Anasazi Ochoa, a 27-year-old USC graduate student, is a lifelong Dodgers fan. (Photo courtesy of Anasazi Ochoa)

Greg Durante, a 35-year-old occupational therapist from Brooklyn, changed his T-shirt, watch and shoes in the hope that it would bring his Yankees better luck in Game 2. (Photo courtesy of Greg Durante)

Greg Durante grew up in a Yankees-loving family, growing up in a house that had a dedicated “Yankee Room.” (Photo courtesy of Greg Durante)

From left: Gabriela Ortega, Kinan Ochoa, Maria Santos-Ochoa, Alejandro Ochoa, Anasazi Ochoa and her fiancé, Eric Fleming, attended the Dodgers’ final home game of the regular season, when they won the National League West. (Photo courtesy of Anasazi Ochoa)

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Anasazi Ochoa, a 27-year-old USC graduate student, is a lifelong Dodgers fan. (Photo courtesy of Anasazi Ochoa)

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So there’s Anasazi Ochoa in Los Angeles, a 27-year-old graduate student at USC.

And Greg Durante in New York; he is a 35-year-old occupational therapist who works in a Brooklyn hospital.

They find themselves on opposite ends of a monumental event that completely alters their mood and is also completely (probably) out of their control.

They don’t know each other, but for the past few days they’ve been contacting me, via voice memos and text messages, because I wanted to know what happens when fans stop being polite and start getting real… while their teams are meeting in the World Seriess.

She’s a Dodgers fan. He’s a Yankees fan. And they’re both incredibly good sportsmen, although, for now, Ochoa is in a better mood; his team leads 2-0 when it returns to New York for Game 3 of the World Series on Monday.

FRIDAY, THU 1

12:22 p.m., New York

“A lot of emotions are running high,” Durante said, a little less than eight hours before the first pitch. “All morning I feel my heart beating in my chest. It’s always a back and forth between being excited enough to run through a wall or just having a completely incomplete panic attack.

9:27 a.m., California

Ochoa walks on Exposition Boulevard in Los Angeles, thinking about a photo she saw of Yankees slugger Aaron Judge taking batting practice in uniform: “Like, what’s up with that?” …an intimidation tactic? If that’s it, I had to laugh… I feel good tonight. You know we’re going to strike first, strike hard, set the tone. It’s going to be a good match, but these guys really don’t seem intimidating.

Hey, real quick. A little more history on these two, before the first pitch: Durante grew up in a family of Yankees fans, in a house with a dedicated “Yankee Room” that was filled with memories. “I remember,” he told me earlier in the week, “how happy I was throughout the 90s, when they were winning these championships (three out of four between 1996 and 2000)… so just the fact that they win makes me happy, makes me feel like a kid again He’ll be at game 4; I didn’t hesitate to spend $1,000 on a ticket.

Ochoa grew up a Dodgers fan… in San Diego. She can thank her parents, lifelong Dodgers fans, for that. They also inherited their fandom, particularly on his mother’s side, as Anasazi’s grandfather Roberto, a Mexican immigrant, was taken to Fernandomania in the early 1980s.

“The impact of Fernando Valenzuela is a big part of my identity as a Dodgers fan,” she said of the Dodgers’ excellent pitchers, who died last week. “Even though I wasn’t there when he played, as a Mexican-American Dodgers fan, that story gets passed down.”

Leading her to Friday.

All afternoon in New York, Durante receives text messages, like this one, from a cousin: “Happy World Series day. Let’s (bleep) Yankees! »

Meanwhile, in California, Ochoa shares, “I know I said I wasn’t a superstitious person, but I just thought something: One thing I won’t do is I won’t play ‘I love LA’ by Randy Newman. I’ll only do it in my car after we win…it’s only for our wins.

Not a superstitious person — no, not at all — Ochoa said she did, however, feel somewhat responsible for the Dodgers’ loss in Game 2 of the National League Championship Series: “My fiance Eric (a Dodgers fan Padres) had a Brooklyn Jackie Robinson jersey. , because as a black man, he felt it was important to honor the player who broke the color barrier. He always justified that he represented Brooklyn, not LA. When the Dodgers won the NLDS (against the Padres), he gave it to me, he didn’t want anything blue in his closet anymore… I wore it for the first time (unwashed) in game 2 against the Put on. We were blown away and I couldn’t help but wonder if this was a bad move from a disgruntled SD fan.

7:40 p.m. Friday, New York

“Thirty minutes left and then it’s game time, baby!” said Durante from a bustling Staten Island bar. I imagine him rubbing his palms together. “I’m starting to get excited, really excited.”

4:41 p.m. Friday, California

Ochoa is about to watch the first game on his phone in the Chula Vista high school football press box, next to his father, Alejandro, because he is the Spartans’ public address announcer. Oddly enough, life doesn’t stop during the World Series. The Lakers and Trojans games also took place Friday, as did those at Chula Vista, whose school colors, Ochoa pointed out, “are also blue and white.”

At 8:43 p.m. his time, Durante texted: “MURDER THE REFEREE.”

Three minutes later, he texted again: “Let this be a joke, I don’t want to be arrested for conspiracy to murder after this article is published.” But seriously, these inconsistent referees are horrible and ruin the game.

Then, at 9:47 p.m., he sent a three-second voice memo: “STAAANNNTINN!!! »

Giancarlo Stanton, a Product Sherman Oaks Notre Damejust hit a 412-foot two-run home run to give the Yankees a 2-1 lead. Durante also texts: “I changed where I was standing after Los Angeles scored their first point. Then HR for Stanton. I don’t move.

“The story of the whole season,” says a sullen Ochoa in a message at 7:36 p.m. in California, where the Dodgers are still trailing entering the eighth. “The runners are on base and we can’t bring them home. But I still believe in it. It’s not over until it’s over.

You know what happens next.

8:39 p.m., California

“Oh my God, Mirjam!” A fucking grand slam! Freddie Freeman! Oh my God!” Ochoa cries, screams, cries – defeated afterwards Freeman’s grand slam in the 10th inning gave the Dodgers a 6-3 victory.

“…oh my God, oh my God, oh my God, oh my God! It’s true, it’s true, it’s true!

SATURDAY, THU 2

I’m not losing Durante, although I would have understood if I had. I didn’t hear from him after Freeman’s heartbreaking heroics until 9:27 the next morning in New York: “What a nightmare. Worst case scenario… I went to bed furious. I woke up furious. You want to punch something (but smart enough to realize how stupid that would be).

“I feel VERY pessimistic about the rest of the series. We have to win tonight. »

At 10:23, he adds succinctly: “I am dead inside. »

I wonder, for the millionth time: Why are we doing this to ourselves?

Ochoa sent a message at 8:06 a.m., as soon as he woke up: “I still can’t believe this happened… I was shaking. »

I say to myself: Ah, that’s why.

Durante gets up from the mat. He has a coffee and takes a long walk. He calls his father to commiserate, then goes to play volleyball to “get some sun and work out my frustrations” and otherwise “distract myself from my overwhelming fear and use all my inner strength for optimism and hope” .

Before the game starts, he lets me know, “Last night’s t-shirt didn’t work, so tonight we’re going in with another Yankees t-shirt, another watch, different shoes and a hopeful attitude.”

Ochoa spends her day doing homework and spending time with her fiancé, Eric Fleming, before grabbing a surf and turf burrito at a place near her parents’ house before the game starts, a little after 5 p.m. “Keeping it West Coast,” she texts about half an hour before the first pitch. “NYC has bodegas, SoCal has taco shops!” »

Dodgers put up four runs in first three innings, build what it feels like, with Dodgers starting pitcher Yoshinobu Yamamoto takes careas a comfortable 4-1 lead.

Durante: “It’s like someone plunged a knife into my heart.”

During the fifth round, Ochoa said, “If you can’t hear it in my voice, I’m just in a state of happiness. It’s pretty fun being a Dodgers fan right now.

The game got closer when the Yankees scored once and loaded the bases in the ninth. But the Dodgers are going “aaaaa and twisting the knife,” Durante writes from The Commissioner, the popular Brooklyn bar where he watched Game 2.

“You know what?” Ochoa said afterwards the 4-2 victory. “It’s exciting, but it’s quiet. We’re ready, I think we’re definitely ready for New York. We were ready for New York.

His reaction is muted, however, because the Dodgers superstar Shohei Ohtani’s left shoulder injured sliding to second in the eighth inning: “All I can think of is thoughts of healing for Ohtani and that’s it.”

The highs and lows, lows and highs of sports fandom. Proving and disproving Einstein’s theory, as if he invented it for Dodgers and Yankees fans: for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. A winner and a loser.

To those who are not indoctrinated, it may seem silly, what we allow sports to do to us. But what is sport for? For for us, it’s magic.

Durante’s best explanation: “It’s an animal and primal reaction, completely visceral and borderline uncontrollable. This is a situation that is completely out of my control and yet the emotions I feel contrast with that.

“I really think it’s out of love,” he added. “I love this team.”

Ochoa wrote: “I watch baseball because of my family roots. The Dodgers are the team that brings us together, amidst our busy schedules and life journeys.

“Baseball gives me hope, brings me joy and reminds me to never give up,” she added. “Despite the countless heartaches of recent years, the last words broadcast by the late, great Vin Scully still resonated in my mind: ‘But, you know what, there will be a new day and, eventually, a new year, and when “Coming winter gives way to spring, ooh, rest assured, once again, it will be time for Dodgers baseball.”

Originally published: October 27, 2024 at 12:56 p.m.