Baseball: New York City will be split right down middle

It has been 44 years since the Mets played the Yankees in the World Series. Rupert Cornwell reports.

NEW YORK - The last time it happened, the Red Army was rolling into Hungary, the Dodgers were still in Brooklyn and Don Larsen pitched the only perfect game ever seen in World Series baseball.

Now, 44 years on, the Big Apple is savouring the prospect of another Subway Series, and the rest of the United States is bracing itself for an orgy of New York triumphalism.

On Tuesday, the team from the borough of Queens did their bit as the Mets clinically completed the demolition of the St Louis Cardinals with a 7-0 victory that wrapped up the National League championship series 4-1.

The din in Shea Stadium was so loud it drowned out the jets overhead as they took off from La Guardia.

Twenty-four hours later, there was identical bedlam in the Bronx Zoo on 161st Street (otherwise known as Yankee Stadium), as the Yanks, amid quite palpitating drama, saw off the tenacious Seattle Mariners to set up the first all-New York contest for baseball's supreme crown since 1956.

The sixth game of the American League championship, a four-hour marathon, was the most pulsating contest yet of this post-season. Seattle took a 4-0 lead into the fourth, before the Yankees scored three of their own.

A five-run seventh seemed to clinch it for New York. But, even as Yankee fans unfurled giant "Subway 2000" banners, the Mariners came back with three runs in their half of the eighth against Mariano Rivera, owner of the best post-season record among active closing pitchers.

But in the end Rivera prevailed. After conceding a soft single to Alex Rodriguez, he forced Edgar Martinez, representing the tying run, to ground out weakly to short-stop to secure the third out and send the city of New York into a fortnight of guaranteed delirium.

"The team's spirit is great. We have great heart, and now it's the biggest one of all for us, the Subway Series," Rivera said.

The match-up has been dubbed the Subway Series because spectators can ride the subway between the two stadiums.

"I hope that people behave themselves, because it's going to split a few families up, I think," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "I have a feeling the city is not going to be the same for 10 days - and maybe for some time after that."

Even the New York Times, normally reserved, is giddy. For the first time in memory, the newspaper ran a banner over its masthead in red ink.

"It's a Subway Series. Yankees join Mets," the paper proclaimed.

Forgive fans in other parts of the country for being less enthusiastic.

"It's a horror, that's what it is," said Chris Gerstell, who works at Boston Beer Works, next to Fenway Park. His Red Sox, haunted by the Yankees for most of the 20th century, lost the 1986 World Series to the Mets.

In Des Moines, Iowa, 31-year-old Eric Ludwig did not want to be a part of "New York, New York."

"They've already got a pretty big ego because they're a big city," he said. "But there's just not that much interest in the series here and, I would say, in the rest of the country."

No matter. New Yorkers will be able to supply all the juice necessary for this match-up. It will be the 14th Subway Series overall.

"There were only three channels in 1956," recalled comedian Billy Crystal, celebrating in the clubhouse after the Yankees won. "Now, the whole world will be watching."

The saga starts on Monday in Yankee Stadium, and no rational individual would venture a dollar on the outcome.

The Mets staged a typical September swoon before clinching the NL wildcard berth. Then, playing tight, focused baseball behind some lethal pitching, they routed first the fancied San Francisco Giants and then the Cardinals in the playoffs.

The Yankees have been even more erratic. They were pre-season favourites, but staggered across the regular season finish-line with seven straight losses, the worst run ever by a division-winning team.

In the post-season they just got past the Oakland Athletics, before the six-game struggle with Seattle.

"Sometimes the hardest thing is to win when everyone expects you to," said Paul O'Neill, the Yankee outfielder who broke out of a deep slump on Wednesday by collecting two hits and three runs batted in.

"The World Series should be fantastic - two great teams with great pitching."

If the Yankees can go all the way, they will not only collect their fourth world title in five years, but become the first club to win three straight since the unstoppable Oakland of 1974-1976. First, though, there is the little matter of the Mets.

The distance between Yankee Stadium and Shea Stadium is 12km as the crow flies, or a 40-minute subway ride (lines 4 and 7, change at Grand Central station).

But the rivalry will divide neighbourhoods.

Above all, it will rekindle memories of the game's supposed golden age in the immediate post-war era, when the "World," as in World Series, effectively denoted the five boroughs of New York.

The teams met six times in inter-league play this year, with the Yankees winning four times.

The rivalry - already tense from the days when the Yankees' owner, George Steinbrenner would put extra emphasis on beating the Mets in spring-training games - was heightened after Yankees' pitcher Roger Clemens beaned Mets' catcher Mike Piazza in July.

- INDEPENDENT