Baseball rivalries aren’t supposed to be this hostile. Dodgers-Giants is a matchup that has seen nearly the entire Giants roster swarm the stands at Washington Park in Brooklyn to brawl with heckling fans in 1910; that has seen future Giants Hall of Famer Juan Marichal beat Dodgers pitcher Johnny Roseboro repeatedly in the head with a bat in 1965; that has seen Dodgers all-star Reggie Smith twice charge the stands, in 1978 and 1981,
to fight Candlestick Park spectators who had thrown objects at him.
The teams have combined for a pantheon of legends when they stick to baseball, too: Giants outfielder Bobby Thomson hit “the shot heard ’round the world” against the Dodgers in 1951, eight no-hitters have been thrown when they have faced off and, maybe most influentially, the teams were the first to play a major-league baseball game on the West Coast.
Yes, the rivalry is so important, so sacrosanct to the sport of baseball, that it was transplanted in 1958 to the other side of the country in order to grow the game. The two teams have now been in California for nearly as long as they were in New York—they’ve been playing each other since 1889—but even after more than 2,000 games, they still can’t settle the score. Through August 2013, the Giants held just a 24-game lead in the all-time series—1,196–1,172.
It doesn’t get much more competitive than that.