Pitt.

Sure, it’s the familiar formula about a losing team (the Oakland Athletics) catapulted to glory by a tough, idealistic general manager (controversial Billy Beane, immortalized in a compelling performance by Brad Pitt, at the top of his game). But thanks to the awesome collaboration of two brilliant Oscar-winning screenwriters, Steven Zaillian (Schindler’s List) and Aaron Sorkin (The Social Network) and one polished director, Bennett Miller (Capote), expect a vacation from clichés and a home run in the final inning with the bases loaded.  Based on the best-seller by writer Michael Lewis, Moneyball details the unconventional strategy devised by Beane shortly after the A’s lost the American League Division Series to the New York Yankees in 2001. In a sink-or-swim decision, he compared the other teams funded by huge budgets with his own team owners and outdated scouts who couldn’t afford to recruit champions, and weighed his options: “We’re the last dog bowl in the room—and you know what happens to the runt of the litter? He dies.” During a strategy meeting to beg favors from the Cleveland Indians, he notices a fat nerdy young economics graduate from Yale named Peter Brand (Jonah Hill) who specializes in team management based on player analysis. To everyone’s amazement and derision, he becomes fascinated by such an oddball and actually hires him as his dorky new assistant. Brand hits the computer and comes up with 25 names they can afford. They rebuilt the team with tapped losers, traded for damaged players and bargained for defective rejects, then switched their positions on the field. Even Art Howe, the pessimistic new team coach (startlingly bald Philip Seymour Hoffman) was hired with a one-year contract because it’s all their budget would allow. Shy, almost socially autistic, and definitely inept in business, Peter nevertheless juggled figures in his head and came up with a scheme that revolutionized major league baseball. “Adapt or die” was the new motto. It was a colossal gamble, but suddenly the game was blackjack and Billy, 44, and his new assistant, 25, became the players who changed the casino rules. Treating baseball as science instead of reverence, they called their eyebrow-raising experiment “moneyball” and the press massacred them for it. But when the Oakland A’s won 19 games in a row—the longest winning streak in baseball—the team soared to American League stardom. The rest is history.

It’s a story that holds up beautifully in the re-telling, but the best thing about Moneyball is the human element. Billy Beane is not soft-pedaled into a deity, and Brad Pitt takes impeccable precautions not to underplay his abrasive personality. Except for caring about his daughter’s respect and a grudging fondness for his remarried ex-wife (Robin Wright, in a one-scene cameo), there’s nothing about his personal life. He shows no hidden compassion for his players as human beings, trading and cutting them at will with no advance warning, and flies into rants and smashes up the furniture at will. You may not admire him, but you can’t help but like Brad Pitt, even when he overdoes his trademark mannerism of saying almost every line with his mouth full of food and drink. (At last week’s Toronto International Film Festival, he admitted he doesn’t even like baseball.) Chubby Jonah Hill is perfect casting as Peter Brand, the computer doofus obsessed with statistics, but his own private life is a blank page, too. Hoffman is largely wasted in the dugout, looking grouchy. Still, in the crack pacing, smart dialogue and exhilarating camerawork by Wally Pfister, any quibbles of mine are minor. This is a subtle, elegant and altogether triumphant film about a subject I thought I was tired of, told with an artistry and freshness that is positively thrilling.

rreed@observer.com

MONEYBALL

Running Time 133 minutes

Written by Steven Zaillian and Aaron Sorkin

Directed by Bennett Miller

Starring Brad Pitt, Robin Wright and Jonah Hill

3.5/4

As I remember, Johnny Damon was playing for the Oakland A's when the Red Sox took him, by giving him a ton more money, ripping off a small-market club. He came to Boston and put in three great years. He didn't complain, didn't hotdog, just played hard, and broke the curse. When Damon came to the plate last night, he was all class. Tipping his cap to the Red Sox and to Wakefield. And Fenway booed. The Boston fans are almost as bad as the Yankee fans, booing Rivera last year...

Before the release of Jose Canseco's Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant 'Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big, the word most often heard in conversations about the book was "credibility." As in: The author's got none. That's what we've been hearing for years, what with all the tales of domestic abuse, failed drug tests, Madonna and enough get-rich-quick schemes to make Ralph Kramden blush. But author Canseco repeatedly urges his readers to keep an open mind, so that's exactly what I tried to do. Maybe this guy's just been misunderstood. Maybe he really does have something to say.

As it turns out, he's got a lot to say … and with each turn of the page, his credibility slips another notch.

In a long note facing the copyright page, the reader is assured (among other things), "This book does not intend to condone or encourage the use of any particular drugs, medicine, or illegal substances." But just a few pages later, the author assures us, "Steroids, used correctly, will not only make you stronger and sexier, they will also make you healthier. Certain steroids, used in proper combinations, can cure certain diseases. Steroids will also give you a better quality of life and also drastically slow the aging process."

No, Mr. Canseco can't really be held accountable for whatever boilerplate the publisher's lawyers wedged between the covers. And in this case he's certainly got a point: Steroids can be therapeutic in a variety of ways. Mr. Canseco's a believer, and if someday steroids are hawked in TV infomercials, he'll be the ideal pitch man. The problem is that his claims for steroids go far beyond those, and the book essentially serves as one long advertisement for better living (and looking, and loving) through chemistry.

If you're thinking about actually reading Juiced, you should first know this: It's not really a baseball book. Rather, it's a Jose Canseco book. A strange criticism of a memoir, perhaps, but then good autobiography tells us something not only about the writer, but also about the people around him. Not this one. It's as if Mr. Canseco had spent his entire life looking at the world with a mirror.

If you're eager for some insight into the 2000 Yankees and their Subway Series with the Mets, you'll have to go elsewhere. The way Mr. Canseco tells the story, when the Yankees acquired him, they had no intention of playing him, but just wanted to keep the Red Sox and A's from getting him. Which was a shame because, according to Mr. Canseco, "It was the first time in my career that I was completely, 100 percent healthy. I could have helped out the organization with my bat and carried the team-but I wasn't getting to play." What's more, "The few times they did get me some at-bats, the Yankees put me in the outfield, even though I hadn't played out there in I don't know how long." Remember, this is only five years ago, and yet none of it's true. In his seven weeks with the Yankees, Mr. Canseco-who at that point in his career certainly wasn't capable of carrying anybody-actually played in 37 games, most of them as the designated hitter. And he played in the outfield only five times.

Mr. Canseco's postseason action with the Yankees consisted of one at-bat. In the fourth game of the World Series-he misidentifies it as Game 6, which is strange considering the Series lasted only five games-Joe Torre chose Mr. Canseco to pinch-hit for David Cone with two runners on base in a close game. Mr. Canseco tells the story as a joke, even though he 1) supposedly struck out on three pitches, and 2) supposedly hadn't bothered to participate in batting practice before the game. Hilarious.

If you're looking for inside information about the game on the field in the 1980's and 90's, you'll have to go elsewhere. Mr. Canseco devotes slightly less than two pages to players he's not accusing of steroid use. And even those pages are less about the players than about Mr. Canseco's obsession with appearance. For example:

Rickey Henderson had "such incredible legs and arms that even past his fortieth birthday he looked like a mini-bodybuilder."

"Dennis Eckersley was one of the pretty boys of baseball …. With his long hair flapping in the wind, he always looked good. He had always been out tanning, and he was manicured, too."

Mr. Canseco was impressed by Royals pitcher Bret Saberhagen, but the short passage about Mr. Saberhagen is really an excuse to mention that "Later, in 1998, we were both up for American League Comeback Player of the Year, along with Eric Davis. As Sports Illustrated put it, I deserved credit for 'resurrecting' myself 'from the cartoon-superhero junk heap.'"

We learn that Blue Jays reliever Duane Ward threw a "heavy sinker" and a "slider from hell." So-the historians will have that, at least.

Historians shouldn't put a lot of stock in Mr. Canseco's claims of discrimination, though. In one of many passages devoted to the rough road he's traveled, he writes: "I remember as a Cuban kid on the A's farm system at that time [in 1982, his first season in the minor leagues], I was very aware that baseball was closed to a young Latino like me. That was only twenty-three years ago, but for baseball it was a completely different era."

The last thing I'd want to do, writing in a New York newspaper, is to downplay the barriers faced in this country by those whose ancestors don't hail from northern Europe. But by 1982, Major League Baseball's rich history was already studded with great Latino players like Roberto Clemente, Juan Marichal, Orlando Cepeda and Minnie Minoso. And that season there were roughly 100 Latino players in the major leagues. What's more, the toughest things about making it as a Latino ballplayer are the language barrier and abject poverty. Mr. Canseco grew up speaking English in Florida, in a solidly middle-class family.

Basically, whenever Mr. Canseco strays into charted territory, he gets lost. Which of course brings us back to that word: credibility. If we can't believe the stuff we can check, why should we believe the stuff we can't? You're reading this review because Jose Canseco has accused his Oakland teammates Mark McGwire and Jason Giambi, and his Texas teammates Juan Gonzalez, Ivan Rodriguez and Rafael Palmeiro, of using steroids. He's also named his Tampa Bay teammates Wilson Alvarez, Dave Martinez and Tony Saunders as steroid users and thrown suspicion on Brady Anderson and Bret Boone (nothing new there).

But why only those players? Mr. Canseco claims that he "single-handedly changed the game of baseball by introducing [steroids] into the game," and that he "personally reshaped the game of baseball through my example and my teaching."

Well, he played in the major leagues for 17 seasons, with seven different teams. Yet with all that reshaping and teaching, he can name only eight ex-teammates as confirmed steroids users? What about the Red Sox, Blue Jays, Yankees and White Sox? Didn't he teach any of his teammates on those teams?

With such a selective list, one can't help but wonder if he's using his book to settle a few old scores. That, or he simply can't remember all the other players with whom he shared bathroom stalls during the steroid-shooting-in-the-buttocks sessions he so lovingly describes. But whether he's vindictive or forgetful (or both), Mr. Canseco's said nothing in his book that gives him more credibility.

In the end, actually, one gets the overwhelming impression that Mr. Canseco is delusional. Early in the book, in the course of advocating steroid use for everyone-yes, everyone-he writes, "I'm forty years old, but I look much younger-and I can still do everything the way I could when I was twenty-five."

When Jose Canseco was 25, he hit 37 home runs for the best baseball team on the planet. Take a good look at him now.

Rob Neyer is a senior writer with ESPN.com. He lives in Portland, Ore.

As the aftershocks of Sept. 11 continue to rattle the country, one mightexpect

that Americans would downgrade New York City on their list of most desirable

places to live. Images of a city under siege-its downtown partially in ruins,

its mailrooms possibly contaminated with anthrax-have become nightly fare on

national news broadcasts.

Yet the results of a recent online survey show that

the city has lost

neither its allure nor its status as America's most compelling place to live.

The survey reports that 24 percent of respondents chose Manhattan's Upper East

Side as the most desirable place to live-only Malibu, Calif., came out with slightly better numbers, at 25

percent. Next was San Francisco's Pacific Heights neighborhood, with 18 percent,

followed by Miami's South Beach and Beverly Hills, Calif., both at 16

percent. 

The presence of Manhattan among such cities as Malibu

and Beverly Hills-places of sun and wealth whose appeal lies in their ability

to dull the senses-indicates that New York still exerts a profound pull on the

national consciousness. Indeed, it's striking that, given the choice between

living alongside Hollywood stars on the beach or living in a city recovering

from the worst terrorist attack in world history, essentially the same number

of Americans would choose the latter as the former. While no one survey can be

definitive, the numbers from Homestore.com, as reported in The Wall Street Journal , suggest that the grace and courage with

which New Yorkers have handled the tragedy have inoculated the city against

what could have been a significant blow to its standing.

While the rest of the country, and the world, regards

the city with a newfound appreciation, the fear of terrorism has temporarily

depressed the tourism and retail industries. A strong effort needs to be made

by the current and incoming administrations to showcase New York to the

international community. One of the city's greatest selling points, of course,

is its stunning diversity-nearly 40 percent of city residents are

foreign-born-and the ability of so many different races, cultures and religions

to live peaceably side by side, in marked contrast to the strife which is

roiling much of the world at the moment. And it must be noted that New York's

countless virtues-including the lowest crime rate of any large city in the

U.S.; a concentration of young talent and skills no other city can match; the

headquarters of the world's most influential financial firms; a collection of

much of the world's finest art, theater and music; and the deep and abiding

loyalty residents feel for the city-were left intact despite the trauma of

recent events.

As the city wakes up to a new

Mayor, some may feel a sense of

apprehension about the untested and the unknown, especially at a time when the

unknown has seemed to rule our daily lives. But the enduring greatness of New

York has only been confirmed in the weeks since Sept. 11, and it shows no sign

of abating.

The Yankees

The record books will show that the New York Yankees

lost the 2001 World Series in seven games to the Arizona Diamondbacks, a team

that didn't even exist when the Bronx Bombers won the first of their

remarkable string of world championships in 1996. In fact, the Yankees-then known as the New York Highlanders-were playing

in the American League nine years before Arizona became a state in 1912. Still, statistics from the '01

Series will paint a dismal picture of the Yankee effort: only 14 runs in seven

games, a terrible team batting average of .183 and an embarrassing 15-2 loss in

Game 6. The keepers of World Series numbers will not be kind to the 2001

Yankees.

But the numbers will have it all wrong.

While there's no denying that this year's Series was a

disappointment for Yankee fans, that's only half the story. Forget the

statistics, and never mind the result of Game 7: These Yankees lifted the

spirits of the city they represent during a difficult, mournful time. They did

it with a combination of grit, elegance and class, reminding us that athletes,

at their best,

transcend the children's games they are paid to play.

The dusty record books will not

present the 2001 Yankees in the

context of New York after Sept. 11. But, of course, it will be impossible for

us to remember them without thinking of the horrific attack on our city,

without recalling how they drew inspiration from our heroes-the firefighters,

the cops, the rescue workers-and how they, in turn, inspired us in our dark

hour. They represented New York to the nation with pride and dignity.

After Sept. 11, no Yankee would consider himself a

hero-not after we saw the sacrifices that legitimate heroes make. But if they

weren't

really heroic, surely these Yankees were admirable, and then some. In their

dramatic comeback in the American League divisional series, when they fell

behind the young Oakland Athletics two games to none in the best-of-five set, there was a parable about determination and

fortitude. And, of course, those themes were revisited in Games 4 and 5 of the

World Series, when the Yankees scored the tying runs in the ninth innings and

went on to win in extra innings.

The defeat in Game 7, when Arizona pulled off a

comeback of its own to beat the Yankees 3-2, won't overshadow all that came

before it. We'll remember this team for all the thrills it has given us since

1996; we'll treasure our memories of Paul O'Neill and Tino Martinez and Scott

Brosius, all of whom may be gone next year; and we'll continue to bask in the

privilege of watching Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Roger

Clemens at work.

Thanks, Yanks.

destiny, the first weekend of the World Series was a cruel shock. With their

fourth straight champion- ship in sight, the Bronx Bombers flew out to the

Arizona desert and promptly got Yankee'd by the Diamondbacks. There's no other

term for it. Easy outs clanked off their gloves, routine balls trickled into no

man's land, minor fielding mistakes set up game-breaking home runs.

These are the things that are supposed to happen to other

teams-that have happened to every

team that's stood between the Yankees and the Commissioner's Trophy since 1998.

But last weekend, it was the garishly dressed Diamondbacks who were hustling

around the bases, Diamondback pitchers mowing down the side, Diamondback fans howling

for blood in their swimming-pool-equipped, retractable-roofed ballpark, while

the Yankees blanched and faltered.

As they returned home to Yankee Stadium and a ceremonial first

pitch from George W. Bush-on the same night Michael Jordan was making his

return at Madison Square Garden-disbelief was in the air. Just two weeks ago,

these Yankees had rallied from the brink to beat back the powerful young

Oakland Athletics. They dispatched the 116-game-winning Seattle Mariners with

ease. How could this team, with the heart of a champion, get whipped by the arrivistes of Arizona-a franchise that

didn't even exist when Bernie Williams, Derek Jeter and Andy Pettitte won their

first title in '96?

If you believe in Yankee destiny, it feels like the end of the

world. The baseball gods have withdrawn their favor. The dynasty is expiring.

After a lost weekend in Phoenix, the obituaries-composed once before in the

Oakland series-were again being set in type.

But if you don't believe that the Yankees' previous success was

ordained by fate-that the invisible world teems with Yankee fans, pulling

supernatural strings on the team's behalf-then, oddly enough, things start to

look much better for the team. Not this year, of course. Though these Yankees

have pulled themselves from 0-2 deficits before-in 1996 against the Atlanta

Braves, this year versus the A's-to pull off a comeback now, they need to win

multiple games against the Diamondbacks' two ferocious ace pitchers, Randy

Johnson and Curt Schilling. Chances aren't good.

Yet even if the Yankees do go on to lose the series, the Bronx

will not be turned upside-down. The winning streak may end, but the winning

will likely go on. And on. That's how things go for the Yankees.

Forget the three titles in a row. The figures that matter are

these: This team has been to the playoffs seven straight years-every season

since baseball's first wild-card round in 1995. It has been to five of the last

six World Series, and has won four. Like the Babe Ruth Yankees at the dawn of

the live-ball era, like the Reggie Jackson Yankees after the birth of modern

free agency, this has been a team perfectly adapted to its times. And that-not

the hoodoo, not the juju, not the courage of clutch players-is why the Yankees

win.

There are two ways of looking at the opportunities that

came along when baseball expanded its playoff system. One view is that, now

that the playoffs are open to more teams, every team has the chance to make the

playoffs some year. Hence the one-time postseason appearances of the Chicago

Cubs, the Colorado Rockies and the 1997 World Champion Florida Marlins.     

The other view is that, thanks to

the extra berths, some teams have the chance to make the playoffs every year.

This has been the guiding philosophy of the Atlanta Braves and the Cleveland

Indians. But no team has pursued it the way the Yankees have. The 1995 Yankees

that lost to Seattle in the first-ever Division Series round featured Pettitte,

Williams and Paul O'Neill, with walk-ons by Jeter, Jorge Posada and Mariano

Rivera. By '96, nine members of the present Yankees were already with the team;

by '97, there were 10.

That year, '97, was the last time the Yankees didn't win it all.

They got a wild-card berth, behind the A.L. East champion Baltimore Orioles.

Both the Yanks and the Orioles fell to Cleveland; the Indians, in turn, lost to

the Marlins. Today, none of those other teams has more than five players left

from '97. The Marlins have only one, and are in danger of being disbanded by

Major League Baseball.

Consistency, loyalty and teamwork are essential to the modern

Yankee mythology. Part of what makes the myth come true is the fact that these

particular Yankees have been playing together for years. Joe Torre doesn't have

to guess what his players will do; he's seen them already. Jeter doesn't just

know abstract rules of technique on a relay play-he knows exactly how to take a

throw from Williams and how to deliver it to Posada. This is why the Yankees

have seemed nearly immune to blunders in big games, and why newcomers to the

team pick up its rhythms so quickly. Today's game is like yesterday's game;

this year is like last year. And last year, the Yankees were world champs.

That's the inspirational part of the story. Then there's the

cold-blooded fact behind it: The Yankees are rich enough to make it work.

Plenty of teams have assembled and trained a nucleus of players like the one

the Yankees have. But players who flourish together become expensive together,

too. Most teams have to pick and choose which ones to keep so their payroll

stays manageable. The Yankees-fat on local TV revenue-can keep them all.

And they can add more. For more than 80 years, to the dismay of

fans in other cities, the Yankees have treated the rest of the league as their

junior varsity. In the late teens and 20's, they cheerfully fleeced the Boston

Red Sox; in the 50's, they cannibalized the Kansas City Athletics. Since the

70's, they've been able to let money and glamour funnel the best free agents to

the Bronx. Even in the darkness of this year's series with Oakland, the city's

newspapers took arrogant comfort in the fact that the A's M.V.P., Jason Giambi,

would be a free agent this winter. The Yankees weren't really losing to the

Athletics; they were losing to the Yankees of the future.

If Giambi does show up in pinstripes next spring, it'll be

nothing new. In '95, Tino Martinez helped the Mariners bounce Don Mattingly's

Yankees; in '96, Martinez inherited Mattingly's job at first base. In '96, Mike

Stanton pitched against the Yankees for Texas; in '97, he was in the Yankee

bullpen. Jim Leyritz and Sterling Hitchcock went from the Yankees to the

Padres; after the Padres met the Yankees in the World Series, the two came back

again. David Wells, Denny Neagle, David Justice, Mike Mussina-the Yankees seem

to play baseball by the rules of marbles, claiming the forfeited assets of

their foes.

Again, it's wealth that makes it possible-money, and a steady

stream of prospects that the Yankees can trade for veterans. When the Twins

wanted to lighten their payroll by trading Chuck Knoblauch, the Yankees were

ready to deal. When Roger Clemens wanted to leave Toronto, the Yankees had the

cash and players to make it work. Even when they've needed to pick up role

players or short-timers, they've been able to afford premium ones: Chili Davis,

Jose Canseco, Cecil Fielder, Dwight Gooden.

What separates the Yankees from other rich teams, like the

Dodgers or the Orioles, is a combination of scouting acumen by the team's

executives and shamelessness by the owner. There are other owners who are big

enough spenders to match the contracts that George Steinbrenner offers, but

none of them have the nerve to eat the contracts Steinbrenner eats. If he thinks the team has made a mistake-as with

Kenny Rogers or Hideki Irabu-Steinbrenner wants to fix it, even if he

has to pay to get rid of the player in question. When the dust settles, the

Yankees have the highest payroll in baseball, but they have the players they

want to have.

Which is not the same thing as having the greatest players. This

past spring, the Red Sox broke camp with the best pitcher in baseball, the best

slugger in the American League and a perceptible edge over the Yankees at

catcher, second base and all three outfield positions. As soon as Nomar

Garciaparra recovered from a sore wrist, they'd have the better shortstop, too.

But Garciaparra didn't recover-and after briefly moving ahead of the Yanks in

the standings, the Sox unraveled amid injuries and quarreling.

The Yankees, meanwhile, kept playing with a relentless,

suffocating adequacy. That has been the key to Yankee ball all along, in this

generation. They are a fleet of Toyota Camrys, a case of 60-watt bulbs, an

endless string of boxed exactas on the top horses. They play the law of averages

better than anyone else. Every game, they run a decent pitcher out on the hill

and put eight or nine guys in the lineup who have a reasonable chance to do

some hitting and know how to take a walk.

The only astonishing note in the whole process is struck by

Mariano Rivera. If the Yankees have managed to be ahead after eight innings,

the closer comes in, throws maybe five pitches and preemptively ends the game.

And he does it so quickly and precisely, it barely sinks in.

Incredible as Rivera is, he is not the definitive Yankee. That

role belongs to Bernie Williams. At no time in the Yankees' current string of

successes has Williams been the best-regarded center fielder in baseball.

Someone is always faster, harder-hitting, more spectacular on defense. But when

you add up the last seven years, what center fielder has done better? Ken

Griffey Jr., and not by as much as you might think. Since 1995, Williams has

batted better than .300 every year, with walks and power. And he's as good now

as he's ever been.

So why aren't the Yankees

winning this World Series, too? They are struggling now not with a younger,

hungrier version of themselves, but with an older, possibly more jaded version.

Like the '97 Marlins, the Diamondbacks are the Yankees without the continuity-a

team stocked with a good, established player at every position, with no regard

for cost. What they lack in tradition and shared experience, they make up for

with Schilling and Johnson. The two aces are well into their 30's, they both

badly want a ring, and they are peaking.

And the Yankees are having some bad luck. They have had good

luck, mostly, since 1996: Jeffrey Maier stealing that home run against

Baltimore, Albert Belle bailing out on their contract offer, Jamie Moyer

cracking a kneecap, Jermaine Dye breaking his own leg with a foul ball. But

luck is random. This time, the Diamondbacks are getting the bounces.

The bounces matter more, too, because the Yankees are playing in

the crunch more than they're accustomed to. Despite the investment in the roster

over the years, this team is thinner than usual. Knoblauch, moved to the

outfield because of his throwing woes, is not adequate there. O'Neill and

Justice are clearly in decline. The pitching is shaky, relatively

speaking-after years of coolly rolling through his rotation however he pleased,

Torre is now juggling starters to keep them out of tough spots.

Still, the troubles seem transitory. The Yankees do not,

historically, let sentiment get in the way of their needs. The ineffective

players will be gone next year, and there will be new, effective ones to take

their place. Whatever happens now, the 2002 Yankees should be better than the

2002 Diamondbacks.      

But barring a comeback, the city

will have to get through the winter without a baseball championship for

comfort. The city has other things on its mind. There was talk-as much outside

New York as in it-of how another championship for the Yankees would help heal

the city, how it would bring joy in dark times. Yet the idea of consecrating a

Yankees victory to the memory of Sept. 11 seems small and unnecessary. What

good, at this point, is a show of invincibility?

If the heroes of Sept. 11 needed a baseball tribute, they got it

from the Mets, who wore FDNY and NYPD caps on the field, and who made a rousing

and inexplicable late run at the first-place Atlanta Braves. The Mets fell

short, at the very end, because they were not good enough. But they made their

point. They left an impression.

The Yankees, meanwhile, paid tribute to Sept. 11, too, but kept

their regular hats on, and went after the same prize they'd been pursuing all

summer, with the same determination. That's why they're the Yankees. Business

goes on. If you want the memory of heroism in the chaos, of rescue crews

raising a flag on a twisted girder, remember the Mets. If your goal is to see a

new Trade Center rise up once the old one's been cleared away, you probably

should stick with the Yankees.