While it seems much of the baseball world is centered in the New York-Boston corridor, there’s a decent possibility we could actually see an All-Los Angeles World Series this year. The Angels and Dodgers will both finish this season with over 90 wins, and I think both are contenders to make it through those brutal first two rounds of the playoffs. While many in New York and Boston will grumble, I think a Los Angeles based World Series would be a good thing for baseball, even if it might mean lower ratings.

Baseball has been losing its grip on southern California for a long time. With so many other sports available to play year round, baseball has way too much competition. The big sports celebrities are basketball players or college football players around here, while few could name anyone on the Dodgers or Angels roster other than Manny and Vladdy. I think a World Series that never has to leave Los Angeles would attract more attention to the sport and help it gain in popularity in the long run by forcing SoCal’ers to choose one team to root for. Just making that choice brings them closer to the sport of baseball. They certainly don’t have to make that choice when the Yankees play the Red Sox.

We’ve seen too many east coast matchups in recent years, and most of them have stunk. Last year’s World Series between the Phillies and Rays should have been exciting, but for some reason it just wasn’t. The Rays don’t have that many fans and play in the worst stadium in baseball, and Phillies fans are rude and savage human beings who I wouldn’t want to be around. You can’t empathize with either one. The Red Sox have broken their curse and won 2 championships in the past 5 years, but neither have been exciting Series’. The Red Sox swept each time. Can you really stay on the edge of your seat when the Sox are up 6 runs in Game 4 having already won the first 3 games? Only if you’re a Red Sox fan, I suppose.

West Coast Series’ have produced some memorable moments. Who can forget the rally monkey, Gibson’s blast off Eckersley, or the fear of experiencing an actual earthquake SoCal-style? You just can’t replicate that in a 35-degree Yankee Stadium at 12:30am in late-October/early-November. You never have to worry about the time with a west coast game, because they always start early enough in local time so that it’s not early morning on the west coast by the time the game gets done. An 8:00pm starting time EST means the game is actually starting at 5:00pm out here. That means half the game gets played with daylight and we all get to see a beautiful sunset over the Pacific.

Let’s get out there and cheer on our Dodgers and hope for a Dodgers-Angels World Series in 2009!

Tags: baseball, los angeles angels, los angeles dodgers, world series