For a visitor from Chicago, New York’s private we-are-the-world party was no place to be.
Times Square on Friday night was nearly New Year’s Eve nuts. Taking the D train to Saturday’s Game 1 of the Subway Series at Yankee Stadium was a Rocker-like ride to Chicago hell. Mets fans taunted Yankees fans, who chanted at Mets fans, who …
Start spreadin’ the fertilizer. All this taunting and chanting begins to sound a lot more like gloating. Mets and Yankees fans don’t seem to hate each other nearly as much as they love New York. White Sox and Cubs fans are much closer to Hatfield-McCoy, sharing a genuine dislike of each other’s ballparks, neighborhoods and images.
But this all-Apple Series seems to have united this city more than split it. It feels like all of New York is extending a Statue of Liberty-sized middle finger at the rest of the country while saying, “The World Series is back in the city that invented it, where it belongs.”
So you in Chicago are excused if you feel like Flushing this Series–Flushing being the neighborhood where the Mets’ Shea Stadium teeters like a tenement that should be condemned.
But in all objectivity I ask Sox and Cubs fans to take a deep breath and ask themselves why this unthinkable World Series has come to pass. It is ironic that the man most responsible for it is actually the only detestable member of a generally classy Yankees franchise.
The man New York can thank for this night–Billy Joel singing the national anthem, Don Larsen throwing out the first ball to perfect-game batterymate Yogi Berra, Yankees 4, Mets 3 in 12 “only in New York” innings–is George Steinbrenner. Yes, the Boss is the best thing Yankees and Mets fans have going for them.
Are you sitting down, Chicago? The one thing you should envy about the New York sports scene is the man who owns the Yankees. The Steinbrenner qualities many detest–the puffed-up yachtsman’s ego, the obsession with the spotlight, the knee-jerk firing and hiring–drive him to be the best owner in sports.
Oh, do I wish Chicago had a Steinbrenner. Not this Steinbrenner. But one owner who lives by the motto “Losing is not an option.” Or “Money is no object.”
Yankee Dwight Gooden, who also pitched for the Mets, was asked the key difference in the franchises.
“This Boss pushes you harder than theirs did when I was there,” he said.
Yet Steinbrenner also was pushing the Mets’ brass, who finally grew tired of seeing Steinbrenner blowing hard on the back pages of the tabloids. Yes, the Boss’ Yankees had a long dry spell through the ’80s and early ’90s after he decided he was qualified to be his own general manager. After losing to the Dodgers in the 1981 Series, the Yankees went 15 years before returning to baseball’s biggest stage.
But at some point six or eight years ago, Steinbrenner was smart enough to let smart baseball people–Brian Cashman, Mark Newman, Gene Michael–start running his operation. Steinbrenner has long employed some of baseball’s keenest drafting eyes, which have provided his current nucleus (Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada) and enough trade bait to impulse buy whatever David Justice or Denny Neagle the Yankees need.
So with the Bronx Bombers boasting Clemens, Cone and “El Duque,” the Mets finally grew serious and began acquiring stars whose teams couldn’t afford to pay them. Mike Piazza, Al Leiter, Mike Hampton, Armando Benitez and, yes, Robin Ventura muscled their way onto the back pages. No way ex-Sox Ventura’s stats merited $8 million a year for four years. But his intangibles did.
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A recent New York Times survey had the Yankees’ payroll No. 1 in baseball at $114 million. Surprise: The Mets are third (behind the Dodgers) at $99.5 million. Money (and brains) can buy October happiness.
Steinbrenner raised New York’s sports bar to Broadway heights. Imagine what he would do if he owned the Cubs. Or Sox. Or Bulls. Or Bears. Or Blackhawks. Heads (and good times) would roll. I’d be writing (and you’d be talking) about George, George, George. Other Chicago owners would quietly cuss his outrageous spending . . . and feel pressure to keep up or sell. No more getting away with, “Oh, well, we’ll get ’em next year.”
The quickest way for Chicago to experience what New York did Saturday night would be for a shrewd, rich egomaniac to wind up in charge on the North or South Side.