s different than any other game,” Larry Baer, CEO of the Giants, once told the New York Times. “It’s visceral, it’s passionate.”
When the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants moved to California in 1958, they brought with them a storied matchup forged in the heart of New York City.
Decades of fierce competition found new life on the West Coast, intertwining with the ambitions of two burgeoning cities: San Francisco and Los Angeles.
Both franchises were born in 1883 (as the New York Gothams and the Brooklyn Grays).
Both have claimed eight World Series titles.
The Giants and the Dodgers have faced each other 2,585 times, with the Giants leading the all-time series by a razor-thin margin of just four games.
This battle for supremacy on the field mirrors the cities’ economic battles. There, too, both are powerhouses.
The Los Angeles metropolitan statistical area has a larger GDP at $1.295 trillion vs. SF’s $778.9 billion, due to its size and sprawl (like Brooklyn). But per capita, San Francisco punches above its weight, powered by concentrated banking and technology wealth (like Manhattan).
Snapshots of the epic sports rivalry:
It’s 1962. A three-game playoff will decide the National League pennant. In the final inning of the final game, the Dodgers lead 4–2. Giants legend Willie Mays said later, “I never thought we’d come back … never in a million years.” But he rips a line drive anyway, and when the dust clears the Giants win 6–4. SF celebrated like it was New Year’s Eve.
It’s 2024. The Giants fall and the Dodgers win it all, besting the New York Yankees in the World Series. Some 225,000 people flood downtown Los Angeles to see the champions of America’s pastime.
As Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers’ owner at the time of the move from Brooklyn, told Time magazine, “I feel that we are transplanting not only a baseball team, but a way of life.”
True then, true now. For more than 140 years, the Giants and Dodgers have traded wins, shaped cities and stoked passions. They’re still at it — writing a new chapter in the rivalry that never ends. Tune in to history.
Eric Newton is a Bay Area journalist and consultant who has worked at newspapers, museums, philanthropies and universities. Read more of his work at Medium.
This story originally appeared in Medium.
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