Danger someone will get thrown under Subway.

[cruadin]

There's another subway series in New York this weekend -- Yankees vs. Mets.

Danger Someone Will Get
Thrown Under Subway
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/story/322058p-275354c.html

Originally published on June 24, 2005
John Harper, Daily News-Sports.

You can say it's no different for the Yankees this time, because they're expected to beat the Mets every year anyway. But you'd be kidding yourself, because the Yankees have never gone into one of these in-season Subway Series needing wins as badly as they do at the moment.

Put it this way: if they play as shabbily against the Mets this weekend as they did against the Devil Rays the last four nights, George Steinbrenner won't be able to hold off from firing someone, anyone, any longer.

And, for once, he'd have every right. Perhaps only shock treatment is capable of jolting the Yankees back to some semblance of normality and restoring order in this bizarro season in which they can't beat the worst teams in baseball.

Nobody loses seven of 10 games to the Devil Rays. Nobody.

But that's the count this season after the Yankees lost, 9-4, last night, not just beaten by the Devil Rays but outhustled and outplayed from start to finish.

Is it merely embarrassing at this point? Or is it the ultimate commentary on where this season is headed?

Alex Rodriguez swallowed hard after the game and admitted: "They dominated us."

And who ever thought they'd hear that in this lifetime?

But when Bernie Williams, the consummate pro, is caught napping in center field, allowing Julio Lugo to turn a routine single into a double, and Derek Jeter, Mr. Clutch, allows the go-ahead run to score with a throwing error on a routine ground ball, maybe it really is time to stop waiting for the Great Turnaround.

For the moment, however, all we know for sure is that this Devil Ray disaster adds an element of intrigue unlike anything seen in a Mets-Yankees series. The ballpark is always full and the atmosphere electric at these intra-city games, but Yankee Stadium will have a different feel to it this weekend.

Fear, mostly.

The Mets are dangerous, after all, still with a chance to make a run in the NL East, mostly because of a starting rotation that Yankee fans might just prefer to their own right now - even if they'd never admit it.....more>