SECTION: Sports; Pg. 50

LENGTH: 548 words

HEADLINE: LOOK FOR ORANGE & BOO
MET FANS MUST BE OUT THERE


BYLINE: BY FILIP BONDY

BODY:


I CANNOT WAIT another day, another minute. I am itching for a fight, spoiling for an argument with relative or stranger, with friend or enemy, before I take my place in the bleachers tonight for Mets-Yanks, Game 1.

I need to speak with a Met fan. I need some target practice, need to sharpen my tongue. I need to vent. I go where I usually go when I need a good spat.

I go to Mrs. Creature.

"Are you rooting for the Mets or the Yankees?" I ask her. I am ready to pounce.

"The Yankees," she says.

I sense this is an arbitrary position. She doesn't care at all, or she would come with me to my second home, Section 39, at the Stadium. (I am talking here about the only real stadium in New York, the one without jets rattling the roof every 38 seconds.)

I press her.

"I always like the Yankees," she says, looking up from some book that is definitely not "The Baseball Encyclopedia."

"Why would I root for the Mets?"

I can't argue with that reasoning. Why would she root for the Mets? Why would anybody? The curlicue letters on the caps? The so-called ace, Bobby Jones, who doesn't have the nerve to pitch in the biggest series of our generation? The catcher, whose father was a Cub?

I try my son, Bleacher Creature Jr., desperate for some serious debate. If I say black, Creature Jr. can be counted on to say white. If I say, "Curfew is at 12," he says, "You mean noon tomorrow?"

He will pick the Mets, I figure, just because I am a bleacher creature.

"Are you rooting for the Mets or the Yankees?" I ask him.

"The Yankees," he says. "I always like the Yankees."

I don't even bother with my daughter, who thinks the Yankees already won the championship against the Confederacy in 1865. I cannot get a serious disagreement inside my own house.

I take a walk, talk to the neighbors. I try a few friends. They all like the Yankees. I ask the cashiers at the supermarket. They like the Yankees.

And then, finally, it dawns on me: There are no Met fans. They are a figment of the imagination, a legend like Bigfoot or the Loch Ness monster.

I am now afraid of some great anticlimax tonight in the bleachers, where we have planned and plotted for this series ever since the words "interleague games" were first strung together.

We creatures are hoping, in a twisted way, that there are just a couple of pathetic Met fans left out there, who will lose their way and stumble into the bleachers where they will be tormented by our piercing verbal taunts.

Some of the bleacher's best, Tina Lewis and the crew, have tried to excavate a Met fan or two by going to Shea, waving a big Yankee flag.

They survive today, without a scratch. That is how bad things are in Queens these days.

If there is a Met fan out there, somewhere, thinking about coming tonight, let me warn him or her about a few things: We don't have any huge, asphalt-smooth, cushy parking lots in the Bronx for you. We don't need them, because we have streets.

WE DON'T HAVE orange-painted seats. We don't have a big empty space beyond the outfield wall, a gaping hole in the stadium.

Instead, we have monuments, and bleachers.

If there are still any Met fans out there, they are advised to sit in the box seats, where they belong.

Notes: Bleacher Creature

LOAD-DATE: June 17, 1997