DODGERS, PADRES RENEW RIVALRY

National League West, champions of the division 11 times in the last 12 years. The Padres, on the other hand, are the rebels who won't surrender, the barbarians at the door trying to steal their crown.

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“T just think that it starts with them wanting to overtake us,” manager Dave Roberts said this week, ahead of the Padres’ latest visit to Dodger Stadium on Friday. “I think that we've clearly dominated the division in the last decade. ... But I think that they’re trying to overtake us. I think that with that, that certainly brings out emotion.”

While the Dodgers have quelled similar challenges during their decadelong reign in the division, the Padres have proved to be a different kind of foil — coupling a contrast in style and culture with enough staying power to fuel increasingly contentious bouts.

“It’s just two contrasting styles,” Dodgers third baseman Max Muncy said, “that have just grown into this beast.”

There was the Dodgers’ sweep of the Padres in the 2020 NL Division Series, then the Padres’ payback in a postseason upset two years later, Last fall, a tight division race came down to the last week of the season. When their paths again crossed in October, yet another NLDS went all the way to a decisive fifth game.

This year, more tinder has been added to the fire, thanks to a flurry of hit batters and a benches-clearing melee during a series at Dodger Stadium in June.

And this week, ahead of a 10-day stretch in which the clubs will play their final two regular-season series, the Padres provided another plot twist, erasing what once felt like an insurmountable nine-game deficit in the standings to arrive in Los Angeles with a stunning NL West lead.

The dragon, of course, hasn’t been slayed yet. The Dodgers are still the defending World Series champions, even if their recent middling form has complicated their title defense.

Still, the conquest that Seidler — who died after the 2023 season at age 63 — long envisioned has never seemed so attainable.

The threat posed by the Padres has never felt so real.