New York Parade a Hit on Broadway

An overflow crowd of New York Yankee fans released 18 years worth of frustration Tuesday in a pinstriped party that stretched from the House that Ruth Built to the Canyon of Heroes.

The crowd was a mix of Little Leaguers and Wall Streeters, die-hard fans and bandwagon-jumpers. Virtually all were decked out in Yankee blue or pinstripes, turning lower Manhattan into an enormous blue and white pep rally.

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani announced 3.5 million people attended the city’s “biggest and grandest parade” ever, an unlikely estimate based more on civic pride than reality.

“No way I would work today,” shouted Pauline Frawley, a Queens nurse who played hooky. “I just wanted to experience the excitement of it. The buzz. It’s absolutely fantastic.”

The parade left Battery Park shortly after 11:30 a.m. EST under sunny skies and temperatures in the 50s and proceeded up Broadway.

Cheers of “Let’s go Yankees” boomed off concrete walls, and people scaled trees and hung from skyscraper windows for a glimpse of the players who ended the longest World Series drought in Yankees’ history.

The players returned the attention. Cecil Fielder, who escaped the last-place Detroit Tigers earlier this season, aimed his video camera at the screaming masses.

The shower of ticker tape--actually shredded phone books, computer printouts and toilet paper--gave way to a City Hall celebration, where each of the team members received a key to the city.

Manager Joe Torre and Wade Boggs told the crowd they had never seen anything like the parade marking the first Yankees’ title since 1978.

“That was the greatest sports spectacle in history,” said Boggs, who was given a mounted police officer’s helmet by police commissioner Howard Safir in tribute to the third baseman’s horse ride through the outfield after the Yankee victory.

“I’ve never been involved in anything close to this parade, this mass of humanity,” said Torre. “This is absolutely spectacular.”

As when the Yankees clinched the title on Saturday night, the crowd was well-behaved.

The throng was packed so deeply in spots along the narrow parade route that some people couldn’t see any of the floats.