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By MARC TOPKIN and Times wire reports
© St. Petersburg Times, published October 24, 2000
Word on the street
As if the tabloids need help stirring up a controversy. On Sunday, they got it. Think this'll be brought up again if the Series reaches Game 6, and Roger Clemens pitches again?
Having the games in New York not only puts celebrities in the stands, but leads to an array of national anthem singers. The pop group 'N Sync will perform tonight, and Sheryl Crow is scheduled for Wednesday.
With Sunday's game ending at a decent hour, the Daily News expanded its morning-after coverage to 32 pages. There were 35 game-related stories, including a first-person diary by Mets first baseman Todd Zeile and a piece on people who didn't care about baseball. The New York Post offered its standard 24-page package.
Apparently it was very important to Yankees owner George Steinbrenner that the bald eagle Challenger continue to fly to the pitcher's mound before post-season games at Yankee Stadium. So much so that Steinbrenner reportedly arranged for a jet to fly the bird, and its support staff, to Minnesota for a previously scheduled appearance at the Vikings game, then back to New York for Sunday's game, with a police escort from New Jersey's Teterboro Airport to the stadium.
The Mets-Yankees rivalry may be a little too hot for a Staten Island family who had a Mets logo painted on their front lawn. Sometime after Saturday's game, vandals poured gasoline on the grass and lit it on fire.
John Koslik was late to his job at the Commodities Exchange on Monday but he had a good excuse: He was at Game 2 of the World Series and didn't get home to Valley Stream until 4 a.m.
"I wouldn't have missed it for anything," said a tired Koslik, decked out in a Yankees hat and warmup jacket on his way to work Monday. "Most of my voice is gone but I can live with that as long as they won."
Yankees fans were smiling after their team took a 2-0 lead on the Mets in the Subway Series.
But fans of both teams could be forgiven for stifling a yawn if they stayed up to watch the games. Saturday's 12-inning affair lasted nearly five hours while Sunday's game took up a more modest three and a half hours. With the games starting after 8 p.m., many New Yorkers are staying up past their bedtime.