The Subway Series


		Is everything doubled up in New York, New York?

By Bernie Lincicome
Scripps Howard News Service

NEW YORK, NEW YORK -- I just want to get the rules straight. Do I have to write everything twice, such as Yanks win! Yanks win!, which they will in five, by the way, if anyone beyond two of the several boroughs gives a hoot, gives a hoot? We out-of-towners are not familiar with the regulations of the Subway, Subway Series, assuming trains run in two directions, though not directly between the Bronx and the Queens. I have tried to make that trip, and let me tell you it can't be done without asking for help, which, in New York, New York, is like asking for a clean place to step.

"Excuse me, sir, is this Grand Central Station?"

"Fuhgedaboudit."

They really do talk like that here and invariably punctuate such pleasantries with hand gestures, using an economy of fingers.

		I warned that this could happen, if you recall, and I clearly blame the St. Louis Cardinals and Seattle Mariners for letting the side down, the side being the mountains and the prairies and the ocean white with foam, the America of song and sunsets.

Not that that local memories stretch back 44 years without visual aids. Almost anyone who was around to see the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1956 now lives in Boca Raton, Fla.

This is really as strange to New York, New York, as it is to the rest of us, which does not prevent the smug assumption that, as the Mets used to declare, this is baseball as it oughta be.

Someone tells me that at least it is not a Series between the Braves and the Indians, teams that give offense to Native Americans. And I say, this Series gives offense to all other Americans.

I warned that this could happen, if you recall, and I clearly blame the St. Louis Cardinals and Seattle Mariners for letting the side down, the side being the mountains and the prairies and the ocean white with foam, the America of song and sunsets.

It is their fault the world in the World Series has been reduced to an underground ditch, and proud to be there with T-shirts and ball caps and banners proclaiming the special conceit impossible for anyplace else, save Chicago.

Other than the obvious alliteration, I wonder how the subway was chosen as the link between the teams when the most obvious connection would be The Dented Yellow Taxi Series, unless you actually need a yellow taxi. For anyone who will be able to afford tickets, the Stretch Limo Series would be more to the point, including the ballplayers.

But subway it is, a place of suspicion and fear and special aromas. All that matters to New York, New York, is that it gets to play itself, the only worthy opponent. It can already plan its victory parade.

"The usual place," said Mayor Rudy Giuliani, "the Canyon of Heroes."

That's just the sort of arrogance that browns off the rest of us. One thing the Subway Series has done is eliminate the natural search for Cinderella. She lives out there with a lawn and patio furniture, and no arguments in favor of the Mets, no matter how many slippers they try on.

"Their payroll is at least $30 million more than ours," assessed Mets third baseman Robin Ventura. Talk about the rich calling the prosperous flush. Either one of these teams (the Yankees $110 million, the Mets $80 million) could pay for all of the teams in Canada, as well as Minnesota, practically the same place.

All the usual measurements do not apply when considering which team will win a Subway Series. Better pitching. Timely hitting. More astute managing. Who can know? The place to get the answer is, it occurs to me, the subway itself.

I venture down into Grand Central Station, the only intersection of the two lines that go to the stadiums. I choose the No. 7, made famous by John Rocker as a train of misfits and unemployables, as opposed to the No. 4 to Yankee Stadium, frequented by lawyers and stockbrokers, an even more scary lot.

The No. 7 bolts out of the darkness under the East River into the fresh sunlight of the residential brick pile that is Queens, still nine stops from Shea Stadium, when a scrawny, edgy, young man kneels in front of me, eyes phlegmy, hands folded in prayer.

"Stake me to a meal," he pleads. "I'm 24 years old, I'm sick and I need some food. Even a dying man deserves to eat once a day, doesn't he?" Passengers used to this sort of thing edge away, pull their newspapers closer to their faces, check their watches. I give him a $5 bill.

He tucks the money inside a zippered pocket of his ratty jacket and before proceeding down the car on his knees, looks back at me, winks and says, "Yankees in five."

I've made an investment, you see, you see.

Bernie Lincicome writes for the Denver Rocky Mountain News.