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On board for a Subway Series
Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum touches on a Hot Button issue each Monday on CNNSI.com. After you read Jack's take, give us yours. There's something seriously wrong with this major league postseason: It's difficult to hate either of the New Yorks, the Yankees or the Mets. Not impossible, I suppose, but difficult. In fact, I'm rooting for a Subway Series, the phrase you are no doubt sick of hearing already. Understand, I'm not one of those obnoxious New Yorkers who thinks that the world begins at the East River and ends at the Lincoln Tunnel. Yes, the Sports Illustrated home office is located smack in the heart of Gotham, but I'm New Jersey by birth, Pennsylvania by address, and anti-Yankee-and-Met by inclination. But not this year. I want to see the New Yorks go at each other, and I'm not even sure I have a favorite between them.
That's reason enough to like them. Apparently, television's idea of cachet is Mark McGwire fondling a bat in the dugout. How many of those shots do we need? You telling me Benny Agbayani doesn't have cachet? Here he is: a thick, round-faced fellow who looks as if he should be playing Jack Lord's sidekick on a Hawaii Five-O episode, collecting big hits and smiling as if he's glad to be anywhere near a baseball park. Mike Piazza? He's only the best-hitting catcher ever, a good guy and the best player the Mets have had since Tom Seaver, Strawberry and Keith Hernandez included. Robin Ventura? Playing hurt and struggling at the plate, but I'd still like to see him up there in a clutch situation. Reliever Turk Wendell? Charges into the game, throws down the resin bag and basically works himself into a Rocker-like lather without Rocker-like obnoxiousness. I don't even dislike Bobby Valentine, the Mets' admittedly arrogant manager. He works the us-against-the-world mentality to perfection and seems to be exactly what his team needs. Furthermore, he knows as much baseball as his St. Louis counterpart, Tony La Russa, a man George Will and some of the other baseball nerds want to present for canonization. The Yankees, meanwhile, also have a roster full of good guys. Does anyone have more reason to be smug and obnoxious than the handsome, talented, model-dating Derek Jeter? Yet he never comes across as anything less than a team player who goes hard every night. Paul O'Neill? Worry on his face, heart on his sleeve, O'Neill Agonistes stages a one-man drama every night, so raw are his emotions. Bernie Williams? Here's a cleanup hitter who has the swing and setup routine of a banjo hitter and, speaking of instruments, a man who keeps a guitar in his locker and calms himself down by doing some mellow strumming. And when the camera pans to the bench, there are Joe Torre and Don Zimmer sitting there like Wilford Brimley and Richard Farnsworth in The Natural, two lifers just taking it all in and letting their guys play the grand old game. Sure, it's easy to work up a solid antipathy for Roger Clemens, a headhunter who has gagged from time to time in the postseason. But just when Clemens seemed ripe for a hard fall, he went out and pitched a hard-boiled one-hitter in Game 4 of the ALCS, reducing Seattle's Alex Rodriguez to a frustrated cursing mess and Mariners manager Lou Piniella to a griping old grandmother. And how can you not like El Duque, who's building a postseason resume to rival Yankee immortals such as Whitey Ford? With an absurd $112 million payroll, the pinstripers might seem like the ultimate corporate entity, the best team money can buy, George Steinbrenner's golden gooses. Except they aren't. Like the Mets, they're a damn good team with damn good people, and I've got tokens clinking in my pocket. Sports Illustrated senior writer Jack McCallum writes about a Hot Button issue every Monday on CNNSI.com. The opinions expressed here are solely those of the writer.
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