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If you asked a Hollywood director or a New York writer to come up with a riveting World Series script for 2024, they would probably conjure the one we’ve got.
On the field, the New York Yankees vs. the Los Angeles Dodgers is a marquee matchup, two teams bursting with star power and a championship series rivalry going back 83 years. The Yankees are led by Aaron Judge, the gargantuan home run basher. The Dodgers have Shohei Ohtani, the smooth Japanese mega star who may be the best all-around baseball player we’ve ever seen.
No other pairing has met in the Series more than the Yankees and the Dodgers. This will be their 12th encounter, with the Yankees winning eight of the previous 11. It all started in the 1941 Fall Classic, before the Dodgers left Brooklyn, and the Yankees won the first five, until the Dodgers finally broke through in 1955 with Jackie Robinson.
When they played in 1977 and ’78, it was much like today. Both rosters glittered with stars (Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson and Catfish Hunter for New York; Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes and Reggie Smith for L.A.). The Bronx burned around them at that time, and New York was portrayed as grimy and dangerous, but the Yankees prevailed both times. The last time they met in 1981, the Dodgers finally won again.
Off the field, New York vs. L.A. suits the country’s two biggest cities, which are culturally distinct and set on opposite coasts, and like their ball clubs, loaded with history, money and glamour.
Here are three ways these crown jewels of baseball are similar yet different. And what fans can do if it feels wrong cheering for either one.
Fields of Dreams
In 1981, Dodger Stadium was not yet 20 years old, an architectural marvel of midcentury design surrounded by one of America’s largest urban green spaces, Elysian Park, and an enormous amount of parking.
“It was a site like no other in Los Angeles: accessible and secluded at the same time,” wrote the architecture critic Paul Goldberger. He continued: “It was, in a sense, a metaphor for the city itself, or at least for what it aspired to, which was both movement and privacy.”
At the time, the trend in ballparks was big, bowl-shaped multipurpose venues that opened in the 1970s, like Veterans Stadium in Philadelphia.
Dodger Stadium and Yankee Stadium stood apart. “It felt unique in that period because of its majesty within the baseball world,” said Janet Marie Smith, an architect and urban planner who has overseen recent renovations at Dodger Stadium. “West Coast version of Yankee Stadium. Two baseball-only parks that were enormous. And everybody else was playing in a multipurpose venue.”
Today, 43 years after the teams’ last World Series, Dodger Stadium stands as a classic ballpark, the major league’s third oldest after Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. “In that span of time it’s gone from being the newfangled thing on the scene to the senior citizen,” Ms. Smith said.
In 1981, it was the second version of Yankee Stadium that gave visiting teams the feel of dressing in a dungeon and playing in a crucible. It was tall and intimidating, with fans seemingly on top of the players. It gave the Yankees a decided advantage that was magnified in October.
The current version of the Stadium opened in 2009, and the home-field advantage seemed to transfer over because the Yankees won the World Series that year. But it is not the same. Even though it is a hulking monolith with loads of Soviet-era brutalism, Yankee Stadium III has a capacity of 50,287, smaller than the previous version, which sat almost 57,000. Walking around the new stadium feels cleaner and safer than the old one, and the parking garages do not smell nearly as bad.
Dodger Stadium, reflecting Los Angeles itself, is often seen as an island, separate from its surroundings. Unlike Yankee Stadium, with its bustling urban streets and subway access, Dodger Stadium is mostly accessible by freeways.
When Ms. Smith moved to Los Angeles from New York in the 1980s she missed, amid the sprawl and car-centered culture of L.A., the camaraderie of, “being alone in a crowd.”
She found that at Dodger Stadium.
“That feeling of you’re by yourself, and you’re comfortable being by yourself, but there are lots of people around,” she said. “And there’s not many places in Los Angeles where you can do that. I think Dodger Stadium really does function as our civic center, our urban playground.”
Getting There Is Another Question
How people get around is a defining characteristic of each city — something that will be on display beginning Friday when car upon car works through the crush of rush-hour traffic to fill the 16,000 spaces on the 21 terraced parking lots surrounding Dodger Stadium.
There will be a different sort of bumper-to-bumper traffic on Monday when the Series moves to the Bronx: legions of fans (and perhaps a handful of players) packing onto trains heading uptown.
If there’s something that Yankee fans and Dodger fans can probably agree on, it’s that their mode of transportation is worse.
The New York subway with its fare jumpers, spotty air conditioning, manspreading passengers and increasingly dangerous platforms is as disagreeable as stewing in your vehicle as it crawls along the Los Angeles freeways, byways and back streets.
Dodger fans may find some relief in the near future. A proposed gondola from Union Station would ferry about 5,000 fans per hour up to the stadium at no charge, potentially taking a small bite out of game-day traffic.
The $500 million, privately financed gondola project has gotten approval from the Metro Transportation Authority and the City Council, but must get approval from the state.
As the crosstown-turned-cross-country rivals meet in the World Series, it’s worth wondering if the next time, public transportation might be vibrant enough in Los Angeles that the New York roots of local baseball team’s name might not seem out of place.
The Los Angeles Trolley Dodgers.
Billions on the Field
This large market Series is like Citi Bank vs. Chase, and yes, sometimes, money buys championships. The Dodgers payroll this year was $351 million, according to Baseball Prospectus, as calculated for the league’s competitive balance tax. The Yankees’ was $314 million. Only the Mets’ ($356 million) was higher.
Including past and future seasons, the Yankees and Dodgers have each committed over $1 billion to just a handful of players. The Yankees have guaranteed over a billion among four: Judge ($360 million), Gerrit Cole ($324 million), Giancarlo Stanton ($325 million) and Carlos Rodon ($162 million).
For the Dodgers, it is over $1 billion for three players: Shohei Ohtani, who rejected the Yankees in 2017 ($700 million), Mookie Betts ($365 million) and Yoshinobu Yamamoto ($325 million). Of course, as a pitcher and a hitter, Ohtani is two players in one, so a bargain.
But What About the Rest of Us?
Yankees fans are the most privileged group of supporters in American sports, with 27 championships to brag about, the most in any major league. Passionate, knowledgeable and opinionated, they also have a built-in sense of entitlement, griping about everything from the owner to the players to the grounds crew and beer vendors when the Yankees don’t win.
Dodgers fans, with their seven championships, aren’t quite as spoiled, but they can be as ill-mannered. Earlier in the postseason, they hurled trash and baseballs onto the field when they were getting thumped by the San Diego Padres.
But if you live where most Americans live — in neither city, what’s in it for you?
For starters, it’s not the New York Yankees vs. the New York Mets, as had been possible. And would you prefer a rerun of last year’s Series between Texas and Arizona, the least watched one on record?
It may not hold up to the hype, but in keeping with New York and L.A., it will look good. And if you’re still not into it, that’s what football is for.
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