SECTION: SPORTS; Pg. C-01

LENGTH: 1809 words

HEADLINE: New Yorkers daffy about doubleheader

BYLINE: By John Henderson, Denver Post Sports Writer,

BODY:
NEW YORK - It wasn't yet noon, and the plastic cooler guarded by  the preteen boy already had filled with empty Corona bottles and  Coors cans. The half-dozen men feeding out of it didn't really  know each other before they boarded the subway at Times Square. It  didn't matter. They formed their own brotherhood, randomly garbed  in Mets and Yankees gear and all entwined by the same New Joisey  'Sopranos' twang and the occasional odd bodily function.

It was the ultimate John Rocker nightmare: life on the No. 7  train. Two games. Two stadiums. One day. One city. New York.

'It's the beauty and the beast, and right here's the beast,'  said Mike Stack, holding a Coors. 'You can't slay the beast: the  New York sports fan.' New York baseball made history Saturday. No, the New York Mets  didn't prove they're a better team than the Yankees, getting swept  by 4-2 scores, dropping them to 1-4 against the Yankees this year.  In the ultimate nirvana for the rabid New York baseball junkie,  the Yankees and Mets played a Subway Series doubleheader at Shea  and Yankee stadiums.

It's not a first unless you were around in 1903, when the New  York Giants played somebody called the Brooklyn Superbas, the  precursor to the Dodgers, at Brooklyn's Washington Park in the  morning and the Polo Grounds in the afternoon.

The Yankees-Mets series isn't even new. Interleague play, in  its fourth year, has watered down the novelty and the Yankees and  Mets are tired of the hype. But tell that to a New Yorker. We dare  youse.

'Mike Stanton thinks it's stupid,' Stack said of the Yankees  reliever, 'but Mike Stanton's a moron.'

New York fans are not, Rocker be damned. They feed off the  hype like vultures on carrion. The New York Post devoted eight  pages to Friday night's series opener at Shea. The Saturday  afternoon game drew 54,165 to Shea and 55,821 to Yankee Stadium  that night. A smart scalper could have retired by the third  inning. Hundreds of fans walked around Shea holding fingers and  signs up, desperate for tickets.

There simply weren't any.

'This is the biggest rivalry in New York,' Stack said.  'Rangers-Devils? Islanders-Rangers? Jets-Giants? Go cover the  Cubs-White Sox. Now that's a series. Kerry Wood against Jim  Parque. Yeah!'

It was hard to gauge Rocker's surly view of the No. 7. Sure,  as he lamented in Sports Illustrated last winter, there were  minorities, but no one took a survey of how many of the mothers  were single. And definitely no one knew who had AIDS. Besides, the  No. 7 was so jammed, Stack's gang was crammed into a little corner  of the car, humanity on one side, steel and beer on the other.

So what do the No. 7 passengers think of the No. 7's critic?

'Rocker spoke the truth,' said Kevin Michael, hovering over  the beer cooler. 'I swear to God. You come here on a weekday  afternoon and you'll see what he's talking about. I can say it and  get away with it. He can't. How come Reggie White can talk like  that and Rocker can't?'

Michael, a 32-year-old warehouse worker from Aveneo, N.J.,  wore a black Mets jersey and a Fu Manchu moustache. He hated not  having a ticket for Saturday night's game just for missing the  sadomasochistic pleasure of wearing his jersey at Yankee Stadium's  right-field bleachers, an act, which under New York law, has been  ruled grounds for justifiable homicide.

He proudly boasted of wearing it before.

'Oh, yeah, I had problems,' Michael said. 'I lasted four  innings and security kicked me out. I asked security why I was  being kicked out, and they couldn't give me a reason.'

('They saved his life,' whispered his friend.)

'I went to the '98 World Series and sat in the right-field  bleachers,' Michael continued. 'I was a San Diego fan. The whole  game they gave me (bleep).'

'And they kicked him out after four innings,' his friend said.

'No!' Michael protested. 'I lasted seven!'

Soon one of the gang, who will remain nameless, stepped out  the door between cars and urinated out of the moving train. A  young woman in the adjacent car looked on in horror. The gang  continued jawing. The topic of discussion was Dwight Gooden, who  in the first game made his return to the Yankees.

It has been a rocky road, even in New York, for Gooden, an  ex-Met who battled drug suspensions before the Houston Astros and  Tampa Bay Devil Rays released him this year before the Yankees  saved him with a minor league contract. The Mets fans, seeing  blood with every pinstripe, are repulsed.

'He'll get a standing O, then he's gone,' Michael said. 'Then  it's, 'Want a bag? Come over here.''

Shea finally came into view as the gang went off in search of  scalpers. Steve Campo, a 32-year-old salesman wearing a Yankees  T-shirt, did his ceremonial nose thumbing at the blue edifice in  Queens, a no-charm cookie cutter from the 1960s that has always  played the ugly sister in the shadow of Yankee Stadium's  Parthenon-like presence.

'This is the worst stadium,' said Campo, shaking his head.  'When you walk in and see that monument of Ed Kranepool? Now,  that's a statement.'

A Kranepool monument was nowhere in sight, but a Yankees fan  did walk by with a Yankees cap attached to a tall blue flag  reading 'Mets suck' on one side and 'Piazza is a (um, pansy)' on  the other.

'I made it myself,' said James Townsend of Beacon, N.Y. 'Yankees  fans high-five me. Mets fans tell me things you can't print.'

Such as 'Dump the stupid hat, (bleep)!' from one passerby in a  Mets jersey.

On the more peaceful front, three brothers all wore Yankees  batting helmets with two wind-up subway cars revolving around a  miniature Yankee Stadium. Gary Peers, a Mets fan and their friend,  had an identical model only for Shea. Brian Asher invented them  and sells them for $ 20. There weren't many takers, but maybe he  drew interest Saturday night in the Bronx.

They were some of the few who had tickets to both games, the  nightcap of which resulted from a June 11 rainout at Yankee  Stadium. Logistically, it's a cakewalk. They drove in from  Huntington on Long Island and parked at Shea, then took the 7 back  to Manhattan.

'We're taking the Rocker Express,' Asher said.

'You've got to get him off the tracks, don't you?' Peers said.

'Oh, yeah,' Asher said. 'We tied him to the tracks. Then we're  taking the 7 and 4 to Yankee Stadium and 4 and 7 back here. We  figure we'll be home by 2 in the morning.'

And well worth the effort.

'It's the greatest thing to happen to New York since 1903,'  Peers said. 'It's a New York happening. It's a great New York  experience. Look around you. It's revitalized baseball. This is  what it's all about: rivalries.'

The afternoon game started with the electricity left over from  the Yankees' 2-1 win Friday night. Mets manager Bobby Valentine  got tossed after the first pitch, and the Yankees scored two  first-inning runs. Then the game went shockingly quiet. Gooden and  Mets starter Bobby Jones looked great and the Yankees, as usual,  played smarter and won 4-2. The loudest cheer came when Yankees  fans, who filled about 20 percent of the seats, erupted after Tino  Martinez's solo homer in the sixth.

The media outnumbered Yankees in their clubhouse about 4-1.  Shortstop Derek Jeter was asked if he's tired of the hype.

'You guys tired of writing about it?' he snapped. 'You guys  build it up, build it up. It seems like we play the Mets every  other weekend.'

Meanwhile, the Mets didn't even bother undressing. They ate at  Shea's Stadium Club and climbed aboard a bus in full uniform for  the drive to the Bronx.

'This is like American Legion again,' said Glendon Rusch, the  Mets' starter in the nightcap. One difference, however. Rusch's  Legion team never got a police escort as the Yankees and Mets did.

The 7 train back to Manhattan was a skeleton of its former  self two hours after the game. Times Square, however, was jammed.  Fans in pinstripes and blue and orange pushed into the No. 4 train  uptown to the Bronx as if trying to escape a fire.

Dave Fox, a Mets fan from Coram, N.Y., swapped swigs from a  bottle of Cressi wine ('$ 4.25 a bottle, you can't beat it,' he  said) with a friend. The wine came in especially handy on a steamy  non-air conditioned train that was the perfect environment for  African violets. Not that anyone noticed. Or cared.

It was Game 2 and chants of 'Let's go, Mets! Let's go, Mets!'  filled the car.

'If you're a New Yorker and at tonight's game, nothing else in  the world matters,' Fox said. 'This is it.'

Yes, Fox and friends wore their Mets garb in right field. He  has before and is alive to talk about it. Actually, Mets fans say  the Bleacher Creatures aren't the sub-human species they're  depicted. Bob Huhssler of Hamden, Conn., took his son to a Red Sox  game Fenway Park last year.

'He wore a Bernard Gilkey jersey and heard about Gilkey and  'Go back to New York,' all night,' said Huhssler, sitting with his  son. 'They're a lot harder-edged there.'

An hour and 15 minutes after leaving Shea, the No. 4 train  pulled up next to Yankee Stadium. If you didn't have a ticket you  didn't get in. Fans were desperate; scalpers were scarce. Tim  Smith of Clinton, N.J., stood with two fingers in the air for an  hour. Only four people approached. Police were everywhere.

In fact, one undercover cop in floppy shorts and a spiked  haircut wrote up a ticket on a perplexed fan with too many tickets  in his pocket. Smith looked for tickets in the right-field  bleachers and didn't find one until after the game started.

'I sit with all the Bleacher Creatures,' Smith said. 'It's a  small gang, about 30 of us, and we look out for each other. The  Mets fans don't have any problems. But if they step over the line,  the Bleacher Creatures will get physical.'

It's a grim lot, the Bleacher Creatures. Many wore blue and  orange 'Mets Suck' T-shirts and never hesitate to drill a Met even  after their pitchers do. In the second inning, Yankees starter  Roger Clemens' 93-mph fastball hit Piazza right in the helmet. As  Piazza lay nearly motionless in the dirt, the Bleacher Creatures  stood and, like a boxing referee, gave Piazza the 10 count.

Then they counted him out in Spanish.

By midway through the game, however, no punches were thrown.  Score one for peaceful co-existence. At least for one day, one  doubleheader. All Saturday did, really was whet fans' appetites  for more.

As Jerry Asher put it best, 'We want a real Subway Series, a  World Series.'

Subway to Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium (map)

GRAPHIC: PHOTOS: Associated Press New York Yankees and Mets fans travel to Yankee Stadium on the subway Saturday for the second game of a cross-town doubleheader. Mets batter Mike Piazza gets hit in the head by a pitch from Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens in the second inning of Saturday night's game at Yankee Stadium. Piazza left the game. The Mets said the hit was intentional. Above, New York Yankees fan Chris Ciccone, left, talks with Mets fan Mark Damone, right, as Paul Brigandi, center, also a Mets fan, looks on as they ride the No. 4 train through the Manhattan borough of New York to Yankee Stadium. A true subway series was held Saturday with the day game at Shea Stadium, followed by the night game at Yankee Stadium. Below, Marge Zien of Manhattan holds a sign welcoming former Mets pitcher Dwight 'Doc' Gooden back to Shea Stadium, although he is now with the Yankees. Gooden pitched five solid innings in his return, earning the victory. The Denver Post Subway to Yankee Stadium or Shea Stadium (map)

LOAD-DATE: July 10, 2000