Bomber boosters were bursting with pinstriped pride yesterday as the city prepared to honor their Yankee heroes with “the largest parade ever.”
“I’m ecstatic,” crowed the city’s No. 1 Yanks fan, Mayor Giuliani.
The mayor could not hold back his superlatives, declaring that the first Subway Series in 44 years – which the Bombers captured four games to one – was “the best Series ever.”
“This was the best of the four Series that have happened for the Yankees since I’ve been mayor,” he went on. “This was the closest ever.”
Giuliani said that, as mayor, he would have loved to see the Series go two more games, “but as a Yankee fan, I don’t think I could have taken it.”
And although everyone in his family is a Yankee fan, Giuliani said one of his cancer doctors is a Met fan.
“We even went to one of the games together, and, I have to admit, it’s a little unnerving knowing your doctor is a Mets fan. It makes you kind of wonder,” joked the mayor, who is being treated for prostate cancer.
To toast its pinstriped heroes, the city is preparing a victory parade up Broadway’s Canyon of Heroes Monday, starting at noon.
It will be the seventh time the Yankees have made the trip from Battery Park to City Hall.
Some 3 to 4 million spectators are expected to show up and scream their heads off.
“From the point of view of participants, this would be the largest parade ever,” Giuliani said, drawing on his superlatives again.
“It’s going to be a very, very large parade and a great, great celebration.”
The parade will have 60 floats and cars, 12 marching bands and 10 double-decker buses. The Rockettes will be there, and so will the Anheuser-Busch Clydesdale horses.
Ten tons of shredded paper will rain down on the parade and the World Champions.
All this will take place under the watchful eye of 5,000 cops, 1,000 more than last year because more people are expected and the city is under a terrorist alert.
At City Hall, Giuliani will give the threepeat champs keys to the city.
The mayor invited the Mets, but they said thank you, no.
“Our view is that it was a generous offer on behalf of the mayor,” said general manager Steve Phillips. “It should be the Yankees’ day of celebration for winning the World Series. They deserve the stage to themselves.”
City Council Speaker Peter Vallone said he and Giuliani agreed to find “an appropriate time and place, chosen by the Mets, to salute their spectacular performance on the field.”
He said the Met flag would be flown above City Hall. Across the Big Apple, Mets fans were saying you better believe we’ll be back next year.
“Seeing those teams play, it was just amazing. And there’s always next year,” said Nando Ross, 32, of the Lower East Side, who was still wearing a Mets cap.
Yankee fans said the Bombers would be waiting for them.
“I feel sorry for Mets fans because they had dreams of winning, but they didn’t know how bad the Mets were until they played the Yankees,” said Maryanne Dattzilo, 50, of The Bronx.
Out in Mets land in Queens, the Yankees fan No. 2 – Sister Marguerite Torre, sister of Yankees manager Joe Torre – wore her brother’s baseball cap and a 1996 World Series ring to work yesterday.
Her first act as principal of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary elementary school in Ozone Park was to give her students Monday off so they could attend the parade.
Not everybody plans to go.
“I love the Mets,” said 9-year-old Daniele Capolongo.