What it was like
You can hear it in the parking structure before you reach the gate — the ratio of blue to brown, and the way both sides are already talking to each other.
The right-field line fills with Dodger blue no matter what day of the week it is. That is not a failure of the home crowd; it is a measurement of how much of Los Angeles ended up living down here. And the home crowd answers. Petco during a Dodgers series is the loudest it gets all regular season, because everyone in it has a personal stake in a building where half the people they know are on the wrong side.
By the last week of June the division has taken shape, which is what makes the second meeting heavier than the first — everything that happened in May is sitting in the stands with you. A Friday night in the Gaslamp, a game or two separating them, everything still to play for.
Text your cousin who wears the wrong hat. He already knows why.