What exit? Yes, It’s the Jersey Turnpike World Series!

1985: The Cardinals and the Royals meet in an all-Missouri matchup, and it’s the I-70 World Series.

1989: The Giants and Athletics endure an earthquake to play in the Bay Bridge Series.

2000: The Bronx Bombers rumble with the Metropolitans of Queens in an all-NYC Subway Series.

This is 2009, Yankees versus Phillies, and there’s only one possible name for it: The Jersey Turnpike World Series!

It’s time the Garden State gets its due with a World Series of its own. New Jersey connects Manhattan’s George Washington Bridge in the north to Philadelphia’s Ben Franklin Bridge in the south. In between, millions of baseball fans from area codes 201, 609, 732, 908, 973, et al. are passionate the Yankees, Phillies or (rarely) both. From the Delaware Water Gap to Cape May, the people of New Jersey will be watching these games intently.

So come on, America. Recognize this series for what it is: A celebration of New Jersey!

For most of us, it’s ‘Wait Until Next Year’

Playoffs notwithstanding, for most baseball fans today is the first day of the long winter. The season is over, the concession stands are empty, the lockerrooms bare as the players have packed up to go fishing or hunting or whatever they do in the off-season.

For followers of the Chicago Cubs, the Cleveland Indians, the Kansas City Royals, the Pittsburgh Pirates, the San Francisco Giants, another year has passed without post-season play. We small- and mid-market fans will watch glumly as the Cardinals, Dodgers, Phillies, Rockies, Angels, Red Sox, Yankees and Tigers or Twins stretch their seasons.

For those teams, hope remains for October glory, a pennant, a World Series champagne spray. But for most of us — like this crushed Cubs fan — our refrain is “Wait until next year.”

Spring training can’t come soon enough.

Caps off to The Captain, Derek Jeter, on tying Lou Gehrig’s hit mark

Jeter and Gehrig, the spirit of the Yankees

It took me a while to appreciate the greatness of Derek Jeter, who tonight in New York tied Lou Gehrig for a record 2,721 hits in a Yankees’ uniform. He’ll undoubtedly break the record in the next few games, and I hope he keeps on swinging until he reaches 3,000 hits.

For most of my life, the Yankees were the enemy, bullies in high-priced pinstripes beating up on teams from the small markets where I happened to live – Cleveland, Seattle, Oakland. They even tormented me in Omaha, where the Kansas City Royals have kept their Class A farm club for many years.

From the hinterlands I had caught Jeter on TV, and he was no doubt a quality ballplayer. But I didn’t watch him regularly. Then I transferred to Midtown Manahttan and lived nearby. Slowly, inevitably, I was drawn in by the Yankees’ tractor beam pulsing from the South Bronx. At first, Paul O’Neill was my favorite Yankee, and when he moved on I got behind Jorge Posada.

Over the years, I started noticing Jeter more and more. I managed to miss the spectacular play he made along the first base line in a 2001 playoff game against Oakland, impossibly intercepting an errant outfield throw and flinging the ball to Posada at the plate to cut down Jeremy Giambi. But there was a night a year or two later when the Yankees were playing the Red Sox. Jeter went tearing after a pop foul and speared it as he tumbled into the first row of seats. Watching the game in our basement family room, my younger son and I looked at each other wide-eyed, knowing we’d just seen something exceptional.

In career of exceptional achievement, Jeter is having one of his best years in 2009. Hats off the Yankee captain, who is worthy of the accolades and superlatives accorded him.

Love those throwback uniforms!

I always get a charge out of the games in which major league ball clubs wear “throwback” uniforms, such as the Pittsburgh Pirates did last night. The Pirates wore the uniforms of the Homestead Grays in defeating the Kansas City Royals, who were wearing Kansas City Monarchs uniforms. Virgil Vasquez (in photo) sports a Grays cap as he delivers a pitch.

There was one strange experiment a few years back in which major league teams wore so-called “uniforms of the future,” and I can recall pictures of the Oakland Athletics in jerseys with quirky sans-serif script that looked like it was out of “Blade Runner.” Better that the teams stick to the throwbacks.

The Yankees as Evil Empire

For days I’ve been putting off this post, but with news of the Tigers trading Pudge Rodriguez to the New York Yankees, I can hold out no longer.

The Yankees are the Evil Empire of baseball, an eternal force against which all others must contend. The Yanks are the archetype of the invincible. If they didn’t exist, we’d have to invent them.

At right is the Yankees helmet my son picked up as a freebie on helmet day at the Big Stadium in the Bronx. It was a day game in 2003, and the Kansas City Royals crushed the Yankees 15-3 or something close to that.

With a pair of free tickets in hand, we took the No. 4 train from Midtown to the ballpark, a total urban experience. I’ve driven to plenty of ballgames and hiked in from parking lots, but for me nothing beats the thrill of riding a train or subway packed with fans to and from the game.

Having spent a good five years working at Rockefeller Center, I’ve soaked up thousands of tabloid baseball headlines on the backs of the Daily News and New York Post. Over the years I’ve formed temporary allegiances to the Mets and even rooted for the Yanks, indulging in a healthy respect and admiration for them and their fans, maybe the most passionate in the game.

So any victory against them — and one is never expected — is all the sweeter.

Below is another view of the Yankees batting cap, and I dare anyone not to liken it to the helmet of Darth Vader.