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!

 

Cliff Lee warming up

Originally uploaded by DDay209

Fans of the Cleveland Indians (count me among them) will be in a rueful mood when the World Series opens Wednesday night in New York. Not long ago, the starting pitcher for each team sported an Indians’ cap.

Cliff Lee, who gets the start for the Phillies, has put together two consecutive spectacular seasons. I watched him carve up the Athletics at the Oakland Coliseum early in the 2008 season. (The photo shows him warming up in the bullpen before the game.) He was a terrific acquisition by the Phillies this year.

Starting for the Yankees will be C.C. Sabathia, who left Cleveland for Milwaukee late in the 2008 season and dominated for the Yanks this year.

Cleveland fans are accustomed to watching players they’ve seen traded away shine for other teams in the post-season, and the Yankees seem to have benefitted particularly with players like Roger Maris, Graig Nettles and Chris Chambliss.

Perhaps one of these years an ex-Yank or ex-Philly will make a difference for the Tribe.

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.

A tip of the cap and a deep bow to the honorable Ichiro Suzuki, who struck his 2,000th major-league hit this afternoon in Oakland. Those hits came after the 1,278 hits he had playing in Japan before crossing the Pacific to play for the Mariners.

Ichiro’s accomplishments are remarkable. Statistically, he’s one of the greatest hitters ever. Even more, he fully opened up the game to players from Asia. Yes, there had been Japanese players before him, but Ichiro has proven irrefutably that a Japanese player can be a superstar in the great American pastime. The game and the world are better for it.

As I write this post, the New York Yankees are playing the Athletics in Oakland. It’s a fair bet that the Yankees will draw more cheers than the A’s, a common occurrence when the Yanks play on the road. The Yankees have been so dominant for so long that no other team approaches their influence on baseball and on American culture.

Above is an image of two of the greatest Yankees, Lou Gehrig and Babe Ruth. They’re sporting classic Yankees caps with the intertwined “N” and “Y,” one of the most iconic images in all of sport. That ligature symbolizes what for decades has been the Yankee ethic of professionalism, superb skill applied diligently without pretension or showboating. It’s DiMaggio smacking a home run, circling the bases in workmanlike fashion, crossing the plate and heading straight to the dugout. It’s Jeter streaking to the sidelines and tumbling into the seats to snare a pop foul, then trotting resolutely back onto the diamond to signal “two outs, let’s get this next batter.”

No pointing to the sky.  No flashy hand-slapping routine between the plate and the dugout. No facial hair.

No matter what team you root for, like it or not, we Americans are known to the rest of the world as Yankees. For its simple, direct, unequivocal statement of Yankees baseball, I award the Yankees cap my highest rating, five.

I spent the day with my son and two of his friends at the Great America theme park in Santa Clara, Calif. While I joined the guys for several rides, I sat a few out and amused myself by taking inventory of the baseball caps people in the crowd were sporting.

As the San Francisco “Don’t Even Think About Moving Here, Athletics” Giants will unequivocally tell you, Santa Clara County is Giants’ territory. So it wasn’t a surprise that I spotted more orange and black caps than any other.  But it was nothing close to even 10 percent of all the caps on display.

The cap that most got my attention was a green Giants cap not unlike the one depicted, only the crown was spangled with glitter and the word “FRISCO” was emblazoned across the back. If San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen weren’t already dead, this cap surely would have killed him.

There were other colorful variations on Major League Baseball caps, such as a red, white and navy Oakland A’s lid on a guy ahead of me in a roller coaster queue. Another guy had a Yankees cap the color of lima beans with white piping (which actually was kind of cool).

I didn’t count, but the team most represented after the Giants and A’s was the Pittsburgh Pirates. The yellow-on-black “P” cap seems to resonate with young men.

After that, it was a mish-mosh of sox (Red and White), Yankees, Phillies, Nationals, even a Tampa Bay Rays cap. One Cubs cap, too, come to think of it.

Refreshingly, I didn’t see a single Dodgers cap all day.

The only question about Rickey Henderson entering the Baseball Hall of Fame is whether the engraver can catch him to record his image on his bronze enshrinement plaque. Henderson was the ultimate leadoff hitter in his brilliant career, stealing more bases than anyone in the history of the game.

I was lucky enough to be at County Stadium in Milwaukee during the summer of 1982 on the night he tied Lou Brock’s single-season stolen base record. I was running film for the Associated Press photo crew that night. Henderson wasn’t able to break the record that evening, and I was all charged up to go back the next night, which happened to be my 26th birthday. But the boss said no, they had enough help. I was crushed, and left the bureau in a foul mood. When I arrived home, I walked into a surprise birthday party that my wife and the bureau chief had arranged. All was forgiven, and it wasn’t long before the stadium darkroom called to tell me that Rickey had swiped another base and broke Brock’s record.

Late in Henderson’s career, I saw him play for the Newark Bears in the Atlantic League. In a game against the Somerset Patriots in Bridgewater, N.J., we were near the Bears’ dugout when an ump threw Henderson out of the game for mouthing off about a call he didn’t like. That competitive fire always burned in Henderson.

I saw Jim Rice play many times against the Indians in the old Cleveland Municipal Stadium and a couple times at Fenway Park in Boston while I was in college nearby. Rice only played for the Sox, so he’ll have a Boston cap on his plaque. I don’t know for certain how Henderson will be depicted, but for me, there’s no question: He goes with an Athletics cap.

Inspired by a few trips to the betting window over the years, I’ve developed a system of rating how good a sports day I’ve had. To hit the daily double, my two favorite teams – the Cleveland Indians and San Francisco Giants – must win. That happens fairly often (although the Tribe didn’t exactly give me great odds during the first half of the season).

To hit a trifecta, the Tribe and Giants must win – and the Los Angeles Dodgers must lose.

For a superfecta: all of the above plus victory by the baseball teams next nearest to my heart, the Milwaukee Brewers and Oakland Athletics.

The parimutuel concept probably struck me in college, about the time I went to my first horse race. That was the 1976 Preakness at Pimlico in Baltimore. (I had bets on four of the horses in the field of six; neither won or placed.)

During college football season, the main components in my calculus were Ohio State winning and Michigan losing. Eventually, I added USC victories and Notre Dame losses to the formula.

In pro football, a Browns’ victory paired with a Steelers loss was extremely satisfying. Nowadays, my daily double is a San Francisco 49ers victory paired with a Dallas Cowboys loss. I’ll include the occasional (and I do mean occasional) Oakland Raiders victory  and a Steelers loss for good measure.

In September, when football and baseball seasons overlap, I can have either a mighty fine weekend or a miserable one, depending on the fortunes of the Indians, Giants, Buckeyes and Niners.

As for October, my baseball teams are usually watching the Yankees, Cardinals and Dodgers along with everybody else. But one can dream.

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.

I’m on vacation for a week, and I celebrated by watching the San Francisco Giants host the Oakland Athletics in their first interleague games of the season.

I wish I had one of those A’s-Giants combo caps that were available during the 1989 Bay Bridge World Series, the one that was interrupted by the Loma Prieta Earthquake.  A good friend back east still has his, but I can’t even find a photo of one. This ersatz Giants’ cap in the A’s green and gold will have to do.

The San Francisco Bay area is the only market where a twin logo cap could exist. In New York, would any fan of either the Yankees or Mets want to share space on the crown with the other team’s NY? No way.

In Chicago, would a Cubs or Sox fan tolerate such? Never.

In LA? Angels and Dodgers together? Inconceivable.

Around San Francisco Bay, fans have fierce allegiance to their team, but it’s a market that appreciates both franchises. I take the twin logo cap as a signal that Bay Area people are true fans of the game, recognizing the value of both the American and National leagues.

(The Giants won tonight on a 3-0 shutout by Tim Lincecum. I was rooting for the Giants.)