U.S.

Subway Workers Experts On Series

By CBSNews.com staff CBSNews.com staff

October 20, 2000 / 6:39 PM EDT / CBS

In between the ribbing and friendly backroom betting over which New York baseball team will win the Subway Series, excited transit workers gave the subway stops at the two stadiums a much needed facelift before Saturday's opening game between the Yankees and Mets.

As crews replaced old copper cables on tracks for the No. 7 line, a devout Mets fan and construction crew foreman at the Shea Stadium station cheerfully badgered his workers who favored the Yankees with drawn out shouts of "Lets go Mets."

The subway track workers that were fans of the defending champion Yankees shook their heads and laughed. The Mets fans whooped back, "Yeah, go Mets."

At Yankee Stadium several Metropolitan Transit Authority employees proudly showed their allegiance to the Yankees with caps and bandanas.

Others debated the intricacies of the game and another showdown between Yankees pitcher Roger Clemens and Mets catcher Mike Piazza. Clemens hit Piazza with a pitch during regular season inter-league play, forcing a shaken Piazza to leave the game.

But another worker - helping a crew remove a worn wooden walkway to be updated with fiberglass panels on the No. 4 line at the Bronx stadium stop - preferred to keep his allegiance hidden from his colleagues.

"All these other guys here have Yankees and Mets stickers on their cars. They have pins with them of teams, and some wear hats with the teams on them," said Felix Mendez, wearing a neutral black and gray baseball cap with the name New York stitched in fat letters across the front. "Not me. I stay low."

Still, it's the Subway Series, and who can passionately voice opinions about the city's two baseball teams better than the 26,000 workers who help New York's 96-year-old underground transportation system shuttle 4.4 million passengers daily.

Born and reared in the borough of the Bronx Bombers, Mendez predicted the World Series would "go the distance," with the Yankees prevailing in the seventh and deciding game, though he was cautious not to make the statement to loudly for his MTA coworkers to overhear.

"It's a rivalry between us. A lot of them are Mets fans and they say the Mets are going to take it in four," Mendez said of his coworkers. "I think it's impossible."

Playing in the first intracity World Series matchup since the Oakland Athletics beat the San Francisco Giants four games straight in 1989, the American League champion Yankees and the National League champion Mets meet in the 14th so-called Subway Series between two New York teams. But it's the first between the Mets and Yankees.

The Yankees host the first two games in their home stadium, which sits a sidewalk width away from the elevated No. 4 subway line. In the best-of-seven series, games 3, 4 and 5 will be played in Shea Stadium - two subway lines, one transfer at Grand Central Station and a total one-hour ride away in Flushing, Queens.

The final two games will come bac to the Bronx - if it goes that far.

"It's going to be a madhouse," station agent Michael Ackerman said, pointing toward the Mets home stadium from the elevated platform of the 7 train.

Ackerman and his coworker Donald Rubin - both Yankees fans - work the token booth at the Willets Point station in Queens, run by station supervisor Mohammad Qasin - a Mets fan.

But having a boss that cheers for "that other team" doesn't bother Rubin, who was born in the same year of the last Subway Series - in 1956, when the Yankees edged the Brooklyn Dodgers four games to three.

Although he can see Yankee Stadium from his livingroom window in the Bronx, Rubin said he enjoys working little more than a hefty baseball throw away from the home stadium of the cross-city rival Mets.

"I can hear the screaming, yelling and all the noise," Rubin said, recalling the evenings he worked in the token booth during the National League playoff games between the Mets and the St. Louis Cardinals. "I also listen to the radio and I can sense the excitement."

Although the Shea Stadium subway stop - also platform for the Flushing United States Tennis Center complex and the grounds for two previous World's Fairs - only handles about one-quarter of the volume of the Yankee Stadium station, subway officials are expecting a much larger, rowdy turnout of fans and tail-gaters.

The Willets Point station - built in May 1927 and renovated for the 1939 World's Fair - averaged 2,662 Queens residents through the turnstiles on weekdays and about 3,500 on weekend days in 1999, according to numbers from the MTA. But for regular season Mets games, the passenger traffic swells to more than 15,000 people.

When the Mets host the Yankees, station manager Qasin expects even more fans to amble down the stairs and across the elevated concrete walkways to the blue and orange painted stadium

"We want to give a good look to our station," said Qasin, who was converted to a baseball fan after emigrating 17 years ago from Pakistan, where cricket is the national pastime.

Indeed, making the two stations attractive to tourists and visitors attending the games has turned into an obsession. Transit workers have been sweeping in every corner and diligently polishing railings after the Yankees beat the Seattle Mariners for the American League pennant on Tuesday to join the Mets in the championship.

As the jovial banter between MTA workers is sure to continue throughout the 2000 World Series, one maintenance worker shrugged off the baseball buzz.

"I don't care who wins," Boris, who immigrated from Moldova to New York seven years ago, said with a heavy accent. "In my country … we don't know what baseball is."

Boris, who requested not to use his full name, returned to painstakingly buffing the stainless steel turnstiles at the 161st Street-Yankee Stadium subway stop, where Brooklyn-Bronx B and D trains also stop.

After rubbing he last piece of metal to a near mirror-like gloss, Boris changed his careless frown to a toothy grin and said, "For these people it's crazy. But it's also human nature to be a fan.

"Me, I'm a fan of books."