In watching ESPN’s new documentary “Yankees-Dodgers: An Uncivil War”, the main takeaway is that the storied rivalry just isn’t the same anymore.
Directed by documentary veteran Fritz Weaver, the old Brooklyn-New York blood feud wasn’t just regional. The Dodgers lived in Brooklyn and were part of the borough’s blue-collar neighborhood culture. The Yankees, meanwhile, were the “upper class” who lived uptown and out of the city.
My, how things have changed. Through the lens of the self-indulgent 1970s, we learn how the Yankees’ bad-boy image matched the tumult in the Bronx at the time. On the West Coast, the Dodgers’ All-American/Hollywood image, led by Steve Garvey, wasn’t all it seemed, either.