NEW YORK'S FINEST

NEW YORK’S FINEST

By BILL PLASCHKE

Oct. 17, 1998 12 AM PT

NEW YORK — The biggest star in the 94th World Series has a foul mouth, poor hygiene, ragged clothes, no manners.

But what a heart! On a breezy Friday afternoon, stooped Eddie Manheim is standing in that heart, just beyond the center-field fence between the bullpens.

The bleachers above it are cold and hard, but the heart is soft and sweet, with its brick walkways, its green grass, its red and yellow mums.

The people sitting above hurl beer and invective, but the heart is spotless.

There are four shiny bronze monuments here, and 16 shiny bronze plaques, and all stay shiny.

There are retired numbers on a wall, but no graffiti.

People have walked into the heart with a relative’s ashes, spreading them gently across the flower beds at the foot of Casey Stengel, or Mickey Mantle.

People have come here amid 50,000 screaming fans, and whispered.

“To me, to all of us, this spot is like church,” says Manheim, 64.

So it is with great pleasure that on this day before the New York Yankees play the San Diego Padres in a World Series, Manheim sees Greg Booker, Padre bullpen coach, walk slowly into the heart.

In his large hands, the coach holds a tiny camera.

In 24 hours, this place will be Booker’s personal hell, fans showering him and his relievers with nine innings’ worth of vituperation.

But for now, he wants to snap some pictures.

Manheim smiles.

“You see what I mean?” he says.

Beginning tonight, the sports world will also see.

This mix of tradition and terror, of Monument Park and madness, makes Yankee Stadium the best house in baseball.

Wrigley Field and Fenway Park are nice, but inhabited by losers.

Camden Yards is quaint, but it’s a manufactured quaint. Dodger Stadium is pleasant, but it’s a sleepy pleasant.

And Qualcomm Stadium, San Diego’s living tribute to arguably the worst owner in professional football?

Since the NFL-terrorized city filled in the views of surrounding hills with seats to satisfy Alex Spanos, it has all the charm of a suburban strip mall.

Yankee Stadium, bless its beer-drenched heart, is still a street fair.

It is colorful, erratic, and its pulse soon beats in all who pause there.

A subway train rattles overhead. A city park with a nice grass field and two full basketball courts--Yankee backboards and all--is next door.

Across the street is a two-story bowling alley, next to some shuttered windows, next to a darkened bar where empty beer bottles burden the tables in the middle of the afternoon.

In one direction is Manhattan and its millionaires. In the other is the Bronx and its slums.

George Steinbrenner wants to move to a new park in that first direction.

But if that happens, what will become of the pulse? The seats here are cramped and the amenities are few--there even are long lines for the men’s restrooms--but nobody wants to lose that pulse.

“I can’t fathom it at all,” says David Wells, Yankee pitcher, of the proposed move. “History has been made here from the beginning, and to up and move it, you are going to tick a lot of baseball gods off.”

For 75 years, that pulse has thumped in time with Babe Ruth and Joe DiMaggio, Don Larsen and Reggie Jackson.

All of them, incidentally, can be seen on a pregame video over the center-field scoreboard just about the time the visiting team is starting batting practice.

No big deal? Fine, you try getting prepared for a game while Gehrig is over your shoulder, reminding you that right where you are standing, he once said he was the luckiest man on the face of the earth.

Uniform numbers were invented here. Foul poles were invented here. Pinstripes were invented here.

For three hours a night, that pulse throbs through the most knowledgeable--if not the most demanding--fans in baseball.

Last week, they figured out when the Cleveland Indians last won a World Series, and chanted, “Nineteen-forty-eight! Nineteen-forty-eight!”

It starts in right-center field, with a group called “the Bleacher Creatures.”

In the top of the first inning, in what might be the strangest fan ritual in baseball, the Bleacher Creatures begin chanting the names of the Yankees on the field.

“Paul O-Ne-ul . . . Ber-nie Will-iams . . . “

They chant each player’s name, again and again, until he turns and waves to them. During the game.

Amazingly, all the players wave, even pitcher David Wells, who paused between pitches of the league championship series opener against the Indians and flapped his glove at them.

Visiting players see this and nervously realize, this place really is different.

“You come in here and get caught up in the mystique and tradition . . . and you’re dead,” said Davey Lopes, Padre coach who played here in some big games with the Dodgers.

And even if you don’t, you still may be dead.

His wide-eyed teammates will love hearing Wally Joyner’s story about the time, while he was with the Angels, someone threw a knife that soared between him and pitcher Mike Witt as they walked off the field after a victory.

Sterling Hitchcock, a former Yankee, will surely tell them about the time he was cussed out, “by a 9-year-old.”

Somebody asked, “How did you know he was 9?”

“Just a guess,” Hitchcock said. “He might have been 7.”