The schedule

Saturday, Oct. 19

San Francisco (Schmidt 13-8) at Anaheim (Washburn 18-6), 7:04 p.m.

Sunday, Oct. 20

San Francisco (Ru.Ortiz 14-10) at Anaheim, 7:04 p.m.

Tuesday, Oct. 22

Anaheim at San Francisco (Hernandez 12-16), 7:27 p.m.

Wednesday, Oct. 23

Anaheim at San Francisco (Rueter 14-8), 7:35 p.m.

Thursday, Oct. 24

Anaheim at San Francisco, 7:22 p.m., if necessary

Saturday, Oct. 26

San Francisco at Anaheim, 6:58 p.m., if necessary

Sunday, Oct. 27

San Francisco at Anaheim, 7:02 p.m., if necessary

The umpires

Jerry Crawford will umpire in the World Series for the second time in three seasons and will be the crew chief for the games between the Anaheim Angels and San Francisco Giants.

Crawford, a 26-year veteran who is president of the former umpires' union, also worked the Series in 1988, 1992 and 1998. He will be behind the plate for the opener Saturday night, joined by Angel Hernandez at first, Tim Tschida at second, Mike Winters at third, Mike Reilly in left and Tim McClelland in right.

Hernandez and Winters will be umpiring in the World Series for the first time. Reilly worked the Series in 1984 and 1992, and McClelland worked it in 1993 and 2000. Tschida's only previous Series was in 1998.

Angels, Giants series spotlights California's old civil war

To outsiders, the World Series is a California contest between Anaheim and San Francisco. To Californians, it's a north-south grudge match, a showdown between darkness and light.

At least that's the way Northern Californians see it. Their simmering, century-old disdain for the south boils up at times like this, when they can revel in the belief they inhabit their own superior state.

If a one-way rivalry can exist, this is it. Southern Californians tend to be blissfully unaware -- or unconcerned -- that their neighbors think they are self-absorbed, smog-addled, cultureless water-hoggers who are less real than reality television.

"I'm a little hurt. They don't even know me," said Marleen Madge, who works in Orange County, Anaheim Angels territory.

Don't want to, say the hostile northerners.

"I'm waiting for the earthquake down there that will split north and south perfectly," said a gleeful Jerry Klein, a New York native who moved to San Rafael in 1968.

"We look down our nose at Southern California mostly because it's all style and no substance," said Carmel's Larry Gerbrandt, a lifelong Northern Californian. "It's all about how thin you are, how famous you are or how many famous people you know."

Even the grand tradition of newspaper columnists dueling over their hometown baseball teams becomes unbalanced here.

The San Francisco Examiner's John Crowley dissed Orange County as "a place more homogenized than a glass of milk" when compared to "cosmopolitan San Francisco."