SANTA BARBARA — If this World Series is a war between California's north and south, then its Mason-Dixon line zig-zags through the heart of O'Malley's Sports Bar, a dark-wood, open-fronted tavern on State Street with 13 television sets and more satellite links than the White House situation room.
Like a lot of places in the middle of California, Santa Barbara is an uneasy bystander in the rivalry between San Francisco and Los Angeles. This week, at O'Malley's, loyalties are divided between the Giants and the Angels.
Back in April when the baseball season was still young and even the San Diego Padres had a chance, the line here mostly separated Giants fans from Dodgers fans. But the L.A. team's pennant run fizzled in September, and loyalties of the Giant-haters have shifted.
Dodger blue has gone Angel red, and the rally monkey is looking cuter all the time to die-hards such as Daran Lewis, a 34-year-old Santa Barbara limousine driver who grew up in Camarillo.
"The Angels are a Cinderella team, and people like an underdog," said Lewis, noting that the Angels have the added cachet that they aren't the Giants. "That's why people are climbing on the bandwagon."
Spend time here on the dividing line and you realize the California split is more than north versus south. It's less a marital spat than a family feud, more like the Balkans than Korea, complete with a disputatious past -- over water, mostly.
California has five Major League teams, enough to form a single division. And each team claims tribal lands, some broader than others. There is no official map, of course, but booster club rosters and anecdotal accounts from sports bars and other knowledgeable observers provide a rough guide.
Four out of five Angels Boosters Club members live within 50 miles of Edison International Field in a zone that swings from Camp Pendleton northeast into Riverside and San Bernardino counties, then cuts back to the coast through Bellflower and Lakewood. Padres fans have their own corner down in San Diego County, and Oakland Athletics fans have carved a niche east of San Francisco.
Still, the state is dominated -- in more ways than just baseball -- by Los Angeles and San Francisco.
The Giants' fan base extends from Northern California out into the Central Valley to include Fresno -- home to a minor-league team affiliated with the Giants -- then eastward to the Sierra Nevada and south to Santa Barbara, where Dodgerland begins.
