Yankees? Mets? Yo! This series is heated

Ex-New Yorkers have some strong passions about their teams as they begin the Subway Series tonight.

By ERIC STIRGUS

© St. Petersburg Times, published October 21, 2000

Tom Hiotis eagerly took a break from his job as cook at New York Bagel Boys to explain why it is better to be a Met fan than root for those damn Yankees.

[Times photo: Scott Keeler] Richard Leone, owner of Leone's Pizza & Italian Eatery in Clearwater, talks to a customer Friday. He's a Mets supporter.

"They seemed to have a lot more charisma and still do," explained Hiotis, 39, who was born in the Bronx, raised on Long Island and became a Met convert when, at the tender age of 9, his team won the '69 World Series.

His boss, Irving Poznick, whispered words of caution as Hiotis' teetered atop his soap box.

"Keep in mind when you talk to a Met fan, believe only one-half of what you hear," said Poznick, 64, a lifelong Yankee fan who moved from New York City to Tarpon Springs with his wife, Joan, 11 years ago. "Fuhgedaboudit!"

For transplanted New Yorkers, tonight's first game of the World Series is like the first bite of your favorite dessert: nirvana.

"Whoo!" yelled out Brooklyn-born Richie Leone, whose Italian restaurant on Drew Street in Clearwater is covered in photos of the New York skyline and a framed poster of the 1955 Brooklyn Dodgers.

Dubbed the Subway Series, this matchup isn't short on bragging. Poznick, for one, makes deliveries in a Yankee cap. But it's not just any cap; the interlocking, battery-powered "NY" blinks.

The series has others reliving childhood memories, of family ballpark outings, of majestic New York City. With reverence, these fans talk of handing down their love of team as if it were an heirloom.

"I'm going to pass along the tradition to her," Met fan Daphne Cimmino, 33, said clutching the shoulder's of her 14-year-old daughter, Jessica.

Terry Torney, 58, grew up in Queens and now lives in Palm Harbor. He still remembers watching Brooklyn Dodger games with his dad from the $2 bleacher seats. When the Dodgers left for L.A., Torney, like many Brooklyn fans, switched his allegiance to the Mets. He frequently vacations in the Big Apple with his two children, who love the subways.

Why so many trips to New York? It links his kids to their roots the same way immigrants did when they took their young to the old country.

"I guess I do it subconsciously," he said.

Although no one keeps precise statistics, it's clear more than a few New Yorkers now call Pinellas County home. In 1997, for example, just over 3,000 people who had filed income taxes in New York did so the following year in Pinellas. That's twice as many as the number of people from Ohio, which placed second in the analysis by the University of Florida.

New Yorkers, and by extension, this series, are not without critics. You can hear their voices on talk radio, or see their faces on television. They toss about words like "rude," "pushy," "arrogant," when describing those from New York. For them, the series adds fuel to their contempt.

Greg Henson, a 46-year-old Pinellas sheriff's corrections supervisor born in Queens who moved to Clearwater in 1981, has heard it before. The longtime Yankee fan defends New York and its denizens.

"They don't know," Henson, who came by Leone's restaurant to pick up dinner, said of the critics. "They're just ignorant."

Henson and Leone then wrangled over the series.

Leone had the last word.

"Mets in five," he said. "You heard it here first."

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