Damn, we promised never to run UPON FURTHER REVIEW on a Thursday again, so I guess it's time to come up with another name for the 22 inches of mindless drivel that follows:
The Column of Columns.
Yeah, that sounds pretty good.
Sure, it has no tradition at all, having never been published anywhere. And there might even be a critic somewhere willing to call me the worst columnist in Division I column writing, but Back this column, or Back off.
Onto other things.
Apparently, God feels a small amount of attachment to New York, or at least in the realm of sports. There is always politics to douse New Yorkers with a few bitter doses of reality. Or, as the envious Southern Californian that I am, I'd like to deceive myself into believing that's true.
But let's face it, with the gluttony of major sporting events that have graced the City recently, the Big Apple has been "making out" better than the captain of the varsity football team at senior prom. And not even a choice between the somehow-still-unknown Rick Lazio and the somehow-still-running-for-New-York-Senator Hillary Clinton can slight that fact.
Even picking between options as seemingly bland as vanilla vs. French vanilla is spiced up a little in New York. To baseball fans in New York-and isn't every New Yorker a fan of America's pasttime right about now?-it's easy.
You're either a Mets fan and riding the Lazio bus, or you're hoping to continue two existing dynasties with the Yanks and Clintons. For the 45 percent of New Yorkers who were rumored to be on the fence a couple months ago-kinda like Hillary was before she flipped a coin to choose her favorite New York ball club-things should get a little easier when these two archrivals take the diamond.
Ahh the Series. The first all-New York World Series in 44 years. Should be a nice chance for neighbors to become enemies and the phrase "on the other side of the tracks" to take on a whole new meaning.
If Joe Torre is even close to on the money with his prediction, next week should do for New Yorkers what the Civil War did for families in Kentucky, Maryland and Missouri.
"I hope that people behave themselves, because it's going to split a few families up, I think," Torre was quoted as saying.
A Subway Series, as if New York didn't have it good enough in the summer of '99.
I remember thinking it was a fairly early Christmas in New York when I was watching a memorable edition of SportsCenter back on June 5, 1999. On that particular Saturday, a scheduling fluke and a little bit of luck centralized every important sporting event in New York, enabling ESPN to focus nearly the entire show at three different Big Apple venues with hour-by-hour depictions of the day's most climactic moments.
The saga began in the house that Ruth built with a 1 p.m. clash between the Mets and Yankees, back when the term Subway Series was just coming back into fashion and baseball commentators had yet to spread it as thin as Casey Sanders' waistline last season (hey, I know I'm hardly exempt from the same attack, and it's good to hear the kid is starting to bulk up a bit, but damn, I've seen veggie burgers with more meat on them). But I digress.
Not too long after the ballgame ended, but long enough to allow several Yankees to make their way over to Madison Square Garden, there was a magic act taking place in the Big Apple. Actually, there was a basketball game-Knicks-Pacers, Game 3 of the Eastern Conference Finals, to be precise-but Larry Johnson's improbable four-point play with six seconds left may have turned even David Copperfield a pretty shade of green. And more suddenly than Susan, Spike Lee was singing the Mo Better Blues.
Completing the triple crown for New Yorkers, at the same time the Knicks were polishing off Reggie and the Pacers, the largest crowd in New York racing history witnessed Lemon Drop Kid end Charismatic's run at history at the Belmont Stakes. The 85,000-plus fans seemed pretty disappointed when Charismatic's Triple Crown threat and career were both undone by injury, but it still was a fairly decent day for sports lovers in the Big Apple.
And now this!
A Yankees-Mets World Series. As one friend from the mecca of sports put it bluntly, this upcoming week will be the highlight of his life.
Great. What about the rest of us? Just a thought, but ever think of spreading the wealth a little? I mean, I come from Los Angeles, the city referred to as the other major sports market in this nation.
Might as well be the "other Triangle university," or the "other religion" in Utah. As a lifetime resident of the City of Angels, I can tell you no amount of counting my lucky stars will ever bring about a Freeway Series between the Dodgers and my beloved Angels. It's just never gonna happen.
So why New York?
Forgive the whining, but it just ain't fair.
I'll tell you what would be fair. Maybe a reprisal of the 1989 earthquake that rocked the Bay area and threw into complete chaos a World Series billed as an epic Battle by the Bay. It may have been epic and unforgettable, but it was anything except good for Oakland, San Francisco or their respective teams.
Maybe a nice major earthquake would divert a little attention away from New York and its fancy Subway Series. Oh wait, earthquakes only happen in California.
Damn.
Brody Greenwald is a senior and the sports editor of The Chronicle. He hopes to graduate this spring so he can never step inside 301 Flowers again.
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