The Subway Series


		Subway Saga: A Story to Excite the Biggest N.Y. Cynics

By Greg Garber
ESPN.com

NEW YORK -- Michael Shapiro is a professor at Columbia University's distinguished school of journalism, where the Pulitzer name hangs heavily over the hallowed halls at Broadway and 116th Street.

You would expect Shapiro to embrace a professional, egalitarian media approach to the Yankees-Mets Subway Series, but there's one hitch: He's a rabid, crazy Yankees fan. Thus, as the Middle East conflict and the presidential campaign get bounced off the front page of the New York tabloids, Shapiro is not exactly concerned.

"What happens in the Middle East matters; it is of great significance," Shapiro said Wednesday. "People's lives are affected in the most profound way. What happens in a Subway Series, in a game, doesn't matter at all, and that's why sports is a wonderful thing.

"The Middle East, the presidential campaign ... these things matter. And yet I want something else. I want something that takes me away from my life and the world. I couldn't ask for anything better than this."

Both the New York Daily News and the New York Post are putting out voluminous special sections every day; thousands of trees over the usual quota will give their lives for this breathless week. There are specials on local television. Sports talk radio, a 24-hour enterprise, never resonated with more passion. Overall, sports has moved in and claimed a unsettling percentage of the news hole.

	“	I used to play a game when I was a kid: How would I lead the paper if World War III began and the Dodgers won the World Series? I always said, 'Well, I think we can fit World War III on the back page.' ”
		— Roger Kahn

"The media is the plural of mediocre, and they're in there and they need this," said Jimmy Breslin, the veteran New York scribe. "They think it's the most important thing in the world."

In a highly unscientific poll conducted at Yankee Stadium before the New York Yankees clinched the American League pennant against the Seattle Mariners, not one reporter said it was possible to oversell the series.

So, Mike Lupica, darling of the New York media, will the Subway Series be over-hyped?

"Well, of course," said the Daily News columnist, laughing. "Of course. This is the over-hyping capital of the world, in addition to being the baseball capital of the world again, as it used to be when we did have the Subway Series every year.

"The Mets and Yankees have never done this. It's a combination of so many great Octobers in this town: Johnny Podres in '55 and the Mets in '69, everything the Yankees have done lately in this amazing collision over 10 days."

The people who cover sports, as a rule, are smitten with the Peter Pan Syndrome. They never want to grow up. Sports is a safe haven from the real world. And, hey, it's fun covering games.

Roger Kahn was a cub reporter for the New York Herald Tribune in 1948, making $48 a week. He covered the Brooklyn Dodgers in the early '50s and went on to write a number of wonderful baseball books, including the lyrical "The Boys of Summer." His most recent effort is "The Head Game: Baseball Seen from the Pitcher's Mound."

Earlier this week, Kahn remembered the old days at his home in Croton-on-Hudson, N.Y. Kahn, not surprisingly, can't read enough about the Subway Series. Sports on page one of the tabloids, as he sees it, is not a matter of skewed priorities.

"I used to play a game when I was a kid: How would I lead the paper if World War III began and the Dodgers won the World Series?" Kahn said. "I always said, `Well, I think we can fit World War III on the back page."

The newside people at the newspapers, television and radio are just as guilty of indulging in homerism. When David Justice hit his critical-mass home run against the Mariners, the Daily News sports desk was admirably under control. The news end of the newsroom, however, erupted in cheers and applause.

Part of the reason the event is enjoying such over-the-top coverage is that so many people who dictate the coverage in media organizations come from New York. Keith Olbermann, the Fox sportscaster who first achieved fame working for ESPN, grew up in New York.

"There are a lot of people who are in positions of, not authority or power, but responsibility in the media who are living their childhood dream through this," Olbermann said. "And it will come out in their writing and their reporting and their decision-making."

Phil Mushnick, who covers television for the New York Post and TV Guide, isn't expecting any Pulitzers to come from the coverage of this Subway Series. "Journalism on television, radio, newspapers, it's dead," he said. "If it it exists, it happens by accident. In a Subway Series we'll see not only that it's dead, but it's dead and buried."

Everyone is a fan, a fanatic.

Christopher "Mad Dog" Russo, the WFAN talk show host, is a huge San Francisco Giants supporter, but he knows this is the biggest sporting event New York has seen.

"It's a big town and a big-event town," Russo said. "This is going to be great."

While the Big Apple has had its share of big sports stories -- Ali-Frazier I at Madison Square Garden in 1971, the Giants' Super Bowls in 1986 and 1990, the Rangers' Stanley Cup win after a long drought -- but this is bigger. Even a Giants-Jets Super Bowl played in Central Park would fall short; there would have to be seven games to approach the magnitude of this Subway Series.

Shaprio knows the drill. He has seen the New York media cover the Big Story, from the Mets' world championships in 1969 and 1986 to the Yankees' three World Series victories in the past four years. He is principled and proper when it comes to journalism, but baseball is his blind spot. He simply can't get enough of this.

"We have a wonderful, rare moment, both as readers, as viewers and as reporters -- so let us enjoy it," Shapiro said. "Let us not feel guilty here -- you know, should we be devoting this much space to a sports event?

"My answer to you is yes."

Greg Garber is a senior writer for ESPN.com.