Finally, after all this time, after all these years, the City of Angels comes after us with one of its own. Finally, after all this time, after all these years, we will have New York versus Los Angeles and it will be just that: full-blooded N.Y. and fully rooted L.A. Ours against Theirs. Us against Them.
Yes, the Yankees have played the Dodgers four times in the World Series since 1963, and the teams split those evenly. And, yes, the Knicks and Lakers met three times in four years in the NBA Finals, 1970, ’72 and ‘73, with the Knicks winning two of those championships, giving New York a tidy 4-3 advantage over Los Angeles, all-time, in title-bout matches.
But as if we need to remind anyone: Los Angeles is a city of sporting thieves, and so while those Dodgers teams might have had that pretty interlocking “LA” on their caps in all those meetings, it was only because a bandit named O’Malley had stolen them in the night and pasted the letters over the ever-iconic “B,” that stood for Brooklyn, where the franchise’s heart (and its nickname, too; how many trolleys have Angelinos EVER had to dodge?) will always be rooted.
And the Lakers? Yes. They were named after Minneapolis, the Land of 10,000 Lakes. The only lake of note in Southern California is Ricki and used to be Veronica, and you are welcome to both of them. That’s the thing about L.A.: It isn’t enough that it steals franchises away from decent, hard-working cities, but it also keeps the names, too, which is illogical, irredeemable and just plain mean.
(Good on ’em, by the way, that they couldn’t keep the Rams — pilfered from Cleveland, before dashing off to St. Louis — or the Raiders — plundered from Oakland, before beating a hasty retreat back north — although if that taught the conniving crooks a lesson, someone should alert the nervous citizens of Buffalo, Jacksonville and San Diego they have nothing to worry about with their Bills, Jaguars and Chargers.)
But we digress.
The Kings, they are a different story. They were actually born and raised in Los Angeles, conceived on Feb. 9, 1966, awarded as an expansion team to one of the great sporting impresarios of the 20th Century, Jack Kent Cooke.
Cooke outfitted the team in the purple-and-gold vestments of his other team, the Lakers, and the Kings spent much of their existence blissfully off the radar screen in their city.
But at least it was their city, their team.
So finally these two titanic cities, ours and theirs, us and them, will meet on a proper field (um … make that frozen pond) of friendly strife. We’ve had interlopers: the Nets played the Lakers once, and the Devils played both the Kings and the Ducks, and we’ll let you decide if Anaheim is the New Jersey of SoCal, or if Jersey is the Anaheim of Gotham, but either way they shouldn’t count.
We’ve had meetings just shy of the Big Game: the Mets of the ‘80s had the swagger beaten out of them for good by the ’88 Dodgers (and enjoyed what, to date, has been their final romp in the October sun, sweeping the Blue in the 2006 NLDS). And Flipper Anderson may still be running after gathering in that overtime heave from Jim Everett at Giants Stadium in January of 1990 — payback for Giants 10, Rams 7, Dec. 23, 1984, Bill Parcells’ first-ever playoff win (although by the time the Rams and the Giants ever got around to playing each other in the postseason, the Rams were based in Anaheim and the Giants in Jersey, so apparently we’ll just have to adjust our definition of what counts and what doesn’t) …
But we digress.
So we’ll leave it at this: starting Wednesday the Rangers (born in New York City in 1926) and the Kings (born in Los Angeles 40 years later) will settle on ice an ages-old feud that has long been waged on grass and hardwood, and emotions will be high, and feelings will be hard, and perhaps this is as good a time as any to warn James Dolan that in ’81, when the Yankees blew a 2-0 lead in the Series to the Dodgers, another owner of some public fascination, lad named Steinbrenner, not only saw fit to apologize for that crime to “the people of New York” but also punched a Dodgers fan in a hotel elevator.
Losing to larcenous L.A. can make you a little crazy, you see.