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The two best teams in baseball this season, and the two biggest rivals in baseball this season, are set to meet in the National League Division Series. The Los Angeles Dodgers beat the St. Louis Cardinals in dramatic fashion on Wednesday night, winning the NL Wild Card Game and booking a date with the San Francisco Giants in the NLDS.
If you’re a Giants fan, which I assume you are given the online location that you’ve arrived at, it’s probably a touch disappointing. We always love to see the Dodgers lose, and facing the 90-win Cardinals in unquestionably an easier task than the 106-win Dodgers.
Yet no one ever expected anything other than a Giants vs. Dodgers date in the postseason, which remarkably marks the first time the two rivals have met in the playoffs. And as much as you might have been chanting “Beat LA!” from your living room couch, the excitement in the air is palpable; the Giants have to go through the Dodgers, the team they miraculously held at bay in the NL West standings all year, one more time.
It’s a five-game series. Games 1 and 2 are at Oracle Park on Friday at 6:37 p.m. and Saturday at 6:07 p.m. Games 3 and 4 (if necessary) are at Dodger Stadium on Monday and Tuesday, with Game 5 (if necessary) on Thursday back in the Bay. Times are TBD for the final three games, and all will be televised on TBS.
The Giants beat the Dodgers 10-9 in the regular season series. They scored 78 runs and allowed 80. There were clutch home runs and unspeakably good pitching performances; missed ball calls and missed strike calls; robbed homers and wild walk-offs. Even if you remove the rivalry, the history, the vitriol between fanbases, you couldn’t ask for a better series.
It’s on.