SECTION: Sports; Pg. 56

LENGTH: 574 words

HEADLINE: CREATURES CLIMB FAMILY TREE

BYLINE: BY FILIP BONDY

BODY:


WE MAY HAVE LOST our cool in Section 39 even before the game began, during batting practice, when some Indians player we figured it was probably David Justice lined a ball at Raymond Roman's full beer cup in the right-field bleachers.

Knocked it right over.

"Hey, he owes me a beer," screamed Roman, from Brooklyn. But of course Justice never bothered to apologize for this latest unprovoked assault on the Bleacher Creatures. We were being severely tested, by the Indians, by Justice, by the rain, by the overcrowding, by everything. And yet we obeyed the rules, stayed within the foul lines, cheered the Yankees on toward the World Series.

A security guard had warned Larry Palumbo, as he walked up the stairs to his favorite wet bench, that no profanities toward anybody's mother would be tolerated.

So either we would have to keep it relatively clean, or we would attack other relatives.

One Creature, who asked to remain anonymous, had scoped out all the Cleveland players' relations on the Indians' Web site homepage. We are high-tech fans these days. She marked down all the birthdays, even of their children. Now it was gametime, however. She was reluctant to pass along the precious ammunition.

"I can't do it," she said. She was a relatively new Creature. She would grow harder with the years.

A few of the Creatures worked other angles with Justice, still staying legal, still avoiding ejection early on. It was difficult to launch an effective heckle because Justice didn't have the nerve to approach his judges and jury in right field. The guy was the DH, which is almost as bad as taking yourself out of the lineup with a sore elbow.

"Hey, David, your mother isn't dead yet, but she's very old," Tom Brown yelled.

"You know what?" Brown decided, "we don't have to yell at the Cleveland players, because we'll say it to their mothers' faces when we meet them in the bar after the game."

Paul Kaplan tried a different tack, a different relative, still avoiding a reprimand from the bleacher monitors.

"Hey, Justice, your cousin's sister is ugly," he heckled.

We went on like this, walking that thin line between bad taste and very bad taste, as we do on a nightly basis.

"What makes Justice think we don't have Uzis?" wondered Mike Donahue.

Justice came up to bat, struck out looking against David Cone. What a bum. Chuck Knoblauch slammed a double in the second inning, after receiving a full pardon from us for Game 2.

Tina Lewis was wearing a Knoblauch button all day at Champs, where she is back as the diva of counter servers. Some customers yesterday gave her grief. They got it right back. Knoblauch may have his problems, but he still waves to us, and that's what counts.

The Yankees scored two runs in the bottom of the first, another in the second. Anthony Griek decided he liked watching them score runs like this better from Section 39 than from jail, where he had spent Game 1.

A cop had arrested him for trying to sell his extra ticket near the Stadium, at a very modest markup. Griek spent 16 hours behind bars, begging for updates. Police confiscated his tickets and his cash, and fined him. It cost him about $ 300. Worse, he'll never get back that Game 1 bleacher experience.

"I wasn't raped by an inmate, but I was raped by the system," Griek decided.

No justice. And, when the Series starts on Saturday, no Justice.

Notes: Bleacher Creature



GRAPHIC: GERALD HERBERT DAILY NEWS FAVORITE SON: Yankees fan and Bleacher Creature celebrates as Bombers avenge last year's playoff loss to Indians.

LOAD-DATE: October 15, 1998