SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. 46 BLEACHER CREATURE

LENGTH: 674 words

HEADLINE: NO TOKEN HATRED ON THIS SUBWAY SERIES RIDE

BYLINE: BY FILIP BONDY

BODY:
I DON'T KNOW how to break this to Met fans, but we Creatures really aren't all that excited about this Subway Series. Annoyed is probably the more accurate description. Aggravated, maybe. Agitated, at times.

For us, this is only a silly three-game gimmick on the way to another world championship. But to the hundreds of unwashed Met fans who poured into the Stadium last night, this seemed to be a matter of life and death - their one chance to prove their team stinks slightly less this season than it did the season before. "This means nothing to me," said Little Mike Millanta of Rockland County, longtime Creature, who was more concerned about reports of the dead crows near his home than the live Mets in the Bronx.

The Mets came, anyway, just like the West Nile mosquitoes. Their fans buzzed around the outskirts of Section 39, wearing a wide selection of their nine or 10 official jerseys, and sporting a pathetic look that said: "This is it. This is what it's all about. If we can just take two of three . . ."

We hate to tell these people, but this isn't what it's all about. This is what Major League Baseball marketing is about. There are much bigger games for us against much worthier rivals, like the ones just completed in Atlanta, and the ones coming up against Boston.

There was an unfortunate rumble outside Turner Field, by the way, after that Saturday game. Several Creatures made the trip down to Rockerville, and were very nearly arrested. At one point, Nadia smashed a Braves fan in the head with a camera, then stepped back and took a photo of the damage.

Message to Met fans: You don't want to mess with Nadia.

Anyway, a bunch of us were standing outside on River Ave. before the game yesterday, trying to remember exactly when it was that we first started hating the Mets.

Chuck (looks like Knoblauch) remembered how he was watching a Yankee exhibition game on TV in March, 1981, and how Dave Winfield was at the plate, and then Ronald Reagan got shot. He remembered how the local station foolishly cut to reports of the Reagan shooting, without finishing Winfield's at-bat, and how Chuck figured this was probably a Met conspiracy of some kind.

Steve Krauss of Staten Island recalled how he was 9 years old when he got in his first fight with a Met fan in grade school.

"It was a pretty good one, because there weren't any teachers around and it lasted a long time," he said.

Krauss was suspended then, for his hatred of the Mets.

Many of the Creatures have ex-friends and long-forgotten relatives, written out of our wills, who were seduced by the evil mind-bending cult of Met fans. We tried, but were unable to de-program them.

These are tragedies difficult to discuss, even in this space.

As for myself, the Filip Creature, I first became disgusted with the Mets and their fawning fans back in 1969.

There I was, a '60s radical at college, spending my spare time rooting for the Cubs at Wrigley Field, just so the Yankees would still be the No. 1 team back home in New York. All I wanted to talk about, when I came back for the summer, was overthrowing Richard Nixon and the Baltimore Orioles. All anybody else wanted to discuss was the allegedly Amazin' Mets.

ALWAYS REMEMBER, Met fans: This era, this column, is payback, for the shadows we were forced to occupy in 1969. This is for Joe Pepitone, Horace Clarke, Gene Michael, Jerry Kenney, Roy White, Bobby Murcer, Ron Woods and Jake Gibbs - and maybe a little for Ernie Banks, too.

On Monday, the Mets will be gone from our sacred section. That is the good news. The bad news is the Red Sox fans will invade immediately, soiling the stairways.

I will flash back to when I sat in the left-field bleachers, watching Jim Lonborg warming up next to me, preparing to beat the Yankees again. And I will heckle the Sox - for Horace Clarke, for Jerry Kenney.

Like my fellow Creatures, I don't let go of grudges easily. I still hate Nixon, and I still hate the Mets.

Neither one, however, is at all relevant to the next championship banner.

GRAPHIC: TODD MAISEL DAILY NEWS TWO OF A KIND At least two Met and Yankee fans find a way to get along last night as this year's version Subway Series gets under way at the Stadium.

LOAD-DATE: June 10, 2000