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Angels, Dodgers, A’s, Giants could make for a California World Series

Angels center fielder Mike Trout, front, and Dodgers center fielder Yasiel Puig embrace before a game at Dodger Stadium in August. The Angels and Dodgers represent two of the four California teams competing in the postseason.
(Danny Moloshok / Associated Press)
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They’re still going to call baseball’s championship the World Series, but there’s a good chance next month’s final will have something less than a global reach.

In fact, with this week’s playoff field featuring four teams from California, two from Missouri and two from the neighboring cities of Baltimore and Washington, the title showdown may be more about local bragging rights than world domination.

For example, if the league pennants go to the St. Louis Cardinals and Kansas City Royals, teams separated by less than 250 miles of flat asphalt, they would meet in an I-70 series. The Show-Me State would like to see that but people in the other 49 states might not be as interested.

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If the Washington Nationals and Baltimore Orioles win out, they would meet in a Beltway Series — never mind that Baltimore, 40 miles north of the White House, is actually outside the Capital Beltway.

Even C-Span would get better TV ratings than a Nationals-Orioles series.

So it’s out West where the most intriguing possibilities lie. Among California teams only the San Diego Padres failed to RSVP for the playoffs, giving the state four teams in the postseason for the first time.

That means there could be a Freeway Series between the Angels and Dodgers. With Mike Trout and Albert Pujols versus Clayton Kershaw and Yasiel Puig, it would feature more drama and star power than the red carpet at the Academy Awards.

Or we could see a repeat of the 1989 Bay Bridge Series between the San Francisco Giants and Oakland Athletics, a matchup so compelling the earth actually shook before Game 3.

We’ve seen World Series featuring the A’s versus the Dodgers twice and the Angels against the Giants once, and all three were epic in their way. In the last Oakland-L.A. series, Kirk Gibson limped off the bench and into baseball lore with a game-winning pinch-hit home run. The Angels won their only championship with a seven-game victory over the Giants.

The TV promos almost write themselves.

But there’s a lot still to be done before any of those California Classics become reality. The A’s and Giants have one-game wild-card playoffs to win on the road first, Oakland in Kansas City on Tuesday and San Francisco in Pittsburgh on Wednesday.

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If Oakland wins, it would guarantee a California team a spot in the American League Championship Series since the winner of the Royals-A’s game will meet the Angels next. The best-of-five division playoff will begin Thursday in Anaheim, where the Angels own the best home record in the majors and where the forecast calls for temperatures in the mid-90s.

The Dodgers open their postseason a day later against the Cardinals at Dodger Stadium. And although the Dodgers were the best road team in the majors this season, they’ll have a extra home-field advantage on their side as well with temperatures again expected to rise into the mid-90s, about 20 degrees warmer than the forecast for St. Louis.

If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the playoffs. Especially in Southern California.

“When you come to L.A. don’t bring your sweater,” taunted City Councilmember Tom LaBonge, a lifelong Dodgers fan who lives in the shadow of Chavez Ravine.

If the Dodgers beat the Cardinals, the team that knocked them out of the postseason in two of their last five visits, they could relive more history with a California Aqueduct series to decide the National League title.

Twice the Giants have beaten the Dodgers in a playoff one step short of the World Series, in 1962 at Dodger Stadium and in 1951 on Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round the World.” The Giants face the more difficult path to the rematch, though, needing to beat the Pirates and then the Washington Nationals, who finished the season with the league’s best record.

Yet, should either league series, or the World Series, come down to a battle of North and South, the momentum is on the South. Not only did the Dodgers and Angels win their regular-season series with the Giants and A’s, but the South is on the rise in other ways too. Los Angeles has won its last three playoff series with the North, the Clippers eliminating the Golden State Warriors in the 2014 NBA postseason and the Kings beating the San Jose Sharks in the NHL the last two seasons. In college football, USC opened its season with victories over Fresno State and Stanford, and even Lancaster was beating Visalia to win the California League title in minor league baseball.

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In any case, a World Series involving the Dodgers or Angels certainly makes for a better script than a Detroit Tigers-Nationals showdown. And as everyone in Southern California knows, when it comes to selling a TV drama the story is everything.

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