Editor's Note: I've written about my love of baseball in past years, but the recent games between the two former New York City teams, now both located in the state of California, acutely characterized the intensity of the rivalry: The San Francisco Giants vs The Los Angeles Dodgers. I'm grateful to Wikipedia for this shortened history.

Origins and early years

In the 1880s, New York City played host to a number of professional baseball clubs in the National League and the American Association. By 1889, each league had only one representative in New York — the Giants in the NL and Dodgers (then known as the Bridegrooms) in the AA. The teams met in the 1889 World Series, in which the Giants defeated the Bridegrooms 6 games to 3. In 1890, the Dodgers entered the NL and the rivalry was officially underway.

Although the two teams were geographically proximate rivals anyway, the animus between the two teams ran deeper than mere competitiveness. Giants fans were seen as well to do elitists of Manhattan while Dodgers fans tended to be more blue collar and had more Latino fans due to what was then the  working class atmosphere of Brooklyn. In 1900, a year in which the Dodgers won the pennant and the Giants finished last, Giants owner Andrew Freedman attempted to have the NL split all profits equally, irrespective of the teams’ individual success or failure.

In the early 1900s, the rivalry was heightened by a long-standing personal feud (originally a business difference) between Charles Ebbets, owner of the Dodgers, and John McGraw, manager of the Giants. The two used their teams as fighting surrogates, which caused incidents between players both on and off the field, and inflamed local fans' passions sometimes to deadly levels.

In 1940, umpire George Magerkurth was brutally beaten during a game by an enraged Dodgers fan ostensibly for making a pro-Giants call. The rivalry is said to have been the motive for multiple fan-on-fan homicides, in 1938 and 2003. Future Dodgers manager Joe Torre recalled how he felt threatened being a Giants fan growing up in Brooklyn in the series.

During the latter years for both teams in New York, players often engaged in purposeful, aggressive, physical altercations. In 1965, Giants pitcher Juan Marichal knocked Dodgers catcher John Roseboro in the head with a bat.

A long and balanced history[edit]

 

Dodgers great Jackie Robinson retired before being traded to the Giants after the 1957 season.

In 2019, the Dodgers and Giants played their 2,500th game against each other, becoming only the third set of teams in the four major North American sports leagues to do so, joining the Pittsburgh Pirates and Chicago Cubs and the Pirates and St. Louis Cardinals.

One notable characteristic of the rivalry is how both have often played meaningful games late in the year. Since 1951, the Giants and Dodgers have finished first and second 11 times. Just as important is the role one team has played as spoiler to the other in the years when they were not directly competing in a pennant race.

The New York Giants won the 68-year series against the Brooklyn Dodgers, 722–671–17. But since relocating to the West Coast in 1958, the Dodgers are ahead in the games played between the two teams, 558–532. 

On July 14, 2005, the Giants became the first professional sports team to win 10,000 games with a 4–3 win over the Dodgers.

Two Dodgers benefited from controversial calls against the Giants to keep streaks alive that continue to be Major League Records. In 1968, Don Drysdale set the current record for consecutive complete game shutouts (6) with a call against Dick Dietz for not attempting to avoid a bases loaded hit by pitch. In 1988, Orel Hershiser established the current record for consecutive scoreless innings pitched (59) with the benefit of an interference call against Brett Butler for breaking up a double play.

The Dodgers' 2014 and 2016 National League West championships were both won by overcoming leads by the Giants. Los Angeles overcame a 9+1⁄2 game lead by the Giants in 2014, and in 2016, despite the Dodgers missing star pitcher Clayton Kershaw for an extended amount of time, the Giants were unable to hold an eight-game lead over their rivals. In both seasons, though, the Giants won one of the Wild Card spots. During the 2010s, the Giants won three World Series titles, while the Dodgers had to wait until 2020 to win their first World Series since 1988.

Pennants and championships

The Dodgers won the National League pennant 12 times in Brooklyn and 12 times in Los Angeles. The Giants won the National League pennant 17 times in New York and 6 times in San Francisco.

When the teams were based in New York, the Giants won five world championships, whereas the Dodgers won one. After the move to California, the Dodgers have won six, the Giants three. Prior to the 2020s, in both New York and in California, all of one team's world championships preceded the other's first one in that region to date. The Giants' five world championships won in New York preceded the Dodgers' only one in Brooklyn, in 1955. The Dodgers' first five world championships won in Los Angeles preceded the Giants' first one in San Francisco, in 2010. All but one of the Dodgers' world championships are sandwiched by the Giants' final world championship in New York (1954) and their first in San Francisco (2010).

Since 2000, the Giants have advanced to the postseason seven times while the Dodgers have advanced twelve times. In that time, the Giants appeared in four World Series, winning in 2010, 2012, 2014, and losing in 2002. The Dodgers made three World Series appearances after, losing the Series in 2017 and 2018, and winning in 2020.

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