Angels-A's Unheralded Rivalry is Best in Baseball

but i dread them because the A’s are always on our butts, they scare me no matter who they have on their and because at some point, too much stress becomes unhealthy.

screw you, mainstream media. i refuse to buy into the crap you try to sell me… that BOSNY is the greatest rivalry in sports and that those 2 teams are the best. you can shove it. \m/

This is my body…....this is my blood! Go Angels!

Frankie Rodriquez is our savior!

It is unfortunate, but what made that hatred rivalry a national passion was the fact that violence occasionally ensued. That was the measure of how bad the blood was between the teams.

Modern free agency and player movement dilute the team allegiances to the extent that personal health and career maintenance tend to outweigh any commitment to brute force to impose one’s will.

If TB and Boston keep at each other with brawls and balls, and TB sustains their new-found success, their rivalry will overshadow that between NY and Boston. And if the Halos/A’s rivalry every gets personal and draws blood, the national media will start paying attention.

Glorious baseball alone will not do it. Sad, but true.

Angels vs. Athletics, 124 games

Angels: 62 wins
Athletics: 62 wins

Angels: 3 division titles
Athletics: 3 division titles

Then of course, we have the heated fights, such as the Lackey/Kendall affair, the fan taunting about the team naming issues and sabremetrics and Billy Beane bullshit, and us having the world title to hold over their heads. And, of course…the unheard-of number of 1-run games the two teams have had.

Reminds me alot of UCLA and SC, no one outside of SoCal really cares about the rivalry or passion of the fans. Not too mention how exciting or close the games have been, or what they have meant to the teams involved. So our game won’t lead sports center, big deal, we all know what a great game this was, screw the peeps back in Bristol.

Between the Moneyball extremists and the first-to-third, Productive Outs anachronists. Though I wish our “program” included more nurturing of the take-n-rake skills, it’s fun to watch such a huge contrast, and how specifically it affects strategy in games between them.

Example: Angels starters have long since understood that the key to facing Oakland is to pound in first-pitch fastball strikes, because they ain’t swinging. So Santana does that last night, and - wonder of wonders! - the A’s are uncharacteristically swinging, and jumping out to a 2-0 lead. So he adjusts, starts throwing first-pitch sliders for strikes, and keeps us in the game. Great stuff.

because its always competitive. The BOSNY tilt was so often one-sided it barely qualifies.

Angels/A’s gets the blood going.

I’ll say this for A’s fans…they’re considerable less annoying than NY or BAHHHHston fans.

Pretty amazing coming out of nowhere this year and competing. Makes this rivalry more fun.

I know a lot of East Bay folks and they are mostly pretty good people. So, I think the fans hating each other ideas are invalid. There are North-South issues in Cali, but I think the more bitter rivalry is the Dodgers-Giants. A’s-Angels is fairly friendly by my accounts.

Oh, and this is possibly the pantherest sentence you’ve ever written here:

”...surprising microcosms ignored by the media in favor of replaying seven angles of Pedro skullfucking Don Zimmer, or Jason Varitek rubbing his fist and erection against his mancrush enemy A-Rod.”

The A’s fans do hate the Angels—but on baseball terms. The Angels are the rivals who beat their team and prevent their team from reaching the playoffs every other year. So of course they hate the Angels. Hell, I hate the A’s for the same reasons, so it’s reciprocal.