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HEADLINE: Test of Loyalty and Luck for Yankee Fans

BYLINE:  By JIM YARDLEY 

BODY:
No one told The Ant about The Random Number Wristband Distribution Procedure. So when Antoine (The Ant) Hill and his friend Lee Boogie heard that Yankees postseason tickets would go on sale yesterday morning, they arrived Thursday night to be first in line.

For 36 hours, they crouched, sat, slept and curled up on the cold concrete outside Yankee Stadium. By yesterday morning, tickets weren't all they wanted.

"Preparation H," Mr. Boogie said. "You sit on that concrete all day." Yet after all their devotion and discomfort, Mr. Boogie and Mr. Hill were not assured of getting tickets. Why? As a means of discouraging ticket scalping and preventing a stampede on the ticket booths (as happened in 1996), the Yankees were using a random distribution system that rewarded luck as much as loyalty.

Most of the playoff tickets are already taken. Some are being sold over the telephone by Ticketmaster. But the 2,000 or so fans who waited yesterday morning at the stadium were hoping for a chance at the limited, but unspecified, number of tickets available at the stadium. They could choose either a blue wristband for Division Series tickets or a red wristband for League Championship tickets. Each wristband was randomly numbered, and tickets would be sold after a number was drawn at 3 P.M.

For example, Donald Simpson, a member of the Section 39 "Bleacher Creatures," regulars who sit in the cheapest outfield seats, got wristband No. 1111 and with it the chance to buy as many as four tickets. But if the number selected in the drawing was 1112, then Mr. Simpson would be considered last in line.

"George, in previous years, has always accommodated us because we're an integral part of the stadium," he said, speaking of the Yankees' principal owner, George M. Steinbrenner 3d. "Without us, it's like you woke up and you're not wearing your underwear."

While Mr. Hill and Mr. Boogie arrived Thursday, no one else appeared until Friday, when Dirk Bernold and Kurt Snyder, both 26, showed up. Others, like Mr. Simpson, began arriving as well. Even when everyone learned it was not first come, first served, they stayed. The police prohibited tents, sleeping bags (though some people brought them anyway), chairs, coolers and alcoholic beverages.

"A stupid experience," grumbled Mr. Snyder, a student at Albert Einstein College of Medicine in the Bronx. Then, explaining why he stayed: "I was too lazy to go home."

Entertainment was hard to come by. The Friday morning crash of a freight train on the nearby Metro-North tracks provided some excitement. When newspaper photographers arrived late Friday night to shoot the crowd, people responded with what Mr. Bernold called the "paparazzi" chant.

"You killed Lady Di!" the crowd chanted. "Bring back Lady Di!"

Yesterday morning, Mr. Snyder stretched, then unwrapped the remains of a Wendy's chicken sandwich from the night before. He ate it for breakfast. It was no comfort that the fans who came yesterday morning had just as good a chance to buy tickets. And they smelled better, too.

What all the waiting did provide, though, was time for fans like Mr. Simpson to assess the greater meaning of the Yankee universe. "Oh, it was terrible," he said of the concrete. "But being so close to home -- Yankee Stadium -- it was warm from that." His father first took him to Yankee Stadium in 1967 at the end of Mickey Mantle's career. So when the Yankees made the World Series in 1996, he took his father.

Now, Mr. Simpson said the Bleacher Creatures are desperate. He cannot imagine a Yankees postseason game without himself. He said there are more than 100 Bleacher Creatures, and they insist on sitting in Section 39. "Creatures sitting all over the place isn't good," he said. "We've got to be united to be strong."

The moment of truth came at 3 P.M.: The drawn number was 1534. For Mr. Hill (988) and Mr. Simpson (1111), this was bad news. For Mr. Bernold (1988), it was good news; he would be 454th person in line. Mr. Simpson was left to call on a power even higher than Mr. Steinbrenner.

"Everybody say a prayer for the Creatures," he said before the drawing, sensing trouble. "We need them."


GRAPHIC: Photo: Donald Simpson got a wristband yesterday that gave him a chance, but no guarantee, to buy Yankees tickets. (Suzanne DeChillo/The New York Times)

LOAD-DATE: September 20, 1998