Loyal N.Y. Baseball Fans Losing Sleep

The World Series this year between the Yankees and the Mets again illustrates the difference between living on the East and West coasts: A lot.

Game 1, which the Yankees won in the 12th inning, 4-3, ended after 1 a.m. (local time) Sunday morning. Game 2, also won by the Yankees, 6-5, flirted with midnight. The games started a little after 8 p.m.

Games 3 and 4 were more of the same. More midnights, more bloodshot eyeballs, more cursing at time-consuming pitching changes, especially on Wednesday night, when Yankee Manager Joe Torre used David Cone to throw to one batter (although it was Mike Piazza--you Dodger fans remember him, don’t you?). Is it just me or have New Yorkers been walking around in a fog the past few days?

I stayed up to watch the first game with my father-in-law--this is in suburban New Jersey--losing along the way my wife, my mother-in-law, my wife’s niece, and finally my brother-in-law, who bagged it after the ninth inning, when the Yankees tied the game but failed to push across the winning run.

Smart guy. He would have watched, with mounting frustration, virtually the same scenario play out in the 10th and 11th innings. Being a Yankee fan (well, I have money on them), I should have taken a perverse pleasure in their inability to score in scoring situations, but the end, when it finally came in the 12th, was a mercy, like dying after a long illness. Not exactly the way one should view a baseball game.

Before the second game, I made a vow not to make the same mistake, a vow I could keep because I was watching this one by myself. I saw Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens throw the bat at (or in the direction of) Mets catcher Piazza in the first inning--how long did that take?--and then settle in for an entertaining display of power pitching. Clemens was like a weed whacker, mowing Mets down with his fastball and slider.

But my pleasure came at a price: He was throwing a lot of pitches. His opposite number, Mets pitcher Mike Hampton, was throwing a lot of pitches too, although for different reasons: He was having control problems. I should have been thrilled at that, because his wildness led to bases on balls and Yankee runs. But I wasn’t enjoying anything, neither Clemens’ mastery nor Hampton’s struggles, because I was concerned about the time it was taking to see it.

The more pitches, good and bad, the longer the game and the later it would be. I went to bed at the end of the eighth inning, around 11:20, with the Yankees in the lead and Clemens on the bench with a stiff back. (I would have stayed up had he pitched the ninth.)

The Mets touched up Yankee relievers Jeff Nelson and Mariano Rivera for five runs in the top of the ninth and darn near won it. I found this out only the next morning because of my principled stand against being dragged kicking and screaming into the wee hours of the morning.

No doubt people in L.A. will weep crocodile tears reading this. While we in New York don’t get any sleep, at least we’re at the center of the baseball universe. But imagine how unfair it would be if there were a Freeway Series (between the Dodgers and the Angels). Not only would you be the center of that universe, you’d still be awake to see it.

I don’t know if there is any resentment here about the fact that the starting times are dictated by rush hour on the Santa Monica Freeway, but if there isn’t, it’s only because New Yorkers don’t know what the Santa Monica Freeway is. They probably think it’s in Santa Monica.

I know because I used to live in L.A. Having lived on both coasts, I can testify to the fact that the difference between the two goes beyond weather and culture. For sports fans, there’s a completely different rhythm to weekends and weeknights, especially Monday.

“Monday Night Football” starts at 9 p.m. here, and the second half of the average game doesn’t begin until 10:30 or 11. Forget it. It’s an issue that transcends “Monday Night” announcer Dennis Miller. Even he can’t keep us awake, either as an irritant or a stimulant.

“Monday Night Football” is by no means the only culprit. During the baseball and basketball seasons, games on the West Coast don’t start for us until 10 p.m. For this reason, the existence of the Lakers is strictly word of mouth, a rumor, because few of us here actually see them play, even on television, at least until the playoffs roll around. And then we watch them with curiosity and a sense of deprivation, in the same way that Iron Curtain countries tuned in Western European television and saw what they were missing.

We are prisoners of our time zone. Until recently, this tyranny extended to print coverage of sporting events as well, particularly for the “newspaper of record,” the New York Times. If there was a late game, the most you could expect were stories anticipating the game. The sports section would be in bed, where the rest of us were.

Now, through the miracle of technology, and probably accompanied by mixed feelings from sportswriters, the newspaper is able to report last night’s scores no matter how late they are. The ironic consequence of this is that there’s even less reason to stay up and actually watch it.

The only time this hegemony of the clock breaks down is during weekends. Baseball, golf and football all come on at more reasonable hours. There’s just something more fitting about seeing Tiger Woods steamroll the field in the waning hours of the day rather than at 3 in the afternoon on the West Coast. And it’s definitely easier to get into the football mind-set at 1 p.m. on Sunday, when the first game kicks off, rather than at 10 a.m. PDT, when you’re still trying to come to terms with the night before or the workweek before.

But these weekend advantages are more a matter of comfort (1 p.m. football) than of pain (1 a.m. baseball).

The West Coast still has it over the East Coast when it comes to actually having your eyeballs open. Some of this is just the way it is. It would be unreasonable to ask the Lakers to play the Knicks at 4 or 5 in the afternoon--or, more to the point, ask their fans to make it to Staples Center at that ungodly hour.

The World Series, on the other hand, because it is more special than a regular-season game, requires special dispensation. I know this point has been made before, but this year’s series makes it worth making again: Play the games during the day. During the week, both East and West coasts will be inconvenienced equally. And on weekends, everybody will get to see it.

If I have to look at one more 5-year-old staring blankly at the field, too tired to know or care about what he’s seeing, I’m going to go to bed.