What Else, October in New York

You wouldn’t believe the storm that blew into New York on Saturday. Noah would shudder, ships’ captains would pray. A blustery nor’easter, the kind of weather that sank the Hesperus, flooded subways, turned umbrellas inside out, outed power, soaked street people to the skin and put the 1996 World Series on indefinite hold.

But for championship-starved Yankee fans, not ordinarily the most patient of God’s children, what’s another day? They had already waited 15 years for this great moment, for the World Series to be coming back to where it belonged.

It has been off sojourning in the sticks long enough--in Canada, of all places, south of the Mason-Dixon Line, the Pacific littoral, these upstart hey-Rube! territories, roaming the hinterlands, avoiding the Palace.

But the World Series is back on Broadway. It has returned to its roots at long last.

It’s fitting. The World Series does belong in Yankee Stadium at that. It’s like Caruso singing at the Met, John Wayne saving the fort, Redford getting the girl, Gene Kelly in the rain, Nureyev at the Bolshoi, Heifetz at Carnegie.

The World Series and Yankee Stadium are synonymous. They go together like apple pie and ice cream, coffee and doughnuts, rice and beans.

Know how many times the World Series has been in Yankee Stadium? Well, 32 is all. No other team can make that statement. In fact, that’s 32 times since its first one in 1923. But that’s nothing. Before the drought, the World Series had been in Yankee Stadium 31 times between 1923 and 1981. That was 31 times in 58 years. Better than an average of a World Series every other year.

It was the flagship of baseball. It brought the game kicking and screaming into the 20th Century. It was the first ballpark to draw more than a million customers, then it was the first to draw more than 2 million.

It was the fountainhead of the game. If you didn’t do it in Yankee Stadium, you didn’t do it.

There was Ruth. There was Gehrig. Yogi. The great DiMag. Mickey Mantle. The gods of the game. They played a game no one else could play. They didn’t play for the standings, they played for history. They clinched pennants by the second week in September. They won World Series four straight by scores like 18-4, 12-6, 13-5, 16-3. They toyed with the opposition. Foes would melt down just watching them take batting practice.

Their exploits challenged the poets of game. They even awed the knights of the press. The keyboards pounded out the hyperbole. Yankees were not mere mortals, they were “Sultans of Swat,” “Iron Horses,” “Yankee Clippers.” They not only ruled baseball, they owned it. Their run-of-the-mill players were royalty. “Poosh Em Up” Tony Lazzeri, “Ol’ Reliable” Tommy Henrich. Lefty Gomez was “Goofy Gomez,” Reggie Jackson became “Mr. October.” The tabloids needed shorthand; so he became “Jax” as in “Jax Hax Nix Sox.” Every New Yorker knew whom they were talking about.

They ran roughshod over rivals. They didn’t stage games, they gave recitals. Their World Series were as one-sided as lynchings. They were haughty, arrogant. They were also good. Of their 32 Yankee Stadium pennants, 23 were world championships.

Like proper royalty, they honor their ancestry. They’re the only team to have monuments in center field to immortalize their past. Babe Ruth will always be in a Yankee outfield.

They were symbols of nonchalant perfection. For foes, their stadium was Dracula’s castle. No team came into it without a clutch in the throat, a sweating in the palms, a fear in the eyes. As if they saw a statue’s eyes move.

It had a mystique about it that transcended a mere game. Whether you rooted for or against them, you were aware you were in a cathedral of sport.

Things began to go wrong with free agency. It wasn’t supposed to be that way. People thought free agency would make New York stronger and stronger. The Yankees had more money, more clout, more history than any team in the game. Who wouldn’t want to be a Yankee?

Lots of people, it turned out. At first, the Yankees cashed in. They got Catfish Hunter and Reggie Jackson, but after that they got players who couldn’t have made their Newark farm team in the old days.

It turned out the playing field had been leveled for them. The old Yankees were better off under the reserve clause. They had money when no one else did. In 1934, they drew more people to one doubleheader at the Stadium than the rival St. Louis Browns drew all season. The Yankees always prevailed in the countinghouse.

Free agency turned Yankee Stadium from the cathedral of the game to just another stop on the road trip. The Yankees had stars--but not nine of them. Pitchers had a rest stop in the middle of a Yankee lineup for the first time.

They had the town to themselves when they tore down Ebbets Field and the Polo Grounds and the Dodgers and the Giants opened the West. They grew to find out like Macy’s and Gimbel’s, why a store on another corner didn’t hurt but helped the business.

So, the World Series disappeared from Yankee Stadium. For 15 long years it was just a haunted house in the Bronx in October with only memories--like an aging dowager consulting her faded dance cards. Its great time of the year was an old-timers’ game, not a World Series.

But now, the old girl is back. The red, white and blue bunting festoons the seats and the familiar metal overhangs, a pennant flutters in the breeze and the growl of the Yankee fan is heard again in the land. The fans have been waiting a generation. They’re ready. They’re antagonizers again, not agonizers. “Call yerself a pitcher, Maddux?! You couldn’t tie Whitey Ford’s shoelaces! Come on, Bernie! Outta the lot! That’s only Maddux out there. He’s got nuthin!”

It’s Yankee Stadium again and it must be October.

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Schedule

TODAY--Atlanta (Smoltz, 24-8) at New York (Pettitte, 21-8), 4:30 p.m.

MONDAY--Atlanta (Maddux, 15-11) at New York (Key, 12-11), 4:15 p.m.

TUESDAY--New York (Cone, 7-2) at Atlanta (Glavine, 15-10), 5:15 p.m.

WEDNESDAY--New York (Rogers, 12-8) at Atlanta (Neagle, 16-9), 5:15 p.m.

*THURSDAY--at Atlanta, 5:15 p.m.

*SATURDAY--at New York, 5 p.m.

*OCT. 27--at New York, 4:30 p.m.

All games on Channel 11; *--If necessary