Beat The Mets, Beat The Mets, Step Right Up And Punch Beltran Out On Three Straight Pitches

That 0-2 curveball right over the middle of the plate was the equivalent of a gigantic double-barreled middle finger to the Mets offense:

The Mets’ offense, so potent during the regular season, was silenced for much of the series. They mustered only two hits through eight innings against Cardinals starter Jeff Suppan, the N.L.C.S. most valuable player, and reliever Randy Flores, before mounting a brief rally in the ninth.

Leading off, José Valentín and Endy Chávez hit consecutive singles off the rookie closer Adam Wainwright. Trying for a Kirk Gibson moment, the injured pinch-hitter Cliff Floyd struck out looking. José Reyes lined out before Paul Lo Duca walked, loading the bases.

But Wainwright struck out Beltrán on three pitches, the last a wicked curveball, to cap a most improbable postseason run.

On another note, if you get your New Yorker monocle in place, there’s something especially poignant about the butcher and the baker and the people on the streets* who “watched” the game from the 7 subway platform:

At Shea, there are box seats and bleacher seats and nosebleeds in the upper deck. There are even places for fans who are not in the ballpark. These would be the standing-room sections of the Willets Point-Shea Stadium station of the No. 7 train, an elevated line that runs by the stadium. Riders can peer through train windows into Shea, and resourceful fans without the resources to buy tickets can find spots on the platform to peer into the stadium and catch glimpses of the game, albeit incomplete ones.

. . .

To watch the game from right outside the stadium is to miss a lot of the action, but it is also a viewing experience that is free of pitch counts and statistics and commercials.

On the landing of a stairwell leading down from the platform to Roosevelt Avenue, a dozen fans gathered and enjoyed a view of the field that included second and third base and part of the outfield.

One of them, Steven Ramirez, 22, from Jackson Heights, said he was watching the game from here “just to get the thrill of the fans.”

“I only have $30 and I couldn’t touch a ticket for that,” he said. “Us people, we don’t got the means to get in, but it’s O.K. You can tell what’s happening just by the fans and using common sense.”

The Chavez family took two subway trains to Shea from their home in Jamaica, Queens. Elmer and Claudia Chavez brought their son, Jonathan, 10, who brought his Rawlings mitt.

“We wanted to come and be a part of the big party,” Elmer Chavez said. Jonathan pounded his little fist into his mitt and said, “If we really need to know what happened, we’ll call my grandpa, because he’s watching the game at home.”

The game was under way and the leadoff batter took the pitch. The crowd roared. “That’s strike one,” yelled Jonathan.

Anthony Nyquan, 28, from the Castle Hill section of the Bronx, said, “I came with $200 in my pocket and I still couldn’t afford a ticket from a scalper.

“So I figured I’ll save my money and stand here and watch,” he said. “Even though I’m not in the stands, I can feel the game. No way I’m going to miss this game. I could go home and watch it on TV, but I feel if I’m here, the Mets will win.”

From the stairwell landing, fans could not see the pitcher, but as Keith Last, 26, of Manhattan, explained: “You can tell just by watching the third baseman when the pitch is coming. You see what you can see, and the crowd kind of tells you the rest.”

*See, for example.

Definitive Proof That, Until 1957 At Least, God Was A Giants Fan

The man who claims to have taken the only photographic evidence of Bobby Thomson’s “Shot Heard ‘Round The World” reveals his inspiration:

Rudy Mancuso is 85 and lives alone in a rental apartment on the Lower East Side. He uses a cane and moves slowly. But 55 years ago, on Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso had the split-second timing to snap a photograph of one of the great moments in sports: “The shot heard ’round the world.”

The photograph of the home run hit by Bobby Thomson of the New York Giants in the ninth inning at the Polo Grounds to steal the National League pennant from the Brooklyn Dodgers and set off pandemonium in New York became iconic — Thomson swinging the bat, the ball sailing above the Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca as it soared out of the park.

. . .

In 1951, [Mancuso] and the rest of New York were riveted by the three-game series between the Giants and the Dodgers to decide who would play the Yankees in the World Series.

By the third and decisive game, Mr. Mancuso said, he had received an authoritative and specific photo assignment.

“God told me Bobby was going to win it with a homer in the ninth,” he said. “There’s no doubt. I was chosen to take that picture.”

On Oct. 3, 1951, Mr. Mancuso said, he rode the subway to the Polo Grounds carrying a Busch camera he had bought for $300 to use for wedding portraits. His ticket put him in the upper level directly behind the press box. He had only brought two exposures with him and used the first one early on, taking a snapshot of the Yankee right fielder Hank Bauer, who was sitting nearby.

Mr. Mancuso set the camera on top of the press box until the bottom of the ninth when Thomson came to bat.

“Like I said, I knew it was going to happen, so I pulled the paper strip out that protected the exposure and put the focus on the furthest it would go. I put the focus on infinity.”

“I heard the crack of the bat and snapped the picture,” said Mr. Mancuso who made a batch of prints and said he took one to The New York World-Telegram and Sun the next day.

“They took it inside and then came back out and said: ‘We can’t use it. It’s old news,'” he recalled. “I think they took a picture of it and it got spread around, because it got to be all over the place. I should have copyrighted it.”

Yankees Looking To Go “Hardcore” In Film Shoot

Don’t trust them — it’s an ambush:

The YES Network is looking for 4 HARDCORE Red Sox fans, 2 male/2 female for a TV shoot this Friday September 15th, with a rain date scheduled for Sunday September 17th. This will be an ALL DAY SHOOT. This is no compensation or pay BUT meals and transportation will be provided for you.

Requirements: (Please do not respond if you don’t meet these requirements)
– Good Health
– Physically active, but not NESSECERLY an athlete
– Ready to have fun and be lively throughout the entire shoot
– Must be comfortable on camera

Kinky-Haired Jews Across The City Looking For A Hero

Shawn Green comes at a time when the city’s Jewish community is searching for a role model:

Not that there’s any pressure on Shawn Green to succeed in New York, but when Mr. Green — power-hitting right fielder, two-time All-Star, Jew — took the field in a Mets uniform for the first time on Thursday, a fan named Corey Mintz held up a poster with Mr. Green’s photo on it.

“The messiah has arrived,” the poster read.

Jews are famed for their prowess in many fields, but have long been stereotyped, even by themselves, as being weak in athletics. There might not be a group on the planet with a more finely honed sense of physical inferiority.

So when a star ballplayer who happens to be Jewish comes to play in the New York area, a capital of Jewish culture, home to nearly two million Jews, it is cause for much rejoicing.

Americans, Jewish and otherwise, may not hold sports stars in the esteem they once did. Jews no longer feel quite the need to prove themselves as Americans by, for instance, excelling at sports.

But still the Jewish people hunger for a hometown hero to call their own.

. . .

And in the stands at Shea Stadium, Joshua Ostrovsky, a husky Manhattanite with a billowing Jewish afro and a gold Hebrew “chai” necklace outside his Dwight Gooden jersey, called Mr. Green a role model.

“There were many times in Little League that people said to me, ‘Ostrovsky, you are fat, you’re Jewish, you’ll never play baseball.'” said Mr. Ostrovsky, 24. “So I lost weight, and they still said, ‘You’ll never play baseball because you are Jewish.’ Shawn has been an inspiration to me.”

. . .

Mr. Green, for his part, seems happy to be in New York. “For me it’s an important thing, the Jewish community here,” he said Thursday. “I definitely want to be a part of it and am excited to be a part of it and hopefully I can make them proud.”

So far, so good. In his second at-bat Thursday, he lined a run-scoring single to left field and the place erupted.

“Ma-zel tov! Ma-zel tov!” Mr. Ostrovsky chanted to the rhythm of “Let’s Go Mets.”

Mr. Ostrovsky pulled at his mane of kinky hair.

“I haven’t been this proud of a Jew since my brother’s bar mitzvah,” he said.

That Was Fast*

Seriously, that was really fast:

The Yankees plan to break ground today on their new $1.2 billion open-air stadium in the Bronx, less than 24 hours after a state judge rejected an attempt by a community group to block construction.

The new 51,000-seat stadium, with echoes of the distinctive copper frieze and limestone walls of the original ballpark, will go up in Macombs Dam and John Mullaly Parks, across 161st Street from the team’s historic home. Various elected officials are expected to join George Steinbrenner, the team’s principal owner, at a ceremony today signifying the start of construction.

“The courts have now ruled that the review process was thorough and complete,” said Randy Levine, president of the Yankees. “We’re excited to be breaking ground for what we think will be the best stadium in the country.”

Opponents of the project will also be on hand. “We’ll be out there demonstrating,” said Joyce Hogi, a member of Save Our Parks, who lives nearby. “We need to let people know how their rights have been trampled on. There’s nowhere else they can get the kind of economic bonanza they have in the Bronx. But the Yankees have not always been good neighbors.”

Save Our Parks, a community group, and a number of environmental organizations objected to plans to eliminate most of the popular Macombs Dam and Mullaly Parks and replace them with smaller parks scattered across the neighborhood. Some of the new parks, as well as ball fields, a running track and basketball courts, would be built on the roofs of new garages for stadium parking.

Save Our Parks had unsuccessfully sought an injunction barring construction, saying that the city’s environmental review failed to gauge the true impact of the new stadium on the neighborhood parks, open spaces and schoolchildren. The group also objected to plans to remove 377 mature shade trees from one of the poorest communities in the city.

“We’re not opposed to the Yankees having a new stadium,” Ms. Hogi said. “We always felt they could have done better by the community by reaching out and getting input into how they were proceeding with their plan.”

But Justice Herman Kahn [sic] of State Supreme Court refused to issue an injunction, saying the city would replace 22.42 acres of lost parkland with new parks totaling 24.56 acres.

Some contend, however, that the city isn’t actually getting all that much extra parkland in return:

“The judge just accepted their word on everything,” complained Geoffrey Croft, president of NYC Park Advocates. “But these guys haven’t been telling the truth.”

In his opinion, [Manhattan State Supreme Court Judge Herman] Cahn also repeats the city’s contention that the community will get 2.14 acres more than it is losing in the stadium swap. But Croft claims that calculation includes existing parkland and paved walkways. He points to the state’s application to convert the parkland, which claims the new waterfront park will be 6.42 acres. “But 1.37 of those acres are underwater,” Croft said.

*How fast? Wasn’t this announced just last June? What is taking the Mets so long?