SECTION: Sports; Pg. 88

LENGTH: 580 words

HEADLINE: WE'RE BIGGER THAN THE GAME

BYLINE: BY FILIP BONDY

BODY:


IT WAS AWHILE SINCE I'd been reunited with the rest of the Creatures. Turns out, we're now very famous, maybe bigger than the Yankees themselves.

The Creatures have been profiled in Esquire, The Times and The International Herald Tribune; interviewed by local TV stations and Telemundo. News radio, too. "Bleacher Creature" T-shirts go for $ 18 around the stadium. "They're making money off our name!" says Tina Lewis. Nobody can get enough of us. We personify the rebirth of baseball, or something like that. "I can give you five minutes," says Paul Kaplan of Manhattan, who still rolls between the wet benches in the middle of the sixth.

Tom Brown doesn't like the way he was described as "portly" in The Times. "I prefer well-defined," Brown says. "Although I prefer portly to gangly." Donald Simpson and Larry Palumbo weren't captured quite perfectly, either, in the Esquire photo shoot.

The Creatures are signing autographs now, controlling the pace of the game with our roll calls, chants and on-field contacts. There are suddenly women everywhere with the Creatures. And when the beer man comes around, one of these women yells, "Hey, beer man, where's the soda man?"

Mind you, don't take such sober behavior for granted. Just when you think we've been totally tamed, somebody (not a core Creature, mind you) drops a cup of beer in Roberto Kelly's face in Game 1.

Considering our great fame and influence, it is fairly annoying that we Creatures must struggle to obtain playoff tickets and then hold on to these reserved benches in the face of great pressure. We succeed, of course. The thing about Bleacher Creatures is, we're very resourceful. There isn't a ticket shortage or a pesticide that can contain us, or keep us from breeding.

When push came to shove this autumn, when our media blitz failed to drum up the requisite sympathy, we still got our tickets. Maybe not enough. Maybe not all for $ 11. But one way or another there is a secret Ticketmaster number in the Midwest that I will carry to my grave the Creatures wormed our way into the right-field bleachers. We set up worshiping services in that holiest of rooting cathedrals, Section 39.

You do what you have to do. George Chityat laid out $ 50 for his ticket, then found out from a friend he could get one at face value. Skinny John sat in his favorite regular-season seat for Game 1, then paid the real ticket holder an extra $ 20 to trade stubs and bleacher locations.

Security guards and police are sympathetic to the regulars (as opposed to the "Ninety-Eighters"), as well they should be. Order is maintained. Rituals are properly observed. By now, the Creatures are such an institution we basically should call all the shots.

I don't want to sound like I'm boasting or anything, but basically we are the game. The Yankees don't win 114 games without us.

OUR RAZOR-SHARP wit, our wilting tirades, can be tuned to any frequency, to any right fielder. We have made quivering Jello of Juan Gonzalez, Jose Canseco and Bobby Bonilla. Opponents don't matter. Major League Baseball has expanded the playoffs so much, officials are letting in anybody. Texas. Boston. Even the Mets almost made it, so you know standards have slipped beyond reason.

We are more than the 10th man at Yankee Stadium. We are the leadoff batter, the staff ace, the chief fireman.

We chant Shane Spencer's name. He hits a homer. It is good to be a Creature.

Notes: Bleacher Creature



GRAPHIC: GERALD HERBERT DAILY NEWS PROUDLY, HE HAILS: Bleacher Creature belts out national anthem last night.

LOAD-DATE: October 02, 1998