Dodgers, Giants Revitalize Rivalry With Brawl on Tuesday

Last night, the benches cleared at Dodger Stadium as the Dodgers and Giants added yet another chapter to their complex and historic rivalry.

The year was 1889. New York City was busy and was a city on the rise. In September, just weeks before Brooklyn, nicknamed the Bridegrooms at the time, and Giants met in an 11-game championship series, the first skyscraper was built. First, the Tower building rose from the ground and up into the sky, and then the Giants raised a championship flag at the Polo Grounds. It was a hard-fought series, in which the Dodgers won the first game and two that followed. The Giants bounced back, with 6 wins in total and won their second championship in as many years.

The two teams would call New York home for another 67 years before moving west in 1958.

Over the years, the Rivalry has been fed by moments like Bobby Thomson‘s “Shot Heard Round the World” in October of 1951, and endless home runs hit by both clubs into McCovey Cove.

Then, there’s the recent history, and by recent, I mean within the last 24 hours.

Last night, as Yasiel Puig fouled off a ball from Tony Watson in the 7th inning, he let his bat fly up into the air, caught it, and said some frustrated remark that he meant to be directed solely at himself. You see it all the time in this game. Players see a pitch that they can see, they can just see it so well, and expect to launch it into the outfield seats. Often times, however, those baseballs end up behind the player; a souvenir, and a missed opportunity.

Nick Hundley, who was catching former Dodger Tony Watson, seemed to dislike the way Puig reacted. “He told me to stop complaining and get back in the box,” Puig told reporters Tuesday night. Puig then got upset, and that’s when the madness began. Dugouts emptied, and with Dodgers first base coach George Lombard being the closest to the action, he stepped in to try and stop Hundley from throwing any more punches at the Dodgers outfielder.

It took a beat for the fight to be broken up. Hunter Pence held back his teammate, and Dodgers bench coach Bob Geren did his best to calm down Puig. The bullpens had already emptied, the stadium crowd was bold and alive.

And, for the first time, Manny Machado and Brian Dozier got to see what this rivalry is really like.

The fight eventually ended, and play resumed. The Dodgers tied it in the bottom of the eighth on a Manny Machado single, but Kenta Maeda came in to close (yes, you read that correctly) and gave up a series of hits, which resulted in a 2-1 Dodgers loss after they couldn’t come back in the bottom of the inning.

At the end of the day, the fight wasn’t about any player doing something particularly wrong. It was about Puig getting frustrated and someone else getting frustrated about the other players’ frustration (did I lose you?). This could have been like any other game.

More from Call to the Pen

• Philadelphia Phillies, ready for a stretch run, bomb St. Louis Cardinals
• Philadelphia Phillies: The 4 players on the franchise’s Mount Rushmore
• Boston Red Sox fans should be upset over Mookie Betts’ comment
• Analyzing the Boston Red Sox trade for Dave Henderson and Spike Owen
• 2023 MLB postseason likely to have a strange look without Yankees, Red Sox, Cardinals

Except, it’s not like every other game. It’s the Dodgers vs. the Giants. It’s two teams from New York who have been the fiercest of competitors for over 125 years.

Bruce Jenkins and Steve Dilbeck said it best in the forwards to Joe Konte’s book “Giants vs. Dodgers, A Coast-to-Coast History of the Rivalry Heard ‘Round the World” (an excellent source of information on this topic, should you find yourself intrigued.)

In his half of the forward, Jenkins writes, “The Dodgers-Giants rivalry changed my life at a very impressionable age. It’s the reason I became a sportswriter, a delghtful job that makes you question whether you’re really working. And it’s still the highlight of a baseball summer, always making me feel like a little kid again. Other than that, I don’t have much to say about it.”

Dilbeck, a lifelong Dodger fan, followed by writing, “In more recent times, Dodgers fans have had to suffer through Fox and Frank McCourt ownership, while the Giants were getting a terrific new ballpark and winning two tiles in three years. Good for them, I guess. Most of us were running out of sympathy, and besides, a one-sided rivalry is no rivalry at all. Competition is at it’s best when both teams are good.”

This is a rivalry that has history in three different centuries. It’s a rivalry that rivals the Red Sox and the Yankees, and it isn’t going away any time soon.