This is not a Subway Series.
The last one of those was in 1956, when anyone, fan or player, could take a subway right from one ballpark to the other, from Yankee Stadium to Ebbets Field. For 15 cents.
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It is possible to get on the Bay Area Rapid Transit train at the Oakland Coliseum and go to the Balboa Park station. For $2.05. But that still leaves you a long walk from Candlestick Park, too far for this to qualify as a Subway Series.
Nor is this the first World Series between the Giants and the Athletics. It`s the fourth. The first one was in 1905, when the Giants won because Christy Mathewson pitched three shutouts. The A`s won the other two, in 1911 and 1913.
Those were, of course, the New York Giants and Philadelphia Athletics, back when there were 16 major league baseball clubs, half of them, like more than half the people, on the eastern seaboard.
Even in 1956, when there were about 170 million Americans, almost half of them lived in the northeast quarter of the country and almost a tenth of them in New York State, which was home to more than one-sixth of the major league baseball teams, including the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, who played that last Subway Series.
Now there are more than 240 million Americans, and more than one-tenth of them live in California, which is home to almost one-sixth of the major league baseball teams.
So there was something fitting about the San Francisco Giants and the Oakland Athletics opening the 86th World Series here, the third all-California World Series, the second in a row and the first since 1956 to be played in one metropolitan area.
Not only has California replaced New York as the biggest, baseball-est state, but today`s relationship between San Francisco and Oakland is similar to the earlier one between New York and Brooklyn.
Standing in line to pay $2 for a Yankee Stadium bleacher seat in that World Series, the Dodger fan knew in his heart that he was entering an alien land, one dominated by richer, better-educated people, by the kind of people who always knew which fork to use for the salad. Like the Yankees, their fans were winners. Like the Yankees, their fans, with all their advantages and superiority, were easy to hate.
For many Oaklanders, so is San Francisco, which is bigger, richer and more fashionable. Nobody has written a song about leaving his heart in Oakland, a blue-collar town with a bigger port than San Francisco but not nearly as many big banks.
On several accounts, the analogy is not exact; analogies never are. Oakland is a separate city, not a section of San Francisco. No longer do World Series tickets go on sale the day of the game, or cost $2. And the Athletics, favored in this World Series, have been far more successful in recent years than have the Giants.
Still, many Oaklanders feel the same way about the bigger city across the Bay that Brooklynites used to feel about the richer (if smaller) borough across the East River. Some Brooklyn residents still call Manhattan ”the city” and resent it. San Franciscans like to call their town ”The City,”
and Oaklanders resent that.
”This is class struggle,” said a former Oaklander who left his heart here though his livelihood has taken him east. ”It`s the wine drinkers against the beer drinkers. My father has lived all his life in Oakland, and more than anything he is proud that he has never set foot in a cable car or eaten a piece of sourdough bread.”
So while Oaklanders were not happy about losing last year`s World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers, they would be downright mortified to lose this one to the Giants. ”It would just give them one more reason to look down on us,” said the former Oaklander.
Actually, San Francisco doesn`t look down on Oakland as much as it just doesn`t look over here at all. The disdain is reflected in the story San Franciscans like about the two women looking in dismay at their city burning after the 1906 earthquake.
”At least Oakland seems untouched,” said one, trying to comfort her friend.
”There are some things,” said the other woman, ”that even the earth will not swallow.”
Not that Oakland was entirely untouched by the great quake. The bar of Johnny Heinold`s First and Last Chance Saloon, for instance, was tilted to a slight but noticeable angle that remains.
Now owned by Carol Brookman, the First and Last Chance is a source of some pride in Oakland, providing proof that San Francisco has no monopoly on the Bay Area`s cultural history. Jack London drank here, studied at one of the tables and met a cruel ship captain named Alexander McLean, the model for Wolf Larsen in London`s great novel, ”The Sea Wolf.”
Oakland would rather be remembered for London, who twice ran for mayor on the Socialist ticket, than as the place about which Gertrude Stein said,
”There`s no there, there.” Oaklanders now claim, plausibly, that Stein was speaking not about the city but about her family home, which had been knocked down. They might be better off claiming that no one ought to take Stein seriously on anything.
(Here`s one of history`s little ironies. But for one detail, London would be delighted that Oakland`s congressman is Ron Dellums, an avowed socialist. The detail is that Dellums is black, and London was a raging bigot.)
Sitting in the First and Last Chance the other day, Boyd Johnson, a 55-year-old computer operator, insisted that not all Oaklanders dislike San Francisco. ”How could anyone hate such a beautiful city?” he said.
But he did have a point to make about the supposed intellectual superiority of the larger town. ”They pay higher rents to look at Oakland,” he said. ”We pay lower rents to look at the prettier city. So who`s smarter?”
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Carol Brookman also proclaimed herself a lover of San Francisco and acknowledged that Oakland is ”a bedroom community, a sleepier town.” But like most Oaklanders, she was not pleased when San Francisco Mayor Art Agnos at first declined to make the traditional World Series bet with Oakland`s mayor, saying, ”There`s nothing in Oakland I`d want.”
Just kidding, Agnos said later, after Oakland Mayor Lionel Wilson expressed his city`s unhappiness. The two subsequently bet an exchange of visits.
Like all generalizations, this one about gritty, working-man`s Oakland and snobbish, sophisticated San Francisco only applies up to a point. By general agreement on both sides of the bay, Oakland Coliseum fans are polite and generous while San Francisco leads both leagues in rowdy, drunken crowds. Still, there is enough to it that Dave Newhouse, a columnist for the Tribune (no longer the Oakland Tribune, just the Tribune) clearly spoke for many on this side of the bay when he wrote that a Giants` victory would be
”devastating” for Oakland`s image of itself.
There it was, the tacit admission that Oakland has an inferiority complex. The secret is that so does San Francisco. The City, hah! It`s the fourth-largest city in this state. As cities go, San Francisco, with fewer than 700,000 people, barely qualifies. With water on three sides and more than 40 hills, it is lovely and special. It is not nearly as lovely and special as it thinks it is, and down deep it knows that.
For all the cross-bay rivalry, there will be a lot of cross-bay trips this week, with plenty of San Franciscans at the opening games in Oakland, cheering on their team and wolfing down hot dogs, peanuts and white wine.
And what? Yes, and white wine. They never served that at Ebbets Field. But, then, the world changes.