Dodgers-Giants rivalry crosses country, generations

The insult, despite emanating from the distant outfield seats at the cavernous Polo Grounds, would cut through the cheers and boos of the New York Giants' home crowd to reach its target in center field: Brooklyn's Duke Snider.

Again and again, the man in the heavy coat, worn in the heat of summer as well as the cool of early fall, would blister the Dodgers' outfielder with his hateful term. And again and again, Snider would fume.

In 1958, the two teams moved west. The Los Angeles Dodgers would play their first game, fittingly, against the Giants at San Francisco's Seals Stadium.

As the Dodgers stepped off the team bus, Snider heard a familiar voice -- agonizingly familiar.

"Hey, horse face," said the man, still wearing his trademark coat, "thought you got rid of me, didn't you?"

Not a chance. After more than half a century of one of sport's greatest rivalries, Dodgers vs. Giants, New York borough against New York borough, that fan served notice that a little thing like moving nearly 3,000 miles would in no way diminish the intensity and animosity generated by the two teams.

It may have become city vs. city, but it was still the Dodgers against the Giants.

Whether it was the dueling bats of Willie and the Duke, the knee-shaking brushback pitches of Sal Maglie and Don Drysdale or the high-kicking style of Sandy Koufax and Juan Marichal, this has been a rivalry played by some of the most skilled performers and colorful characters to ever put on a baseball uniform.

The rivalry continues this weekend, with a three-game series beginning Friday night at Dodger Stadium, the Dodgers trying to hold onto their lead in the National League West, the Giants trying to knock them from the perch.

Sometimes they played with a pennant on the line, sometimes not. But that didn't matter. The mere sight of each other stirred the emotions.

Snider said he couldn't even enjoy Halloween because it reminded him of the Giants' colors, black and orange.

"It was a season within a season whenever we played them," said former Dodgers shortstop Maury Wills, now a part-time Dodgers coach. "You didn't need a Knute Rockne speech before a Giants game. If a player couldn't get up for the Giants, he didn't have any fire in him. It was war. It was life or death."

Like the heart-wrenching moment in the 1960s when Wills, his family still in Spokane where he had played minor-league ball, got a call from his wife's gynecologist.