Photo by Brian Rothmuller/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images
The Giants may be 23 games behind the Dodgers, but it’s still a rivalry, and winning is still gratifying.
I missed most of Friday night’s game.
I repeatedly checked my phone throughout the contest, smiling as my longtime favorite Giant, Mauricio Dubón, hit a double and then a home run off of Clayton Kershaw.
I wasn’t able to get to a TV until the eighth inning, when I was blessed with two innings of the Giants clinging to a lead I was positively sure they’d let slip through their fingers.
They didn’t. As Kenny detailed beautifully, the Giants hung on to beat the Dodgers 5-4, rudely sending the Angelinos, who had so kindly applauded Bruce Bochy just hours before, home unhappy.
And I went to bed minutes later. Happy.
Despite Kershaw’s confusion (an amateur lipreader could tell that he shouted, “Why?” when manager Dave Roberts came to take the ace out with no outs in the fifth inning), and anger (the Dodgers’ Amazon Prime account ordered a cooler at 10:30 PM Friday night, with guaranteed delivery before the first pitch today), this was nearly as meaningless a game as the standings will allow for.
The Dodgers have a 3.5 game lead over Atlanta for the top seed in the National League, with just 19 games remaining. The Giants are 8.5 games out of the Wild Card, with playoff chances roughly equivalent to my odds of making next year’s roster.
So the result didn’t really mean much.
Except it did. Because baseball is enjoyable and silly and gorgeous, even with a losing team, and because beating the Dodgers is - and I cannot stress this enough - always fun.
Most rivalries in sports wax and wane. They appear when the apex of both teams happens to coincide, and they disappear as soon as that ceases to be the case. A few, based on location alone, half-ass the rivalry even when the level of play doesn’t dictate it.
But a rare few persist in full, regardless of how the teams perform.
The Giants vs. Dodgers was a fun rivalry from 2010-2012, when San Francisco won two titles while Los Angeles failed to make the playoffs. And it’s a fun rivalry now, with the Dodgers booking playoff hotels while the Giants throw prospects at the wall, hoping they’ll stick for 2020 and beyond.
And because of that, a win over the Dodgers is exciting. It’s borderline titillating. It’s fun.
Just ask Dubón, who was taught to be a Giants fan by his host family (bless their souls) more than a decade ago, and was making his rivalry debut.
Or go to a game, in Los Angeles or San Francisco. Get yelled at by a crapulent Dodgers fan. Yell something back that’s inaudible save for “1988.”
The Giants aren’t a good team, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have anything to play for. They have fun games left to play for.
And beating the Dodgers sure is that.