CALIFORNIA SCREAMIN’: BEHOLD DODGERS-GIANTS, DON’T MAIM IT
Hopefully, a premature October collision between baseball’s two best regular-season teams doesn’t trigger the worst in fans in what has been a gangland-style bloodbath through the years
Navigate the California of song and lore on Pacific Coast Highway, from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Behold the nudist retreats in Big Sur, the vistas from the cliffside roads, the wine tastings in Santa Barbara, the sunsets in Malibu. Listen to Joni Mitchell the entire way. Preferably, all of this is done in a Porsche with a tight steering mechanism.
You would have no inkling, during your dreamy excursion, that the Giants-Dodgers rivalry is a bloodbath known to leave victims in funeral homes and intensive care. Fan violence is supposed to be a symptom of sports psychosis in wacko wards back East and in the Midwest, where devotion to teams is disproportionate to reality. But as baseball poets romanticize about the first-ever postseason collision of these titanic rivals — in a season, no less, when the Giants won 107 games and the Dodgers won 106 — they are forgetting the ugliness that has spilled in both cities over time.
And while this National League Division Series rightfully is being hyped as an event of epic uniqueness, in a sport that craves eyeballs, we’d be remiss not to emphasize the wildly charged backdrops — and what could happen when, beginning at 6:37 tonight by the bay, the passions of two generationally contentious fan bases will be more intense and uncontrollable than ever.
Because there is no best-of-seven crescendo to build toward in a NL Championship Series, as would befit a playoff bracket featuring two of baseball’s best regular-season teams in recent times, the fan fury will boil immediately. That the Giants and Dodgers are meeting in a mere prelude series — a best-of-five quarterfinal in what could be advertised as the Real World Series — continues to be a source of indignation among purists, including some players, who wonder why Major League Baseball doesn’t re-seed playoff teams according to record like the NBA, a progressive league. They say it’s unfair, the latest example of MLB’s old farts tripping over themselves when solutions are easy and convenient. Think about it: They’ve won a combined 213 games, most ever by two combatants in a postseason series. Yet if this was a music festival, they’d be the Rolling Stones and U2 as a warmup act.
“I feel like this might be a moment where baseball may have to think about restructuring the way that the playoffs happen — 106 and 107 wins doesn’t feel like a DS matchup, you know?” said Evan Longoria, the Giants’ veteran third baseman. “Especially because the season is so long for two teams to win that many games and then one of them to have to go home this early.’’
The harsh reality of it all — one team’s grand season will end no later than next Thursday — has triggered levels of anxiety and fear never felt so early in a postseason. Rather than seed the Giants No. 1 and have them face the No. 4-seed Atlanta Braves, while the No. 2-seed Dodgers play the No. 3-seed Milwaukee Brewers, Godzilla is meeting Kong barely before the red, white and blue bunting was hung and the hankies were distributed for fans to wave. “This,’’ said Longoria, “is going to be a madhouse at both places.’’
“I think all the 106 games are out the window now. It didn’t help us win the division, so it’s really irrelevant,” Mookie Betts said after the Dodgers survived St. Louis in the wild-card game. “We’re in the spot we are now. We’ve got to play the hand we’re dealt. … Obviously, use what you learned in 106 wins. You just try and apply it to now. Other than that, those 106 are irrelevant.”
Hopefully, the fans leave all weapons at home. I am not being snarky. I am simply revisiting recent criminal history. On the field, these teams have won a collective four World Series championships and six pennants since 2010. Off the field, the fury has been accompanied by a horrific gang element. We only can hope that an increased police presence over the years, and the perspective of a global pandemic, will soothe tensions in China Basin and Chavez Ravine and in surrounding areas. But anyone who has seen the viral videos of full-scale brawls in the stands this year, throughout sports, realizes it’s urgent for leaders in both cities — the mayors (Eric Garcetti in Los Angeles, London Breed in San Francisco) have been busy and inept amid COVID-19 and rampant homelessness — to prepare for the best-of-5 scrum in riot mode.
All games will be played at night, to accommodate the TV masters who recognize a historic event when they see one. I would like to think the terrifying episodes are in the past, soothed by banners and parades in both cities. But here in October, given everything at stake, we’d be naive to believe the emotions won’t be ramped to unprecedented levels. The concern is that a new and pressurized element — two superteams fighting for the right to pursue a pennant and World Series title — could lead to more mayhem. Even the players are dispensing back-alley talk, in a rivalry that has spanned 131 years, 2,535 games and two coasts.
“They had a special year,’’ said Walker Buehler, who starts Game 1 for the Dodgers, “and I guess for us, this is kind of a way to settle it.’’
“They beat us, but now we have the opportunity to get them where we want them,” said Max Scherzer, who has struggled of late but still is better on fumes than most October pitchers.
This is no time for short memories or Pollyanna passes. Only by the grace of God did Bryan Stow, a Giants fan and father of two, survive a vicious attack in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, where, on Opening Day 2011, his Buster Posey jersey made him the target of prison-bound goons who put him in a coma with permanent brain damage. Today, Stow is able to walk and talk under his own power and has been assured by Larry Baer, the Giants’ CEO, that he will throw out a first pitch if the Giants reach the World Series.
Not as fortunate two years later was Jonathan Denver, the 24-year-old son of a Dodgers security guard, who was stabbed to death a few blocks from Oracle Park after a street confrontation with Giants fans. Denver’s “sin’’ was wanting to have a post-game drink at a bar, with his girlfriend, father and two brothers. The attackers hadn’t even attended the game, driving in from Lodi to hang in the neighborhood and cause trouble because — hella good — the Dodgers were in town.
With the passage of time, the words of Greg Suhr, the San Francisco Police Department chief at the time, had started to fade. “There is no place at these games for violence. Nobody's life should be at stake, whether they're at the game, or six blocks away and an hour after the game,’’ he said. “That anybody got into any sort of beef over the Giants and the Dodgers and somebody lost their life, it is just senseless.''
Yet, only last month, Susan Slusser was walking to her car after a Giants-Dodgers game at Oracle Park, having just filed her game story as the San Francisco Chronicle’s Giants beat writer. She was confronted by an inebriated man. Of all happy endings — and, hopefully, a portent for the evenings ahead — Slusser was rescued by a group of Dodgers fans, though, as a working professional, she wore nothing that indicated she was connected to the Giants. “Pretty big fan of Dodgers fans right now,’’ she tweeted that night. “Very drunk and big man accosted me walking to the parking lot, very threatening, and a group of LA fans surrounded me and walked me to my car and kept him away. Thanks to all of you. That was freaking scary.’’
Then, the writer in Slusser provided world-view perspective. “It’s tempting to sensationalize this kind of story, but if you talk to women about their daily life experience, these sort of encounters are all too common,’’ she wrote.
So, consider this very much a fresh story, still troubling and capable of detonating. How pleasant if the fans viewed the series as what it is — a delightful, quirky byproduct of a postseason system that has served the sport well. Such is the view of the combatants: Bring it on now. Does it really matter when the Giants and Dodgers play if the Brewers, with dominant starting pitchers and relievers who minimize home runs, wind up winning the pennant anyway. And doesn’t this series help baseball in the end, capturing attention spans before the championship series and maintaining high ratings for the two wild-card games.
“We’ve been two of the best teams all year in baseball,’’ Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “And, so, to see us go head-to-head in the series, it’s really exciting for our players. I think it’s great. It’s what baseball wants. Giants, Dodgers, one of the great rivalries in sports, and it’s happening.’’
“For me it kind of felt like this was how it was going end up anyway,” Giants outfielder Mike Yastrzemski said. “I felt like I didn’t even have to watch the (wild-card) game to figure out who we were going to play. It just felt like that was going to be the matchup.”
Stoking the wildfire is a matchup that reflects the cultures of both markets. Los Angeles is everything San Francisco is not — sunshine, warmth, Hollywood, pretensions, cold-pressed juice — which explains the ``BEAT L.A.! BEAT L.A.!’’ chants that will launch long before the first pitch of Game 1 and linger deep into the weekend. The Dodgers, as the dollars-and-data behemoth with the superstar-slammed clubhouse and $270 million payroll, are in many ways the antithesis of the Giants, who have exploited brainpower and tech in the bosom of technology and one-upped L.A. by spending $110 million less this year. In a business context, the Giants already have won a World Series. And from a romantic purview, how does a neutralist not root for a wildly overachieving ballclub with a piecemeal roster assembled by an MIT engineering grad named Farhan Zaidi — poached three years ago from the Dodgers, of course — and a culture that maximizes talent and preaches team while breeding cohesion and fun and belief, exhibited by a major-league record 18 pinch-hit homers and an embrace of platooning.
“To a player, they are all on board,’’ said Gabe Kapler, the free-love manager. “It’s not bulls—. It’s very genuine and authentic. I find it to be really, really endearing. I don’t think it’s all that normal. Often times, it’s an opportunity to sulk. But this group is just different. It’s obviously made it much easier for me to do my job. And I’m really grateful for that.”
And the picture is more complex than some MIT nerd overdosing on analytics. “I think that’s why there’s a lot of buy-in, because it’s not like this cookie-cutter approach,’’ said Longoria, who dealt with sabermetric overload in Tampa Bay. “There’s like a more human aspect to it that has been easier for the group to buy into to.’’
The Giants, in some impossible way, are a melding of Ted Lasso and the Summer of Love. Whereas, the Dodgers are L.A. Excess, hard to root for when they have the massive resources to cover up a franchise-staining internal crisis — sexual assault allegations against pitcher Trevor Bauer, recklessly signed last year to a $102 million deal — by shipping prospects to Washington for Scherzer and Trea Turner. If the Dodgers become the first team to repeat as Series champs in 21 years, history will point to the trade that brought a Hall of Fame pitcher and one of the sport’s dynamic multi-dimensional weapons. Both have embraced Dodger Blue, with a shirtless Scherzer announcing on national TV that he was drunk during the wild-card celebration. Turner is still blown away by the rumbling of 53,193 bodies in the ravine after Chris Taylor’s walk-off home run Wednesday night.
“I was telling Trea when we were standing on the line for the anthem, you haven't really felt Dodger Stadium until you're here for a playoff game. I was like, just wait until you see a homer. Just see how loud this place gets." teammate Justin Turner said. “Obviously, it doesn't get much louder than that swing, the walk-off homer. You see the fans going crazy, beers going, flying, everything on the field after the game. Just for 50,000-plus to be screaming, jumping on their feet up and down in excitement in one moment, it's something you don't forget."
It would be something to remember if the fans simply celebrated, then found their way home without looking for trouble. As the world teerers in 2021, much more is at stake in California than which baseball titan survives and which departs before its time. This is a referendum on the fraught condition of fandom.
Which makes you wonder why Gavin Newsom went where he did on social media. “As Governor of CA … excited that we’re guaranteed an historic playoff series between @MLB’s two best teams — the @SFGiants and @Dodgers. One way or another a CA team is moving on to the next round,’’ he tweeted. “But as a native San Franciscan … I may have a different opinion … #BeatLA.’’
Was that necessary? Now you know why they wanted to recall him.
Jay Mariotti, called “the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he has gravitated by osmosis to film projects.