In the days preceding the World Series, we were pummeled with references to the rivalry between the Dodgers and New York Yankees.
The Dodgers and Yankees are all about history, about tradition, about the rare chances to charge outrageous prices to see baseball’s two biggest brands on the same field.
Today, however, the Dodgers and Yankees are not a rivalry. Jackie Robinson and Mickey Mantle are not walking through that door.
In the Dodgers’ last decade in Brooklyn, the teams met six times in the World Series. When the teams met this October, they had not clashed in the World Series in 43 years. Movies in black and white and stories from Bob Costas get old after awhile.
Rivalries — at least the few that attract national interest — are born in October. We enjoyed what is now the best rivalry in baseball this October, just not in the World Series.
The Yankees and Boston Red Sox shattered the bounds of a regional rivalry largely because of the 2003 and 2004 playoffs, when the teams met in American League championship series, each of which amplified the drama by lasting the maximum seven games.
In 2003, Boston’s Pedro Martinez flung Yankees coach Don Zimmer to the ground, two Yankees players jousted with a Fenway Park groundskeeper, Boston manager Grady Little left Martinez in the decisive game too long, and the Yankees won on a walkoff home run by third baseman Aaron Boone. Wonder whatever happened to him.
The 2004 series is best remembered for the Red Sox becoming the first and still only team to win a seven-game postseason series after losing the first three games: The catalyst: the pinch-runner who stole second base and scored the tying run in the ninth inning of Game 4, Boston outfielder Dave Roberts. Wonder whatever happened to him, too.
But that was 20 years ago. ESPN can air the Yankees and Red Sox every Sunday night — and the network would if it could, with good ratings to show for it — but the Red Sox have not been nationally relevant in years.
In the five seasons since they traded Mookie Betts to the Dodgers, the Red Sox have finished in last place in the American League East three times.
Shohei Ohtani is called out by home plate umpire Dan Bellino after being tagged by Padres catcher Kyle Higashioka in Game 4 of the NLDS.
(Robert Gauthier / Los Angeles Times)
This year’s World Series featured six players on contracts worth more than $300 million apiece — three on the Dodgers, including Betts, and three on the Yankees.
That caught the attention of Zack Scott, who was Boston’s assistant general manager when the Red Sox traded Betts.
“This triggers flashbacks to internal conversations about signing Mookie, and our owner said he had no interest in doing mega deals,” Scott tweeted this week. “I guess you can build around them.”
The San Diego Padres have two players on contracts worth more than $300 million and another on a contract worth $280 million.
Dodgers co-owner Magic Johnson stood atop the Yankee Stadium grass late Wednesday night, surrounded by fallen confetti beneath him and a video board congratulating the Dodgers above him. The Yankees had been vanquished, and before them the New York Mets.
But the only team this October to force the Dodgers into an elimination game: the Padres, in the division series.
“I really thought San Diego was the key for this,” Johnson said. “They made us go to another level to beat them. I thought, once we beat them, we stayed on that level. They tested us. The Mets did a fantastic job. And then give the Yankees credit. They battled us.
“But I thought it was ours. Once we beat San Diego, I thought we were the best team standing.”
When the Padres starting throwing money around, under late owner Peter Seidler, San Diego fans declared a legitimate rivalry with the Dodgers was on.
It wasn’t then, but it is now. Rivalries are born in October: in 2022, when the Padres eliminated the Dodgers in the rain; in 2024, when the Dodgers eliminated the Padres with back-to-back shutouts, in a series where the players chirped at one another and fans on both sides debated the greater meaning of a ball Manny Machado tossed in the general direction of the Dodgers’ manager.
The World Series attracted a larger share of television viewers in San Diego than in New York.
The loudest crowds in baseball are at Dodger Stadium and Petco Park. The best rivalry in baseball is ours. The best two teams in the majors this season were the Dodgers and the Padres.
The World Series champions return to Petco Park next June, when the Padres will once again try to do what no team was able to do this October: Beat L.A.
