NEW YORK’S FINEST

They don’t call Cinergy Field baseball’s Cathedral, and they don’t record songs called “Joltin’ Joe Carter,” and they don’t make movies called “Pride of the Astros,” and they don’t stage plays called “Damn Mariners.”

If they’re going to glorify baseball, they’re not going to make it anywhere; they’re going to make it in New York, and with very good reason: The Yankees are the most successful, most tradition-filled and most decorated franchise in professional sports.

They will be going for their 24th championship when they open the World Series against the San Diego Padres in Yankee Stadium tonight, four days after beating the Cleveland Indians for their 35th American League pennant.

Only one other franchise in the four major professional sports, the NHL’s Montreal Canadiens, can even approach the Yankees’ track record, having won 23 Stanley Cups--at least one in every decade dating to the 1917-18 season in 32 trips to the finals.

The Boston Celtics, who have won 16 championships, and the Lakers, who have won 11 titles in Minneapolis and Los Angeles, are the class of the NBA, and the NFL’s Dallas Cowboys and San Francisco 49ers have each won five Super Bowls.

But how many times have you heard someone called the “Bill Russell of Soccer,” or the “Guy Lafleur of Football,” or the “Joe Montana of Hockey”?

When you’re the best, you’re called the “Babe Ruth of” whatever you’re the best at, because it was the former Yankee slugger who was considered the ultimate professional athlete, the benchmark for a nation that adores its sports heroes.

And that’s how the Yankees have always thought of themselves--as the team that sets the standard by which others are measured.

“When you go to other parks, they hang banners for winning the wild card or for being East or West division champions,” Yankee designated hitter Chili Davis said. “Around here, they don’t hang anything unless it’s for being world champions.”

It has been this way since then-Yankee owner Jacob Ruppert got Ruth from the Boston Red Sox for $120,000 in 1920, a move that helped transform a fledgling franchise in the nation’s fastest-growing city into a dynasty.

Ruth, who hit 714 home runs, led New York to its first World Series title in 1923, and the Yankees went on to win 16 World Series championships in 27 years from 1936 through ‘62, including five in a row from 1949 through ’53.

Ruth was the first Yankee to be inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame, the charter member of a pinstriped pack that would also include the likes of Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra and Reggie Jackson. But this was not a franchise built on superstars alone.

“There wasn’t ever a point when they were rebuilding,” said Bill Rigney, who played with the New York Giants from 1946 to ’53 and managed the Giants from 1956 to ’60. “When Frank Crosetti couldn’t play shortstop anymore, Phil Rizzuto was ready to step in. When DiMaggio had to step aside in center field, what do you know, Mantle was right there.

“And they always got key players when they needed them. They picked up Enos Slaughter [in 1954] and he helped them win two titles [in 1956 and ‘58], and one year [1949] they got Johnny Mize just to pinch-hit. He had some great seasons and helped them win five World Series titles.”

To keep pace with the Brooklyn Dodgers in player development, the Yankees fielded as many as 18 minor league teams, and with no amateur draft, they had the resources to offer bigger signing bonuses and the tradition to attract the best players.

“If you had a choice between Cincinnati and New York, you signed with the Yankees,” Rigney said. “But they also had shrewd men handling contracts and a great scouting department.”

And, just like George Steinbrenner’s Yankees of today, they were filthy rich compared to the competition.

“You look at their dollars and match them against everyone else’s dollars,” said Sparky Anderson, former manager of Cincinnati and Detroit. “Ruth got $80,000, and he was the first guy to get that kind of money. They’ve always been one of the top three in payrolls.”

As the Yankees’ reputation grew, so did resentment outside New York.

“They were like U.S. Steel,” Rigney said. “Everyone didn’t like them, but you respected what they did.”

Added Anderson: “It was like Muhammad Ali, you either loved them or you hated them. But that’s what makes them so good. You can’t really say that about any other team.”

Add to that reputation the Yankee uniform and logo, the pinstripes and the interlocking “NY” that is the most recognizable insignia in sports, a combination that has remained essentially unchanged since 1911.

And Yankee Stadium, the 75-year-old jewel that may be aging--a 500-pound steel joint fell from the third deck to the middle deck last April--and outdated, but still gives players and fans the chills.

There’s the distinctive facade rimming the top of the upper deck in the outfield, and Monument Park, where all the Yankee greats are enshrined beyond the center-field wall, and the daily video board clips of Gehrig’s “I am the luckiest man on the face of the earth” speech, and the subway trains rumbling behind the right-field bleachers, and the beautiful, baritone voice of public-address announcer Bob Sheppard.

“It’s neat walking out of that tunnel and into Yankee Stadium,” said Yankee right fielder Paul O’Neill, “and knowing you play the same position Babe Ruth played.”

The sum of it all: There is more tradition in this park than the other 29 combined.

“Going into Yankee Stadium is like playing a good golf course, like Cypress Point in Monterey,” Rigney said. “It’s so pretty, you better play well, because the course demands it.”

That’s the one pitfall of being a Yankee. The stadium and franchise have so much history and tradition, and expectations are so high, that it can be a burden for some.

“The Yankees are competing against their past success, and sometimes that’s the worst opponent you can have,” said Laker Executive Vice President Jerry West, who played for and helped assemble the Laker championship teams in L.A.

“They’re competing against the tradition of Ruth, Gehrig, DiMaggio, Mantle and [Roger] Maris. People have long memories when you have a storied franchise, and when you lose, you’re held to a different degree of accountability.”

Included in the Yankee pressure package is a tabloid-driven press in the media capital of the world, where newspapers compete for the most outrageous back-page headlines and where virtually every New York-area paper has not only a Yankee beat writer but a baseball columnist--a writer whose primary job is to opine about the Yankees and Mets all season.

The Yankees have the most demanding fans in baseball, a hard-core following that knows the game and reveres the home team but will not hesitate to jeer a Yankee who has betrayed them with a lack of effort or a mental gaffe.

Just ask Yankee second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who was viciously booed after he chose to argue with an umpire instead of chasing an errant throw while Cleveland scored the eventual winning run in Game 2 of the AL championship series.

And who could forget: The Yankees have the most hands-on owner in pro sports in Steinbrenner, a bundle of emotions and opinions who is given to frequent outbursts and knee-jerk reactions in the clubhouse and in the press, but whose desire to win is equal to or greater than that of any Yankee player or coach.

“They expect a lot from you here, guys who come here want to prove they can play here and you get fired up when you’re expected to win every night,” Yankee first baseman Tino Martinez said. “It makes you concentrate and play better on those Tuesday nights against the last-place team.”

Not everyone has thrived in this setting. Pitcher Kenny Rogers was a bust in New York but pitched extremely well in Oakland this season after being traded to the Athletics. Former San Diego pitcher Ed Whitson wilted in New York after the Yankees signed him as a free agent before the 1985 season. Players such as Jackson and current shortstop Derek Jeter love the atmosphere.

“You can feel a different level of intensity at games here,” said Davis, who is completing his first season as a Yankee. “Even after we clinched the division [in early September], people wanted us to go for the record [for most wins in a season].

“The fans, the media, George, Joe [Torre, Yankee manager] . . . they don’t allow you to let up. There’s a level of performance that is demanded, and you have to be at the top of your game every day. If you’re not, they’ll put someone else out there.”

This has a familiar ring to Bernard Brisset, the vice president of communications for the Montreal Canadiens and a former newspaper writer who covered the team from 1973 to ’84.

Some 20-30 members of the media attend Montreal’s practices every day. The Canadiens have such a rabid following that after star player Maurice Richard was suspended for the entire postseason for pushing a referee in 1955, fans started a riot in Montreal.

“That’s how involved people are here with the hockey team,” Brisset said. “You can only play 100%, full speed, because they won’t accept a low-quality performance. If you don’t play your best, people would force management to trade you.”

Brisset said he recalls players who performed better once they got to Montreal. Frank Mahovlich, a former Toronto and Detroit left winger who helped Montreal win two Stanley Cups in the early 1970s, comes to mind.

“Wearing the Canadien jersey is like magic in hockey,” Brisset said. “Saturday night games are broadcast across Canada. It’s a religion, part of the social tissue of the country. It’s like the Yankees. Watching them reminds me of the great Canadien teams of the 1970s.”

The Yankees have baseball’s most lucrative local television contract, a 12-year, $460-million package that has allowed them to maintain one of baseball’s highest payrolls.

The rich, it seems, just keep getting richer.

But is that such a bad thing?

“The aura of the Yankees never ceases, and I hope it continues,” Rigney said. “We need auras. Is there one in Cincinnati? No. Is there one in Philadelphia? No. The Yankees may bob and weave every now and then, they may stumble some years, but they always seem to get back on track again.

“There’s a mystique there with that stadium and the history of that franchise from Babe Ruth on, and thank God it never stopped. It gives every other organization something to shoot for.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

Yankees in the World Series

Yankees in it (35 times)

Yankees won it (23 times)

Note: No World Series held in 1904 and 1994

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World Series Appearances

Babe Ruth

1921: Yankees in it

1922: Yankees in it

1923: Yankees won it

1932: Yankees won it

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Lou Gehrig

1926: Yankees in it

1927: Yankees won it

1928: Yankees won it

1932: Yankees won it

1936: Yankees won it

1937: Yankees won it

1938: Yankees won it

***

Joe DiMaggio

1936: Yankees won it

1937: Yankees won it

1938: Yankees won it

1939: Yankees won it

1941: Yankees won it

1942: Yankees in it

1947: Yankees won it

1949: Yankees won it

1950: Yankees won it

1951: Yankees won it

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Mickey Mantle

1951: Yankees won it

1952: Yankees won it

1953: Yankees won it

1955: Yankees in it

1956: Yankees won it

1957: Yankees in it

1958: Yankees won it

1960: Yankees in it

1961: Yankees won it

1962: Yankees won it

1963: Yankees in it

1964: Yankees in it

***

Reggie Jackson

1977: Yankees won it

1978: Yankees won it

1981: Yankees in it

Series Champions

Team No.

New York Yankees: 23

St. Louis Cardinals: 9

Philadelphia/Kansas City/Oakland A’s: 9

Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers: 6

Boston Red Sox: 5

Cincinnati Reds: 5

Pittsburgh Pirates: 5

New York/San Francisco Giants: 5

Detroit Tigers: 4

3--Baltimore Orioles, Washington Senators/Minnesota Twins, Boston/Milwaukee/Atlanta Braves

2--Chicago Cubs, Chicago White Sox, Cleveland Indians, New York Mets, Toronto Blue Jays

1--Florida Marlins, Kansas City Royals, Philadelphia Phillies

GAME 1

San Diego (Kevin Brown, 18-7) at New York (David Wells, 18-4)

5 p.m.

Channel 11

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INSIDE

* PLACE TO BE

Even the San Diego Padres, heavy underdogs against the Yankees, are soaking up the atmosphere of New York. Page 6

* ROSS NEWHAN

San Diego’s Jim Leyritz can get on your nerves, but you want him around if you’re in the playoffs. Page 6