The Yankees and the Red Sox, Duke and North Carolina, Lakers and the Celtics are just a few of the major rivalries in sports, with a rich history and always a great matchup. One of the largest rivalries in the history of sports is the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Francisco Giants. These two teams both started in sub-areas of New York, the Giants being from New York and the Dodgers being in Brooklyn. In 1957, both teams received permission from the MLB to move their bases of operation to California. The rivalry continued through the migration and still stands today.
Personally, I feel that the Giants are the superior team. When asking San Marcos staff member Joe Garcia about him being a fan of the Giants, he told me how he grew up in Santa Barbara and found that everyone says they’re a Dodgers fan, but can’t name a single player on the active roster.
“Growing up here, I was always a fan of the NorCal teams because the SoCal teams had such big fan bases. If you asked someone claiming to be a Dodgers fan who was starting that night, they might say Fernando Valenzuela, who retired 25 years ago.”
The Dodgers fans aren’t all fake, but it feels like many of them are just fans because of the popularity that they already have. This large fan base brings in a lot of money, causing them to have the highest available payroll in all of Major League Baseball. In the current 2021 season, the Giants have a 161 million dollar payroll, the tenth in the MLB, whereas the Dodgers have a whopping 267 million dollars at their fingertips. This massive payroll difference means that the Dodgers are chock full of superstar players, including Trea Turner and Max Scherzer, two all-stars acquired at the trade deadline. The highest paid player on the Dodgers is Clayton Kershaw, whose salary as of 2020 is 31 million dollars, not including his bonuses or extra deals. The Giants however have their highest paid player at 22 million, that being Buster Posey.
Despite this drastic difference in money, the Giants are the best team in baseball, coming up on their 100th win of the season, more than any other team. They were the first team to clinch the playoffs and held the team wide record for home runs for the majority of the season. They were initially given only a 5.7% chance of making the playoffs before the season started, and here they are, the best team in baseball, proving they are a better franchise than the Los Angeles Dodgers.
