Giants, A’s have proud rivalry, so can it move into October?

As baseball fans from the North Bay, South Bay, East Bay and Peninsula descend on the Oakland Coliseum for the second series this season between the Giants and A’s this season, I’m wondering: Could there be a third?

After all, the A’s are in the mix for a playoff spot in a highly competitive American League, and the Giants have the best record in baseball. Surely these two teams could play a few more games in October in a Bay Bridge World Series.

According to FanDuel Sportbook, the odds are 47-to-1 that such a series happens. Those are pretty long odds.

But if you’ve watched these teams lately, the possibility of their getting together with it all on the line feels downright plausible. Perhaps a trip to Vegas is in order. And, no, not the kind the A’s brass has been taking as

of late.

The A’s, despite a recent skid, have been one of baseball’s best teams since the July 30 trade deadline. That’s when they added center fielder Starling Marte, who has been marvelous in green and gold.

Meanwhile, the Giants simply can’t stop winning. They’re a juggernaut squad of no-names.

Talk about improbable. Who saw this season from the orange and black coming?

Forget the sportsbooks and analytics. Something special is happening on both sides of the Bay this season. Like an old-school baseball guy, I feel it in my gut.

Why not the Giants and the A’s at the end of the season?

After all, this region deserves it. We have some unfinished fun from 32 years ago.

The Bay’s two teams met in the 1989 World Series. The A’s swept the series, but that’s not what people remember. They recall the Loma Prieta earthquake striking minutes before the first pitch of Game 3 at Candlestick Park.

Up to that point … let Giants broadcaster Mike Krukow tell it. And bear in mind he was on the losing team. He was a pitcher for the Giants, and they had lost the first two games of the series. And still …

“It was euphoria. It was so much fun,” Krukow said of the environment around the Bay Area before the disaster. “Obviously we wanted to win desperately … (But) the crowds were having fun with it and, you know, what was so cool about it was, there just was no animosity with the fans. There was just such a cool vibe about it.”

“I mean, who’s got more entertaining fans than Northern California? That real hip weirdness that our crowds had, that absolutely was so, so much fun.”

Krukow’s broadcast partner, Baseball Hall of Famer Jon Miller, remembers the half-and-half hats — A’s logo and colors on one side, Giants’ logo and colors on the other. Those hats don’t exist, let alone get worn, in two-team markets such as New York and Chicago, or even Los Angeles.

“Those were big sellers,” Miller said.

But the real world intervened. The 6.9-magnitude earthquake delayed the series for 10 days — there were bigger issues at hand.

“(And) when we came back, that was definitely toned down,” Krukow said. “The reality of the tragedy was, 63 people that were killed, the Marina was torched, the Nimitz was down, The bridge was — you know. The whole thing was just awful,” Krukow said.

I think the tragedy also instilled a permanent perspective in A’s and Giants fans.

Ball games are taken seriously around these parts, but only to a point. That’s just the Bay Area attitude for you. It’s always been that way, but the earthquake cemented it, at least in baseball: Bay first, team second.

Since the introduction of interleague play in 1997, the Giants and the A’s have played six times every season. Even last season, which was truncated to 60 games because of the pandemic, they still played six times.

I’ve lived all over the country and seen a game in almost every big-league ballpark. Let me tell you, there’s no rivalry in baseball quite like that between the Giants and A’s.

In those other twoteam markets, these special series are treated like life and death. Bay Area fans know better.

And while there are some diehards who act as if their fandom of the Giants or A’s is a viable replacement for a personality, the Battle of the Bay is generally a pleasant affair. Fans live in harmony together.

Who cares whom you root for? Wear that hat with both teams on it. You can still find them online. (Sticker shock! They go for as much as $199.)

This is baseball, it’s supposed to be fun.

And it’s good baseball, too.

“I think about the Giants and A’s, and the first thing that comes to mind is they’re two very talented teams with players that the fans can identify, with styles of play that are just fun to watch,” said Giants general manager Scott Harris, a Redwood City native. “It’s great for the Bay Area and great for our sport. … I’m looking forward to the weekend.”