Nearly two decades after he managed the New York Mets against the New York Yankees in the 2000 World Series, Bobby Valentine still couldn’t help but laugh in wonderment at having actually participated in the first New York-New York World Series since 1956.
“The Angels have never played the Dodgers, the Cubs have never played the White Sox,” Valentine said in October 2019. “The Yankees and the Mets actually played in a frigging World Series in New York! It’s like out of a comic book. It was amazing.”
Might this be the year the Yankees and Mets — and Los Angeles Angels and Los Angeles Dodgers — try to top the experience of 2000 by competing for the right to potentially face their crosstown rivals in the World Series?
The League Championship series matchups are, of course, still nearly five months away from being determined. But it’s not too early to ponder the possibility — or the likelihood — that all four baseball teams from America’s biggest cities will qualify for the playoffs for the first time ever.
The Yankees, Dodgers and Mets all enter today atop their divisions while the Angels, who are in second place in the American League West behind the Houston Astros but own the best record of any AL non-division leader, would be the Junior Circuit’s top wild card if the season ended today.
There doesn’t appear to be anything fluky about the fast starts. The Yankees (27-9) and Dodgers (24-12) have the two best records in baseball while the Angels (24-15) and Mets (24-14) are second and tied for third, respectively, in their leagues in run differential. And the Angels and Mets are responsible for the season’s two no-hitters (though, as former Mets pitcher Noah Syndergaard seemed quite content to point out, only the Angels’ was the work of a single pitcher).
Three of the four New York/Los Angeles baseball teams have reached the playoffs in the same season just three times. The Yankees, Angels and Dodgers made it in 2004, followed by the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers in 2006 and the Yankees, Angels and Dodgers again in 2009.
This isn’t one of the NCAA basketball tournaments, so there’s no ability to wager on the exact identity of baseball’s final four. But anyone with an eye on history can target a potential Subway Series or Freeway Series matchup.
At DraftKings, the Yankees (+275) are the favorite to win the American League pennant while the Mets (+390) have the second-best odds to win the National League crown, A Yankees-Mets parlay generates odds of +1737, or just shy of 18/1, meaning a $5 bet would net $91.87 should the second Subway Series of the expansion era actually happen.
The Angels (+900) have the sixth-best odds in the AL while the Dodgers (+235) are the NL favorites. An Angels-Dodgers parlay generates odds of +3250 — or a little more than 32/1, meaning a $5 bet would net $167.50 in the event of the first Freeway Series clash.
As historic as either a Subway Series or Freeway Series would be, the four teams advancing to the LCS would arguably be an even rarer event. Three New York- or Los Angeles-area teams have advanced to the semifinals of one of the four major North American pro sports leagues just once — in 2009, when the Yankees beat the Angels in the ALCS and the Dodgers fell to the Philadelphia Phillies in the NLCS. The Yankees then beat the Phillies in the World Series to earn their most recent championship.
Getting all the New York and Los Angeles area teams into the playoffs is almost as unusual in the NBA, NFL and NHL as it is in Major League Baseball. Since the Clippers moved to Los Angeles in 1984, all four teams in or near the big cities have qualified for the postseason in the NBA four times. In only two of those years — 1993 with the Knicks and 2021 with the Clippers — did even one New York- or Los Angeles-area team advance as far as the conference finals.
In the NFL, which didn’t have a team in Los Angeles from 1996 until the Rams moved back in 2016, the four New York- or Los Angeles-area teams have reached the playoffs together just once — in 1985, when only the Rams got as far as the conference championship game.
The NHL didn’t add a second Los Angeles-area team until the Mighty Ducks arrived in 1993, but the three New York-area vs. Los Angeles-area Stanley Cup Finals this century are the only New York-Los Angeles championship rounds in any sport in the last 40 years. The New Jersey Ducks beat the Ducks in 2003 while the Los Angeles Kings beat the Devils in 2012 and the New York Rangers in 2014.
Of course, depending on your definition of New York- and Los Angeles-area teams, the 2003 and 2012 Cup Finals might not have been New York vs. Los Angeles after all. The Devils reveled in their suburban setting — the parade celebrating each of the team’s three championships took place in the Meadowlands parking lot in East Rutherford, N.J.
Yankees and Mets fans might argue about a lot, but they’ll all agree they call New York home. And while the Angels, Ducks, Dodgers and Kings might not officially share Los Angeles — Angel Stadium and Honda Center are both located in Anaheim — their cities are about half an hour apart, which is probably an easier commute most days than any trek to and from any pair of New York-area facilities.
All of which makes the possibility of the Yankees, Mets, Angels and Dodgers advancing to the LCS with a chance to reach the World Series all the more delicious — and unlikely to be repeated again anytime soon, regardless of how strict one is with his or her geography.
While the Rams are defending Super Bowl champions and the Chargers seem to be ascending with franchise quarterback Justin Herbert, the Jets and Giants — both of whom play at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, though every Giants parade has taken place in Manhattan — are each 22-59 since the 2017 season.
The Clippers’ conference final appearance last summer was their first in Los Angeles. The Knicks haven’t reached a conference final since 2000 while the Brooklyn Nets haven’t gotten that far since they were in New Jersey and reached the NBA Finals for the second straight year in 2003. And even the championship-rich Lakers are coming off a 49-loss season and have advanced beyond the first round once in 10 years — in 2020, when they won it all in the Orlando bubble.
The NHL officially has five teams in the New York and Los Angeles areas — though the Islanders, whose four championship parades in the 1980s all snaked along Hempstead Turnpike in Nassau County, are as proud of their suburban lineage as the Devils. But while the Islanders made the NHL semifinals in each of the previous two years and the Rangers are in the quarterfinals right now, the Ducks have missed the playoffs each of the last four seasons, the Kings haven’t gotten out of the first round since winning it all in 2014 and the Devils have made the playoffs just twice in the last 12 years.
So keep an eye on the fortunes of the Yankees, Mets, Angels and Dodgers. Because if Valentine thought the Subway Series was an amazing, comic book-like experience, well, a New York-New York, Los Angeles-Los Angeles final four this fall might be even wilder.
