It's Yankees vs. Dodgers, so maybe you can sip a Nedick's before the game and eat lunch at the vending machine while you flip through your Daily Mirror and Herald-Trib. Maybe afterward you can catch a show at the Paramount at 1501 Broadway or a late dinner at Copa (after a few trips to Toots Shor's, of course), and on the subway ride you can read Jimmy Cannon telling you all about the afternoon Spiel tells The Post.

It's Yankees vs. Dodgers. When the game's over, maybe you can try to get on the good side of the velvet rope in front of Studio 54 (after putting the world to bed over a few beers at Runyan's, of course). Maybe on your day off you can watch Nell Carter do her thing in “Ain't Misbehavin'” at the Longacre, and then maybe catch a late gig by the Talking Heads or Elvis Costello downtown, at CBGB or from Blondie or other Patti Smith at Max's Kansas City.

It's Yankees vs. Dodges, and so the baseball world will take center stage, as it regularly did in the '40s and '50s and regularly did in the '70s. The flyover cities may be rolling their eyes at all this, and they have a right to be. Maybe it was too much when the Yankees and Dodgers seemed to make their reservations every October before they ever left spring training.

Somehow, however, it has been 43 years since the last one.

When Jack Flaherty throws the first pitch of the 120th World Series to Gleyber Torres on Friday night, we'll return to a familiar place. The Yankees and the Dodgers, the Dodgers and the Yankees: Close your eyes and half the Hall of Fame flies by with many others who surely played at that level when these teams came together:

Mickey and Duke… Whitey and Newk… Pee Wee and Scooter… Reggie and Dusty… Dixie and DiMaggio… Yogi and Campy… Jackie and Billy… Thurman and Fernando… Leo the Lip and Ol' Case…

“It was exciting to take part in these games,” said Carl Erskine, one of the last Boys of Summer, a few years ago. “It was a privilege. What games. Which players? What friends. What rivals.”

Erskine died in April at 97, but he would certainly have been pleased by the revival of this age-old baseball feud. Everyone would do it. The Yankees-Dodgers used to grace October when they belonged to all of us, when Brooklyn faced off against the Bronx almost every year, and so many of the old feelings returned in 1963 and 1977, 1978 and 1981, when an entire country separated them now instead a few subway lines.

And here it is again, and it seems right that when they meet this time, they're going at each other as the undisputed best teams in baseball: The Dodgers are the National League's top team with 105 wins so far this season; the Yankees with 101 wins, the gold standard in the American League. They are 1A and 1B and ready to fight unchallenged for first place.

These series have always been dominated by the stars and attracted by the stars, and so will this one: Aaron Judge and his near-unanimous MVP numbers (.322, 58 home runs, 144). RBI) shares the top spot along with Shohei Ohtani and his near-consensus guaranteed .310/54/130 mark with 59 steals thrown into the mix.

Follow the Post's coverage of the Yankees in the postseason:

Both players played with Triple Crowns this year; Now they're fighting for the only crown that really matters and the right to hold long-awaited parades. It would be the first for the Yankees in 15 years; It was the Dodgers' first in 36, as the 2020 champions were never celebrated due to pandemic restrictions.

But there are also the wingmen: Juan Soto with the Yankees, Mookie Betts with the Dodgers. There are the two managers, both of whom overcame some disillusionment from their own fans to get here, and both of whom are forever linked to the Yankees' past: Aaron Boone as the man who ended Boston's curse in 2003 with an ALCS for another Dave Roberts was one of the co-conspirators who finally ended it, and his stolen base in Game 4 in 2004 was the play that lit the fuse for an epic Red Sox comeback.

All these nuggets, all these items, two teams that are a product of today. And yet, when Flaherty retires, he will wear the same outfit the Dodgers have always worn: blue cap, white uniform with blue lettering and a whimsical red number on the front. And Torres will wear the street grays that the Yankees reintroduced this year for the first time since 1973, which includes no white shadow around the blue “NEW YORK.”

It really could be 1941, 1949 or 1956. You could actually get on a trolley bus on Flatbush Avenue. You could actually be listening to Mel Allen or Vin Scully or Red Barber coming to you from the catbird seat. The Yankees-Dodgers are back. Yes. Let's get started.