Dodgers-Giants rivalry
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The Giants-Dodgers rivalry is, along with the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry and Cardinals-Cubs rivalry, one of the most long-standing and storied rivalries in the history of baseball.
The feud between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers began when both clubs were based in New York City, with the Giants playing uptown at the Polo Grounds in Manhattan and the Dodgers at Ebbets Field in Brooklyn. After the 1957 season, Dodgers owner Walter O'Malley decided to move the team to Los Angeles for financial reasons, among others. Along the way, he managed to convince Giants owner Horace Stoneham (who was considering moving his team to Minnesota) to preserve the rivalry by bringing his team to California as well. New York baseball fans were stunned and heartbroken by the move but the rivalry continued and grew even stronger out west. Given that the cities of Los Angeles and San Francisco have long been competitors in economic, cultural, and political arenas, the new venue in California became fertile ground for its transplantation.
Unlike many other historic baseball match-ups in which one team remains dominant for most of their history, the Giants-Dodgers rivalry has exhibited a persistent balance in the respective successes of the two teams. Each team's ability to have endured for over a century, leap across an entire continent, and grow from a cross-city to a cross-state engagement inspires many fans to believe that it is the pre-eminent rivalry in all of American sport.
