The Bay Bridge Series matters this year

The annual struggle to make the Bay Bridge Series matter to a wider audience is on again, this time a six-games-in-10-days extravaganza that actually has a chance to do something meaningful to this largely dormant rivalry.
 
Namely, killing a team’s postseason hopes.
 
The Giants have tried ignoring the A’s throughout much of this 22-year boondoggle on the theory that kings do not interact with peasants. They have outdrawn the A’s in each of those 22 seasons, have won three rings and played twice as many postseason games . . . plus they have a ballpark/cash register. And don’t think they hold those up as an impenetrable shield against all westbound jibes.
 
The A’s, on the other hand, have tried to pick little marketing-driven fights here and there to see if the Giants will respond at all, so far to no success.
 
So with the two teams ready to lock up for two series on either side of the All-Star Break, the path to rivalry relevance lies in the most basic of methods.
 
Baseball.
 
Namely, this way: The A’s beat the Giants out of postseason consideration by winning five of the six games (two sweeps would be too much to ask). Or, the Giants beat the A’s out of postseason consideration by winning five out of six.
 
And then this way: By forcing the loser to reconsider its position viz -- the trade deadline. As in, “We made you trade Johnny Cueto,” or the reverse, “We made you trade Blake Treinen.”
 
True, this is a desperate scenario in both directions because there have only been three such incidences in series history of one beating the other five times, and in none of those (2007, ’09 and ’15) did one materially damage the postseason hopes of the other since, oddly enough, neither team made the playoffs in any of those years.
 
And that might turn out to be true this time as well. Such is the nature of the rivalry – it has mattered only once since 1913, and the time it did, the earth tried to swallow both teams. This mutual hatred thing that the Giants have developed with the Dodgers has never translated to the Bay Bridge.
 
But every year we live in hope, and this is the scenario we have being given today – that either the A’s or Giants can punk the other out of their postseason fantasies, enough to turn holders into sellers, the most obvious form of surrender in this modern mercantile world.
 
And then acting all mouthy and attitudinal about it.
 
This would not be the Giants way, of course, because of their haughty stature and market positioning. It would absolutely be the A’s way, though, and frankly should, because nobody likes a quiet underdog. Their position should be a loud and proud, “Whatever happens to us, at least it happened to you guys first.”
 
It is the only way that the Bridge can become battleground, especially now that the 49ers-Raiders thing is pretty well done and buried. And Warriors-Kings isn’t happening because they have never even had a winning record at the same time while in the same state.
 
So there’s your scenario for starting a rivalry that barely exists in the mind and hasn’t actually in the tangible world since Loma Prieta decided to beat them both. Their tasks are clear.
 
We expect failure.