NEW YORK, NY October 20, 2000 — There will be a rally for Mets fans and Yankees fans in Bryant Park this afternoon. Mayor Rudolph Giuliani yesterday said fans for each team would be separated by an aisle?and joked the aisle would be filled with police officers. Since the Mets were formed in 1962, the two teams have had 38 years and now eighteen games of interleague play to fan the flames of rivalry. The Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers, though, had at least five decades to nurse theirs. You can still sense it in Russ Hodges' call of Bobby Thompson's home run off Dodgers pitcher Ralph Branca that clinched the National League pennant for the Giants in 1951 ?.the hit that was called "the shot heard 'round the world."

Archival Tape, Russ Hodges: "The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant! The Giants win the pennant!"

The Giants went on to face the Yankees, their perennial October rival in the World Series. The two teams competed in the first subway series, in 1921, and played against each other for five more. As for the Brooklyn Dodgers, they took on the Bronx Bombers seven times in the 40s and 50s, winning only once. Mayor Giuliani remembers the animosity a Yankee uniform inspired in his Brooklyn neighborhood.

Mayor Giuliani: "I lived one mile from Ebbets Field. You could hear the cheers from Ebbets Field, where I lived. Everyone on my block was Dodgers fans, my relatives were Dodgers fans, and I was a Yankees fan. And I would wear a Yankee uniform, and I was thrown in the mud, and I was almost hung once. I was, I was almost hung once. A bunch of kids grabbed me and tried to hang me from a tree. Because I was a Yankees fan. My grandmother prevented it. I mean, I think they were kidding, but I'm not sure, it goes back to five years old, so it's a pretty distance memory. But this got pretty intense."

From the 1920s to the 1950s, New York's three teams dominated the national pastime. And, as the city became ground zero for the country's radio and television industries, its sports clubs dominated the nation's attention, as well. Filmmaker Ric Burns is the creator of New York: A Documentary Film.

Ric Burns: "You know when New York was the center of the world, and the center of the American universe, baseball was one of the emotional and spiritual centers of that center of the universe. And it was an expression, in a way, of the power and brashness of the city itself."

Mr. Burns says the team rivalries, especially between the New York Yankees and the Brooklyn Dodgers, symbolized the battle between two ideas of New York: one a city of power and success and upward mobility?.the other, the city of opportunity and welcome and community. The men in pinstripes versus Dem Bums.

Bronx Borough historian Lloyd Ultan.

Lloyd Ultan: "The Yankee fans sat in the stands with jackets and ties. When they watched the game, even if the other side produced a great defensive play, they applauded. Because the Yankee fans recognized a good play. There was no rabid, wild yelling and screaming that you would see, for instance, in newsreels of Dodgers games. It was in many ways, much more sedate."

Anyone who's been to a Yankees game knows sedateness has gone the way of the eight dollar bleacher seat. The simmering class warfare between Dodgers fans and Yankees fans has also vanished from today's rival teams.

Fans: "Yankee fans have more history?.more wins, more World Series, more to boast about. And the Mets fans are?dying because they're always in last place, and haven't won since '86, and before that, I dunno when, '69.""A typical Met fan? I dunno, is?.A Met fan. You can't stand watching any other team. If it was the Yankees and the Cardinals, I wouldn't watch a single game of the World Series.""And that's the type of fans they are, there's no history?.they just?They were young, the Mets were hot back then, and they became Mets fans. And they're passing it on to their kids. And with us, it's passed down? Amy: There's been several more generations, in other words."Oh, yeah, oh my God, we've got balls signed by Joe DiMaggio, and it's been passed down, for a looong time.""I was born and raised in the Bronx, in Parkchester, but my mother was a Met fan, and I've been rooting for them since 1962.""Mets? They're from Queens!"

Documentary filmmaker Ric Burns.

Ric Burns: "What's clear now is that the Yankees stand for a slightly more old-fashioned New York, a slightly brasher, almost 1950s image of New York. Whereas the Mets, inevitably, as part of the borough that is their home, are equated in the public mind understandably with a kind of a burgeoning world culture in which everyone's welcome, in which we don't know what's going to come out of there. And I think that, inevitably, the heart of the Mets is in some sense, gotta be bigger than the heart of the Yankees."

Mr. Burns thinks that while many aspects of this subway series have changed since the last one in 1956, one has stayed the same. He says it's the sense that New York City has returned to its place of predominance in the landscape of American culture. For many fans and historians, it does not matter whether this fledgling rivalry will ever burn with the heat of a Dodgers-Giants Pennant race, or a World Series between the Bronx Bombers and the Giants. New Yorkers, this October, win no matter what. For WNYC, I'm Amy Eddings.

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