This time there’s nothing transplanted about the New Yorkers. The ones who will fill Yankee Stadium on Saturday night are the real deal, not former residents who went south for the winter and never returned.
But for New York Mets teammates Al Leiter and Dennis Cook, the first Subway Series in 44 years isn’t a completely new experience.
It offers reminders of 1997, when the two left-handers helped the Florida Marlins beat Cleveland in the World Series.
“This is a whole lot like ’97,” Cook said Friday. “I hope it ends the same way.”
While the New York Yankees try to win the Series for the fourth time in five years, a feat that hasn’t been accomplished since the Yankees won five in a row from 1949 through ’53, the Mets are surprisingly confident they can end the Yankees’ run.
After all, Florida already has proved that a wild-card team can win it all.
“For anybody to think less of us because we’re a wild card, it’s ridiculous,” Cook said. “That’s a non-issue. Our goal was to get in the playoffs, no matter how we did it. We figured then we’d have a one-in-eight shot of winning it all. Now it’s down to a one-in-two shot.”
Mets outfielder Benny Agbayani didn’t just pick the Mets during an appearance on Howard Stern’s radio show. He picked the Mets in five games.
“Maybe he’s just smarter than the rest of us,” Yankees coach Don Zimmer said.
While the Mets didn’t win their division, they did win seven more regular-season games than the Yankees, who were fifth in the American League with 87 victories.
They’re just the kind of team the owners had in mind when they expanded the playoff field from four teams to eight.
Wild-card teams have acquitted themselves well in the relatively new playoff system, going 9-10 in postseason series.
The Mets, who finished behind Atlanta each of the last two years, reached the National League Championship Series before the Braves beat them a year ago.
Florida finished behind Atlanta in the NL East in 1997 but knocked off San Francisco and Atlanta en route to the Series. Leiter, who will face Yankees lefty Andy Pettitte in Game 1, was a big part of the Marlins’ success.
He started Game 7 against Cleveland, keeping Florida close enough for its 3-2 victory in 11 innings.
Leiter, a native of New Jersey, was traded to the Mets before the 1998 season.
“I was thrilled to death that the team was the Mets,” Leiter said. “I grew up a Mets fan. . . . Anytime a player gets an opportunity to play for the team that he rooted for as a kid, and to be here in the World Series, possibly about to do my share to help win a championship, it’s a big thrill.”
With New York teams meeting in the World Series for the first time since 1956, this will be memorable.
The winner will own bragging rights in addition to the usual rings.
“There’s more pressure, obviously,” said Pettitte, who is 2-1 in four previous World Series starts. “That’s because of the interest the city has put into it, with the fans, and how much excitement is going to be there. But again, it’s a World Series and we’re the defending champions. There’s pressure on us. But playing the Mets adds a little more to it.”
Joe Torre is managing his fourth World Series; Bobby Valentine, his first.
But anybody who expects Valentine to take a back seat doesn’t know him.
Valentine already has made two surprising decisions.
He bypassed Mike Hampton for the Game 1 start, even though Hampton threw 16 scoreless innings against St. Louis in the NLCS.
He also said Friday that he not only is starting Todd Pratt but will use him to catch Leiter. Mike Piazza will serve as the designated hitter.
“Todd Pratt has been a big part of our team for two years and more,” Valentine said. “He’s as deserving as any person who ever has put on a uniform to play in a World Series game, and this might be his only opportunity.”
Torre had hinted Chuck Knoblauch might return to second base, which would have allowed him to get Glenallen Hill or Jose Canseco in the lineup.
Instead Jose Vizcaino will play second while Knoblauch serves as the Yankees’ DH.
Vizcaino “has had some success against Leiter, and why not?” Torre said. “He and [Luis] Sojo are interchangeable for me defensively.”
While the Mets have won 17 of their last 20 games, the Yankees somehow made it to the World Series after going 3-16 in the last three weeks of the regular season.
“If this was our first time coming into the playoffs after going through the September that we had, we’d probably be home right now,” Yankees right-fielder Paul O’Neill said. “We don’t turn the switch off and on, believe me, because it doesn’t work that way. But there are certain times of the year that we seem to play better.”
That includes when only two teams still are playing.
