In first-ever postseason series between Giants and Dodgers, who does Sacramento root for?

The National League pennant race between the San Francisco Giants and the Los Angeles Dodgers leaves Sacramento with a familiar question: for whom do we root?

This California cage match creates a typical Sacramento conundrum. We don’t have a major league team, so we have to choose again between two alternatives: San Francisco is right over there and all, and Los Angeles is 399 miles away and constantly plotting to get our water.

Sacramento does have its own sphere of influence: West Sacramento; parts of Davis, which thinks it’s in the Bay Area. But we are the 21st largest media market, and we only have a minor league team, so whaddaya gonna do?

A lot of folks around here are from San Francisco, and you see a lot of Giants love. Orange isn’t just a Halloween color around here in October.

There is also a sizable contingent of Los Angelenos here, who find themselves in Sacramento because they have a nice state job or they couldn’t stand sitting in traffic burning up their actuarial table.

So here we are again, again. S.F. vs. LA.

Sacramentans usually cite this lovely city’s proximity to Fun Things, like Lake Tahoe, Napa, the Sierra or “We’re Pretty Close to San Francisco” as a major selling point. You know you do it, I’ve heard you. Like, a million times.

I love Sacramento. It’s pleasant, low-key, polite and fairly easy to get around. But we just don’t have the major attractions that the second- and seventh-largest metro areas in the United States have.

Even the formerly beleaguered but now mighty Gov. Gavin Newsom once observed that he prefers San Francisco, famously saying of Sacramento, “I just, ugh, God.”

That’s not a great marketing slogan, although it might work with the right punctuation.

“Ugh. God. Sacramento!”

I can assure you that there are no conversations occurring in San Francisco or Los Angeles about the relative merits of Sacramento vs. Elk Grove, which a friend describes as the Second Largest City in Sacramento County.

I’m an Elk Grove fan, too. Why do I have to choose?

In short, Sacramento is either overly affiliating with some other place in California or playing defense with “Hey, the zoo is cute.”

As for the NLCS, as a Minnesota Twins fan, I don’t really care who wins. But I do have a solution for Sacramento’s baseball bipolarity: Let’s just give up and merge with San Francisco.

We practically have already. Ask the 40,000 people who commute back and forth from here to the Bay Area each day. Ask the people who now have $800,000 3/2s in Land Park because San Franciscans are coming in and redoing all those nasty little 1960s kitchens.

The upside for San Francisco? Congratulations! You’re now the capital of the Golden State, which you kinda already think you are anyway.

You guys can come in and rename all the elementary schools, paint the Tower Bridge more of an orange-rust color and have quick access to a wide range of tomatoes.

You can relieve Newsom of his “Ugh, God” attitude and make him a real Sactown guy. He’ll need a tattoo, of course — maybe “Ugh, God” tatted on his calf. Get him out of the blue suit and into Tommy Bahama.

For those of you who think this is crazy, here’s what’s crazy: You’re all rooting for two baseball teams from New York.

Fuhgeddabout it. Go, Twins.

Oh, and the Kings!