BLEED ORANGE OR BLUE

Who do Bearcats like more, the Giants or the Dodgers?

by Braydon Hoier, Sports Reporter

Baseball rivalries have brought fans together, but also torn the stitches of conversations. One of the biggest rivalries in baseball is the Los Angeles Dodgers vs. the San Francisco Giants. This season they played a total of 19 games against each other with the Giants winning 10 games and the Dodgers winning nine. It’s a healthy and admirably balanced rivalry.

This past month, the Dodgers played the Giants in the National League Division Series(NLDS) and the Dodgers reigned superior, to advance to the next step of the playoffs.

With Paso Robles being 270 miles from Los Angeles and 204 miles from San Francisco, Paso high school is filled with Giants and Dodgers fans alike. The question stands; which team do Bearcats like more? According to a survey taken on Oct. 22nd of 61 students, the majority percentage of those students are Dodgers fans.

Junior Jaclyn Bullard started early. “I am a Dodgers fan and have been since I could talk,” Bullard said. In October 2021 Bullard attended game three of the NLDS to see her favorite players Will Smith and Trea Turner play. On the downside for her the Giants ended up beating the Dodgers 1-0 in that game.

The Dodgers and Giants rivalry has gone all the way back to when the two teams were on the east coast as the Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Giants. The Dodgers moved from Brooklyn to Los Angeles in May of 1957, and the Giants also moved west from New York to San Francisco in May of 1957.

The two teams brought the rivalry from the East Coast to the West Coast and since the move,the Giants and Dodgers head to head record is 577 wins for the Dodgers and 548 wins for the Giants.

Even teachers at Paso High show their true colors when it comes to being a Dodgers or Giants fan. Kevin Kijewski, freshman and sophomore English teacher is a Dodgers fan. “I’ve been breathing for 43 years, I would say I’ve been a Dodgers fan for 41,” Kijewski said.

Kijewski’s loyalty was cemented, he said, when in 1988 he watched an Injured Kirk Gibson in the 1988 world series hit the game winning walk off home run, while limping around the bases pumping his fists in the air.

On the other side of the rivalry there’s Steven DeCou, a sophomore science teacher, who has been a Giants fan for a little over 20 years. “The thing that got me to be a Giants fan was my uncle’s a Giants fan. He used to take me to Giants stadium,” DeCou said.

But who is the better team currently? In the 2021 season the Giants placed first in the National League West with a record of 107-55 and the Dodgers placed second in the NL West with a record of 106-56. In the 2021 regular season the Giants proved to be the better team statistically. But as the postseason rolled around the corner, the Giants and Dodgers matched up once again, this time in the NLDS. The two teams battled back and forth leading to the final game of the series, game five. In game five the crowd was on their feet the whole time, cheering for their team hoping to advance. For the Giants fans, their hopes were demolished by the first base umpire as he made a debatable call that ended the game and the season for the Giants.