Sep 30 2006 08:37 AM
Interesting article in the Times today.
| ]September 30, 2006 More Players Are Taking the Train to the Game By MICHAEL S. SCHMIDT An hour and a half after the Yankees beat the Tampa Bay Devil Rays on a muggy night this season, three players stood sweating on the underground platform at the 161st Street and River Avenue subway station in the Bronx. They were waiting for the B train. All three Yankees — the backup catcher Sal Fasano, the backup infielder Nick Green and reliever T. J. Beam — were on their way home from work. As they waited, they complained to one another about the heat, exchanged the names of good bars in the city and talked about that night’s game. None of the rowdy fans on the platform noticed them, perhaps because none of the fans imagined that any player would be there. But in fact, every season usually finds Mets and Yankees players who take the subway to work. They tend to be players on the fringe who are bouncing from team to team or from the minors to the majors, who are far from their families and sometimes living in hotels in Manhattan. Their cars are back home, wherever home might be. In a season when a Subway Series is again a possibility, they tend to be the real subway players, even if most of them may not be included on the postseason rosters. “It’s just stupid to have a car here,” Green said, explaining why he was without wheels in Manhattan. “Parking is expensive and I have to pay for my hotels.” On the subway, he looked the part, dressed in orange sneakers and carrying a backpack, resembling a college student more than Alex Rodriguez’s backup at third base. Reliever Heath Bell of the Mets can tell you all about the No. 7 train. He has been the Mets’ human yo-yo this season, sent back and forth between the major leagues and Class AAA Norfolk enough times to leave him dizzy. Without his car, with a contract that is more minimal than mammoth, Bell rides the subway. After regular-season games at Shea, Bell waits for fans to clear out of the stadium before he heads for the elevated platform above Roosevelt Avenue. If the fans are still around, he puts on a shirt and hat given to him by security personnel at Shea so he looks more like a security worker and less like Heath Bell — not that Heath Bell is all that recognizable. He heads to the front of the station’s platform and boards the first car, aiming to avoid the crowd. Actually, Mets less anonymous than Bell have taken the subway to Shea, too, and some of them — Ron Darling, Al Leiter, John Olerud — were central to the team’s fortunes. They could have afforded to take a cab or a limousine rather than a subway train that slowly makes its way through Long Island City and Jackson Heights and other points before arriving in Flushing. Darling, a starting pitcher who played for the Mets from 1983 to 1991, grew up in Boston using that city’s subway and thought the No. 7 was the easiest way to get from his apartment in Manhattan to Flushing. “I took it every year till 1989,” said Darling, now a baseball commentator for the Mets on SNY. “Then I got a car sponsorship and they gave me a car. It was the biggest nightmare, especially $400 a month for parking.” Darling used to get on the train the same way Bell does — at the front of the platform. And he still takes the subway to Shea, although he noted that Keith Hernandez, his fellow commentator and former teammate, didn’t ride the subway, then or now. Jay Horwitz, the Mets’ vice president of media relations, has been with the team since 1980 and said more players live in Manhattan than used to be the case — the current group includes David Wright, Carlos Delgado and Chris Woodward. As a result, more players are riding the subway. When a player comes to the Mets during the season, Horwitz said, the team will pay for the player to have his car shipped to New York, but the player has to decide if it’s worth it. The team also covers the player’s meals and hotel room for a week. After that, the player is on his own and can either stay at a hotel (where the team has a negotiated rate) or use the team’s real estate agent to find an apartment. Many September call-ups, and other players who shuffle through the Mets during the season, stay at a hotel that is within walking distance of Shea Stadium. But when Bell, who is making a couple of hundred thousand dollars this season, stays in New York, he saves money by staying with a friend. “Guys have a sense of their situation,” Horwitz said. “Players that may be in New York for only a few weeks know not to sign a long-term lease on an apartment.” First baseman Andy Phillips and reliever Scott Proctor were both rookies with the Yankees in 2004, although Phillips played in only five games that season and only 27 last year. Proctor had a more substantial role, but both relied on the subway to get them to and from Manhattan — when they were not with Class AAA Columbus. Now, as full-time Yankees, they live with their families in New Rochelle, N.Y.. They have cars and drive to the stadium. But their time on the subway makes them alumni of a club that includes Phil Linz, who played for the Yankees from 1962 to 1965 and the Mets in 1967 and 1968. He is perhaps best remembered for angering Yogi Berra, then the Yankee manager, by playing a harmonica on the team bus in 1964. “I know my first week into New York, I stayed at a hotel on 42nd Street,” said Linz, 67. “My first day at Yankee Stadium, I rode it up there with Bud Daley and Tex Clevenger. It was the first time of my life — nobody recognized us.” Later, he said, he ended up subletting the Midtown penthouse apartment of an actress who was in Spain making a movie. “We had a lot of fun in that apartment, lots of parties,” Linz said. “We were living the high life. I was making $14,500 a year, and we were paying $500 a month. That was big money.” It is not much now, even for those players on the fringe who keep MetroCards in their wallets. Of those Mets and Yankees, only Fasano is certain to be in the postseason. And since he was acquired by the Yankees at the end of July, he has moved to New Jersey and drives to Yankee Stadium, a more customary means of transportation for a player in the postseason — even if there is a Subway Series. |