Ours is not the only city to be victimized by Los Angeles’ larcenous heart. LA stole the Lakers from Minneapolis. LA stole the Rams, twice: once from Cleveland, and then from St. Louis. LA stole the Raiders from Oakland. LA stole the Clippers from San Diego and later doubled up on that, stealing the Chargers, too.
(Although since, at last count, there are exactly 58 Chargers fans who live in Los Angeles — actually, hold on: sadly, one of them just passed away; make it 57 — it’s uncertain at the behest of whom that heist was done.)
But New York has been LA’s favorite target. It started innocently enough. In the fourth season of the hit TV show “I Love Lucy,” Ricky Riccardo gets a big career break in California and so Lucy and the Mertzes — of course — decide to follow him there. It was supposed to be a four-episode arc; it was such a wildly popular ratings hit, it lasted for most of the 30-episode season.
The Riccardos and the Mertzes eventually did return to their apartment building at 623 E. 68th St. — don’t go looking for it; it’s actually in the East River — but that 1954-55 season clearly reflected the pulls that would drag so many of New York’s most prized possessions west. Seventeen years later, Johnny Carson closed up shop in New York and took “The Tonight Show” to LA
And, oh yes:
Somewhere in between (1958, to be precise), the Dodgers boarded up Ebbets Field, called the moving vans, and relocated to Los Angeles, trading in the 11225 ZIP code for 90090.
So when the Yankees and the Dodgers kick off the 120th World Series Friday night, they will represent cities who have been longtime sparring partners. It will be Broadway on one side, Hollywood on the other. Long Beach’s own Billy Crystal, Queens’ own Paul Simon and Brooklyn’s own Spike Lee on one side, Rob Lowe (a Dodger fan by way of Dayton, Ohio), Magic Johnson (a Dodger fan by way of Lansing, Mich.) and Jason Bateman (a Dodger fan by way of — goodness gracious — Rye, N.Y.) on the other.
(Seriously: LA can’t even home-grow their own celebrity fans!)
Follow The Post’s coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:
- Sherman: Yankees can turn this advantage into World Series-winning formula
- How slumping Yankee can help win World Series despite cold streak
- Heyman: The ‘short’ reason underdog Yankees will conquer Dodgers in World Series
- For Brian Cashman’s ‘consigliere,’ this World Series is a full-circle moment
Now, once again, New York and Los Angeles — the 212 versus the 213 — will play a 3,000-mile wide game of tug-of-war across a best-of-seven series. If we’re going to count all of our various city-adjacent teams, representing the likes of East Rutherford, N.J., and Anaheim, Calif., then the scoreboard in final rounds of seasons reads this way:
California Pretty Boys 5, New York Tough Guys 5.
So this World Series will decide (for now) this grandiose best-of- eleven series, which began in 1963 when the Dodgers and Yankees met for the first time in a Red-Eye Series instead of a Subway Series and LA swept the fading dynasty. The Yankees got revenge in 1977 and ’78, and the Dodgers evened that end of things by winning the World Series in 1981.
The Knicks won two out of the three NBA Finals they played with the Lakers between 1970 and 1973; 29 years later, the Lakers would sweep the Jason Kidd Nets to even the basketball portion of the rivalry. And while the Devils beat the Ducks in an entertaining Stanley Cup Final in 2003, when the teams from the big cities met 11 years later it was Kings 4, Rangers 1.
Five to five.
And now this.
Best-of-seven to determine best-of-11. These teams already got a nice up-close look at each other once, back in June, at Yankee Stadium, the Dodgers taking two out of three. The signature game was the first game, Friday, June 7. It was scoreless into the 11th inning. The Dodgers scored two in the top on a two-run double by Teoscar Hernandez. Aaron Judge drove in the ghost runner in the bottom, but was stranded at first as the tying run.
It felt that night, that weekend, like the two best teams in the sport had just taken the measure of each other; 4 ½ months later, it turns out, that is exactly what that was. Judge hit three home runs in the series. Hernandez hit two. Shohei Ohtani went but 2-for-13.
Two boxers, sizing each other up.
Two cities with a long and sometimes contentious relationship with each other. LA has really never stopped trolling us, or stealing from us. It took Don Draper to move from New York to Los Angeles to dream up “I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing,” after all. Ah, well. What’s past is prologue. What’s about to come could be as fierce a World Series as we’ve enjoyed in a while. That’ll do just fine.