When it comes to the Dodgers / Giants rivalry, its apparent there are two sides now. You have the in-game baseball aspect, and everything else. The everything else is the problem, and the "rivalry" is becoming less and less about baseball.
Your writer spent years in Boston (pre-World Series victories) and saw a team with a desperate inferiority complex. Beyond that, there was a unifying hatred of the Yankees...really, the fact that the Yankees were a close (geographical) team that tended to not only win often, but defeat the Red Sox. There would be anti-Yankees apparel, and folks wearing Yankees clothing (purely to act as a shit-stirrer in public) would be booed and threatened. If you think it is & was limited to sports fans around the stadium or bars, you're wrong. I had an older, female teacher in a college class tell me (solemnly) that anyone wearing a Yankees cap would receive a lower grade. This was said along side the class curriculum and assignment workload. I was surprised, but would soon grow accustomed to the scorn.
The difference between that rivalry and the Dodgers and Giants is different, and the recent murder makes any sort of "progress" made all for naught. With the Brian Stow beating in the Dodger Stadium parking lot, the focus was on the out of control nature of the post-game LA fan. It was LA's problem (regardless of how a Dodger fan would be treated outside Telephone Park) and often used as symbolism of Frank McCourt's inability to be nothing but a moron.
But now, 2 years later, a Dodger fan (son of a stadium employee) is killed just outside the stadium. People wearing one team's apparel, someone wearing the other's confronts them...and then this. "This" (thankfully) doesn't happen often...but it's the same 2 teams, and here we go. "Words exchanged" - doesn't help whoever started the talk, but it's all the shit afterward. Or that there's any "shit afterward."
Folks, the Dodger and Giant teams are thankful for their fans, but that's where it ends. You can pay to see them in person, pay to eat their food, pay to wear their clothing. All they do in return is take your money. When I ended years of frustrated Cub fandom, I received no letter or phone call of apology from the team. They didn't notice. The Dodgers didn't notice I became a fan. So it goes.
And this is just a rivalry between two teams - there are entire groups of a team's fans who uniformly "don't respect" other team's fans because...they're "rivals." Who are? The fans? Does that make you the "Best Fans in the League?" Because you care more? Shit, on the streets of Beverly Hills this morning, I saw a woman wearing a New York Yankees cap. The odds would be good that, if pressed to name a starting pitcher for the team, she could not...or would say "Mariano Rivera?" But even if she did that, or did name one, or the entire rotation...who cares?!
You're a fan of a team? OK. You're a fan of a team that is a rival of my favorite team? My mind will reflex and claim to "not understand why you would" but there it ends. And that's all it should be, because you don't play, own, or even work for the team. As an excuse for anything beyond a "look" is apparently the state we in this state are in now...and there's no joy in Dealville.
