WFAN'S 10 GREATEST MOMENTS

WFAN celebrated their 30th anniversary on July 1. They recently ran a poll to select the 10 greatest NY sports moments of the last 30 years. Here they are, with my commentary...



10) 2000 Subway Series- OK, so for obvious reasons this was a hard one for me to swallow, but there was one moment in the series where I was a proud New Yorker..... There were numerous stories saying that this was the lowest rated World Series in history, reflecting the country's downright hostility towards New York.  But at one point, the FOX camera crew focused on the Met bullpen, where David Cone of the Yankees had hopped the wall and was sitting watching the game with Met reliever John Franco. The two of them sitting there laughing and enjoying the game. Fans of both teams complained but I thought it was great. What better way to remind the rest of the country that New York was the baseball capital than by having two guys from the opposite teams sitting there together. To me that was a proverbial flip of the bird to all the NY haters out there.

9) 1996 World Series- This was fun. The Yankees were not yet the hateable bunch of d-cks they would become. And even though the act would grow very old, watching Joe Torre cry that Sunday evening as he was going to his first show, with his poor brother awaiting a transplant while having buried another brother earlier that year, was not only heartwarming, it convinced me the Yanks were going to win it all, despite being heavy underdogs to the Braves. One of the few I've gotten right over the years.

8) Giants win Super Bowl 46- This has lost some luster in my eyes, as I hear Giant fans telling me that their team and their QB is the only team capable of being Brady/Bellichick in a Super Bowl. To which I respond Who are the only two QB's to beat Brady/Bellichik in the playoffs at New England. Joe Flacco is one. Peyton Manning is NOT the other one. That would be Mr. Buttfumble himself.

7) Matteau, Matteau Goal in 1994- I was at the Met game with my girlfriend and some of her male high school friends (almost all of whom were Islander fans) when Valeri Zelepukin scored that game tying goal with 7 seconds left. "I live in Whitestone! yelled the one other Ranger fan in the group, we can get to my house before OT starts." I drove my 79 Ford as fast as the poor thing could go, to the house of some dude I had only met that night (and would never see again) and when Stephane Matteau scored that goal, I literally cried into this poor dude's shoulder. Needless to say, a month later, my relationship was over. But this memory will last a lifetime.

6) Jeter's flip in the 2001 playoffs- I was with Woodsy at the Beach Club watching this one. At the time, everyone in the bar was yelling at poor Ellen Cahill because she skipped the jukebox playing God Bless America for the 10th time that hour. (we were just a month past 9/11 at this time) One by one everyone stopped yelling at Ellen and started watching the replay of El Capitan cutting the ball off, flipping it to Jorge Posada and nailing Jeremy Giambi at the plate. FOX must have showed the replay 100 times, every time the bar collectively yelled "Holy $h-t"

5) Aaron Boone's 2003 ALCS winning homer- Was home watching this one with Mom, just days after her surgery. Had pretty much passed out after the 9th inning, and was awoken by the roar of the Yankee Stadium crowd. Or maybe it was the collective groan coming from New England. Earlier that post season, Trot Nixon hit a game winning homer against Oakland, and told Jim Gray that he "didn't hit that home run, Jesus Christ did." Well, Jesus didn't hit this one against the Red Sox, according to the Sawx fans, Aaron f-cking Boone did.

4) Mike Piazza's 9/11 Home Run- I've written about this several times. Of all these great moments, this was the only one I was there to see live. We thought it was important to show the world we were going to go on and not be scared to go out, so me, dad, Katie and Steve did our civic duty and headed to Shea Stadium that night. As it looked like the Mets were going to lose, I began to rationalize that the  score was not important, that being hit to support New York was the main goal and then BOOM!, Piazza hit one of his no doubt about it blasts and the Mets held on. Would it have been as special if they had lost? Glad I didn't have to find out.

3) Rangers Win Stanley Cup in 1994- Chaz Palmenteri hosted a town hall with Mike and the Mad Dog right before their 30 for 30 aired on ESPN, and they were asked their most memorable time as a team. Russo chose this. (Hockey moron Fancessa chose the 96 Yankees) I'm obviously biased here, this would be without question number one if I were putting the list together, but putting my bias aside, hockey was never more popular in the US, the city was never more united than it was for those two weeks in June 1994. Had the Knicks been able to overcome John Starks poor shooting 8 nights later, NY would have had two ticker tape parades in one month. Think about that for a minute.

2) David Tyree's helmet catch and 1) The Giants Win Super Bowl 42.

As I said previously, Super Bowl 46 wasn't nearly as much fun, but Super Bowl 42? That was a blast. The Patriots were 18-0 coming in, about to join the 1972 Dolphins as the only unbeaten teams in modern NFL history. No team has made me more miserable in the past 30 years than the Patriots, so watching them go undefeated was something I wasn't looking forward to. Tyree's catch was the luckiest catch in the history of the NFL, but to me that night it was a thing of beauty. I ended up heading out to 1st Avenue that night (I was living on 70th and York) and I had a gray and blue Rangers sweatshirt on, which a group of revelers mistook for a Giants sweatshirt and mobbed me with hugs and high fives. Good times.