The Yankees and Dodgers will play a three-game series against each other this weekend, even though it’s not the World Series. Maybe that can happen later this season. If it does, it would be the 12th time they face each other in the Fall Classic, dating all the way back to 1941, when the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in five games.

This is a rivalry -- as infrequently as it has happened over the years -- that is as deep and important as any there is in baseball. And one as filled with romance, even though there is a country between them now, instead of just a city.

• Yankees at Dodgers, Fri. at 10:10 ET

And the very best news of all, because of the new schedule? Now they’re going to play each other every year.

It will be the Yankees vs. the Dodgers again this weekend -- New York against Los Angeles, not the Bronx against Brooklyn. The game they will play on Friday night at Dodger Stadium will open the 17th regular-season series they have played. The Yankees have won eight, and the Dodgers have won eight. In the 11 World Series they have played, there is more distance between them, with the Yankees having won eight and the Dodgers these three:

1. There was the magical Brooklyn October of 1955, the World Series that ended with Johnny Podres getting the win in Game 7, and a team from Ebbets Field nicknamed the Bums inspiring the famous cartoon on the front page of the New York Daily News, whose headline was this: “Who’s a Bum?”

2. Then came the sweep of 1963, the one that saw the great Sandy Koufax strike out 15 Bronx Bombers in a complete game at Yankee Stadium. The last punchout came against a journeyman named Harry Bright. After the game, Bright said that he had dreamt his whole life of batting in the World Series, and when he finally did, as a Yankee, the New York crowd was cheering for Koufax to strike him out.

3. Then came 1981, when the Dodgers got the Yankees again, after the Bronx Bombers had gotten them twice in ‘77 and ‘78 -- that ’77 World Series ending with Reggie Jackson’s three home runs in Game 6.

There is more October history between these two teams because of the World Series than there is between any other two teams you care to mention.

Think about something: The Yankees and Dodgers, whether the Dodgers were playing in Brooklyn or downtown L.A., played World Series against each other in five straight decades. Now the Yankees are trying to make it back to the Fall Classic for the first time since 2009. The Dodgers, who have had the best record in baseball for years and years -- and have all those first-place finishes in the National League West -- are trying not to leave this particular era with just one World Series win (in the COVID-shortened season of 2020) to show for all the immense regular-season winning they’ve done.

So now the whole thing is rejoined again this weekend in Los Angeles, with Aaron Judge and Mookie Betts this time; with the Yankees chasing the Rays, and the Dodgers once again being chased by everybody in their division.

Clayton Kershaw is set to start the opener with Gerrit Cole tabbed for the middle game. Giancarlo Stanton and Josh Donaldson have been activated from the injured list and will rejoin the Yankees just in time. It will be a former October (of 2004) Red Sox hero named Dave Roberts managing the Dodgers. It will be Aaron Boone, who broke the Red Sox’s hearts with his pennant-winning home run against them in ‘03, managing the Yankees.

The Dodgers make the playoffs seemingly every year. So do the Yankees. Until the schedule changed, they didn’t play each other nearly often enough. It still feels like a very big deal when they do. The Yankees will show up in L.A. with a 34-24 record. The Dodgers are 34-23. There it is. Right now, after all these years, there is just one game in the loss column that separates them.

There was the feeling that the Dodgers might make a run at Aaron Judge last fall after he became a free agent. They did not. It was the Giants who made the big run at the big man. He decided to stay with the Yankees for a whole lot of money. Now he has picked right up with home runs the way he ended last season -- 18 home runs in his first 47 games.

Judge brings that sort of home run swagger with him to Dodger Stadium. But both of these teams bring baseball glamour, history, long-term success and high expectations, every single year. Both teams started slowly this season. It wasn’t so long ago that the Yankees were 15-15. They have gone 19-9 since. The Dodgers were 13-13 and have gone 21-10 since.

The Dodgers will throw their ace, Kershaw, at the Yankees on Friday night. The Yankees will throw their ace, Cole, at the Dodgers on Saturday night. A series the first weekend in June that feels like a lot more than that. We get the Yankees vs. the Dodgers back this weekend. Who knows when they might do this again in October? For now, these next three games will do.