Jerry Beach - The Subway Series: Baseballs Big Apple Battles And The Yankees-Mets 2000 World Series Classic

Copyright 2020 by Jerry Beach

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

Cover design by Tom Lau

Cover photo credit: Getty Images

ISBN: 978-1-68358-342-4

Ebook ISBN: 978-1-68358-343-1

Printed in the United States of America

To Helene Leavitt.

For being the best mother to my wife, mother-in-law to me, and grandmother to our daughter; and for the innumerable gifts and lessons Mom/Ma/Grammy provided us over her final 15 months. We all miss you very much.

And to Molly.

A unanimous first-ballot Hall of Fame daughter and the light of our lives from the moment you arrived.

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Officially, I was approached about writing this book in June 2019 and finished it just under five months later. But in reality, this project dates back to 1998, when I began freelancing for the Mets official newspaper, New York Mets Inside Pitch , and in particular the wild, wild days of the first Internet boomthe fall of 1999 and the spring of 2000.

In fall 99, two of my college friends, Jeff Colchamiro and Dan Kline, started a lifestyle website, rouze.com, and hired me to write sports features. A few months later, Bryon Evje hired me to cover the Mets for the ACSSports.com family of websites, which, in the pre-MLB.com era, included the Mets official website. Without those assignments, my career would have been much different, and I never would have built the relationships or the foundation to take on this project. New York Mets Inside Pitch , rouze.com, and ACSSports.com are long gone, but thanks to Coman Publishing, as well as to Dan, Jeff, Bryon, and my coworker at ACSSports.com, Steven Goldman.

During the 2000 playoffs, I met a mets.com intern, a college freshman whose impressive knowledge of Billy Idols catalogue belied his age. Who could have imagined 19 years later that Bryan Hoch would not only be established as one of the nations top beat writers at yankees.com, but that I would field a text from him (2000 me: Whats a text?) referring me to Sports Publishings search for a Subway Series author? Thanks to Bryan for the two decades of friendship, which now spans three books.

Thank you to Julie Ganz, my editor at Sports Publishing, for entrusting me with this project on such short notice and for her guidance throughout the process. I hope things went as smoothly for you as they did for me. Thanks also to Jason Katzman for his editing assistance as we approached the finish line.

The inside photographs in this book come courtesy of Rob Cuni, whom Ive known since he walked into the office of the small sports magazine I edited in the late 1990s and asked if we needed a photographer. We did, and Im glad our friendship has lasted much longer than our time at that magazine. This is the second time Rob has contributed photos to a book I wrote, and I can think of no one else Id rather have behind the camera.

None of this would be possible without a day job that had me at the ballpark on a regular basis. Thanks to my editors at Field Level Media, including Rick Kaplan and Jeff Reynolds, for all the opportunities there, and to my forbes.com editors, Brett Knight and Daniel Klein-man, for bringing me aboard as a contributor. Thank you also to Kolby Paxton, who asked me in June to contribute college basketball coverage to FloHoops.com and patiently waited until Novemberwhen college basketball had already begunfor me to begin writing for him.

I am appreciative to everyone who took the time to speak to me for this book. A full list of interviewees is in the bibliography, but I would like to extend extra thanks to Steve Phillips, Joe Torre, Bobby Valentine, and Todd Zeile for being particularly generous with their time. David Cone was also extremely kind and understanding when I told him I was late for our interview because wed spent the morning putting down our 20-year-old cat (RIP, Maggie).

Thank you also to Brad Young of USA Baseball for setting up the interview with Scott Brosius. The public relations firm of Nicholas & Lence Communicationsincluding Josh Knoller, Chrystine Nicholas, and Nick Nicholaswas extremely helpful in getting me some time with Mariano Rivera before the parade in his honor in New Rochelle, NY, in late July.

I didnt say much in the press box about this project, since I hadnt written a book in more than a decade and was petrified I wouldnt meet the deadline. So I offer the heartiest of thanks to Bryan Hoch and the other coworkers in whom I did confide: Laura Albanese, Billy Altman, Peter Botte (who also wrote a book last summer), Zach Braziller, Larry Fleisher, Howie Karpin, Bob Klapisch, and Scott Orgera. Their friendship, words of encouragement, suggestions throughout the process, and proofreading expertise were all invaluable.

Extra thanks to Bob, who shared with me some pivotal columns he wrote in the late 90s and 2000 for the Bergen Record and ESPN.com; and to Larry, who has the most impressive memory and research skills of anyone I know. I lost count of the number of times hed suggest an angle or long-ago stat for the book and then have a link to a story from the 2000 season in G-chat by the time I got home.

Thanks to all the New York baseball writers who make the Big Apple such a great place to cover the best game in the world, and to the denizens of #MetsTwitter, whose passion makes that place so entertaining year-round.

Id also like to acknowledge the Mets beat writers from 2000: Pete Caldera ( Bergen Record ), Rafael Hermoso ( New York Daily News ), Tyler Kepner ( New York Times ), Andrew Marchand ( New York Post ), Jose de Jesus Ortiz ( Newark Star-Ledger ), T. J. Quinn ( Bergen Record and New York Daily News ), Kit Stier ( Journal News ), and the late, great Marty Noble ( Newsday ). Their work was an invaluable resource then and now, and their kindness to a bespectacled kid from small-town Connecticut trying to write on the Internet was and remains much appreciated. Thank you to T. J. as well as Bob Klapisch for writing the back cover blurbs.

I was a little more carefree with letting other friends outside the New York area know about the project. Thanks to my friends from my college basketball travelsMike Brodsky, Dan Crain, Jaden Daly, Michael Litos, Gary Moore, Brian Mull, and Rob Russellfor their support and encouragement, as well as to Matt Pallister and Todd Stumpf.

Matt Edwards, my oldest and best friend from back home in Connecticut, was a constant source of support. So too were fellow Torringtonians Mark Arum, Emily Kline, Katina McGrath, Carrie Newton, and Mark Silano. Our off-color Facebook chats provided much-needed levity.