SPORTING PURSUITS The savage swagger of New York's baseball brutes BY CHIP BENSON

The first-place Yankees, with a player named Godzilla, and the last-place Mets, with a 300-pound playa named Mo, illustrate, more then ever, what’s wrong with baseball. First, a win-at-all-cost philosophy, with absolute adulation of victory, regardless of its perversion of the overall good. The second road: overpaid, wild extravagance followed by shock and merciless ridicule for the loser. The baseball brutes’ two paths don’t entirely reflect our society, just some of the most grotesque elements of New York City’s version of America.

Thank your lucky stars if you’re a Red Sox fan. Even with the team’s knack for heartbreak, you might enjoy the game as if it was an actual sport. You’ll definitely live longer. Remember the final point made in Ken Burns’s epic documentary, Baseball — that the Red Sox best represent the game and its necessary optimism, because baseball is inherently futile (the best hitters, after all, are successful only one-third of the time).

No such thing in New York, where George Steinbrenner is always trying to buy everybody off like Mr. Potter, the mean old banker, in It’s A Wonderful Life. If you’re the Red Sox, you hope you’re Jimmy Stewart, with enough integrity to realize the right thing from the priced thing. The Yankees are priced to win their business, not play a game; with the money that Steinbrenner spends, it’s beyond embarrassment if they lose. Between the Mets and Yankees, they spend more than $250 million on salaries. Most fans can barely afford to live in the city, let alone root for the Yankees or Mets. Just look at the worn faces of the players, coaches, fans, and especially the owner, when things aren’t going well. Look at Rudy Giuliani. Two days after his wedding, the former mayor was wearing his Yankees jacket, presumably on honeymoon with Steinbrenner — a grown man flailing his arms in a too-tight turtleneck and yelling at the field during Clemens’s first failed attempt to win his 300th game.

Meanwhile, the Mets’ Mo Vaughn and his $17 million salary have been taken off the field, first under cover of the dugout, and then out of Shea Stadium under the guise of the disabled list. The brutish booing from the bloodthirsty New York mob didn’t get to just Mo. It was starting to get to the whole team, so he was sent to the gallows.

Angry Met fans reading a steady diet of bad local news might wonder what Mo’s salary could accomplish if applied toward closed firehouses, government layoffs, and terrorism preparation. One year of paying Mo? Or should we fund the salaries for 340 elementary school teachers . . . enough for five entire schools!

Where is it all going? Even Yankee fan and radio host Mike Francesca of New York’s WFAN-AM pointed out how insulting it was that the Steinbrenner-owned telecast of the last Red Sox-Yankees game didn’t replay the 2-2 pitch that should have ended the Yankees’ ninth inning. "Please don’t treat us like idiots," Francesca said. The Yankees do have an unrivaled record of success on the diamond, but their insistence on winning – as suggested by the business-like pinstripes on their uniforms — comes at a harsh cost.