The Talk of New York Baseball or anthrax? By Bob Yamplosky	フレームで見る  英文をプリントする  脚注をプリントする
野球と炭疽菌 炭疽菌騒ぎでニューヨーカーは混乱していると思われがちですが、筆者によれば、市民の大半は落ち着いているようす。少なくとも、4日にワールドシリーズが終わるまでは、彼らの一番の関心事はヤンキースの試合でした。しかし、ヤンキースが敗れ、野球シーズンが終わってしまった今、市民の不安感は高まるのでしょうか。

It is Sunday, Nov. 4, as I write this. Today, anthrax spores were found in City Hall. Ordinarily, you would think that a piece of news like this would be the top news story. It is not, however; the top news is that today, the Yankees play in the 7th and deciding game of the World Series.

New York, I am glad to say, is not in a panic over anthrax. There are jittery nerves, to be sure: A post office in Queens is closed for several hours when white powder (which turns out to be talc) is found spilled on the floor. A homeless man causes a stir when he pours baking soda in a mailbox. And those workers in industries directly affected the media, to whom the anthrax letters were addressed, and the postal workers handling the letters are understandably upset. And there are the people who will panic at any provocation, who are hoarding Cipro and ordering gas masks and what have you. These people are certainly conspicuous. But from what I can tell, they are not representative of New Yorkers.

Of the three known anthrax letters, two came to New York one to the Post and one to NBC news and one went to Washington. The anthrax in all three letters is apparently the same strain, but the anthrax that went to the Senate was "weaponized," making it far more lethal. The letters were mailed from a city in New Jersey, about 48 km outside New York. Two postal workers in the Washington area have died from inhalation anthrax, and a number of postal workers in New Jersey and near Washington have been infected, but are expected to recover.

There were several mild cases of anthrax infection among media workers (including a 7-month-old baby whose mother brought him to the office); spores were found at city mail facilities, but no postal workers had been infected. So while there certainly was concern, there wasn't anything like panic; we hadn't been hit head-on by this terrorist attack. My own postman handed me a letter from overseas, started joking about anthrax and made as if he was about to run away before I opened it.

Then, quite suddenly, New York had its first anthrax fatality Oct. 31. What made this particularly troubling was that this woman had no connection with the media or with mail handling; it suggested that anthrax was being spread in ways that we did not know about.

If there was any time for panic, this was it. But the panic did not come. And I believe that a big reason for this was the baseball team in the Bronx.

The Yankees, traditionally, have been the most hated team in baseball. This is because of their success through the years, and the fact that they are from New York, which is the least liked city in the country. After Sept. 11, however, all this changed. The Yankees were cheered in other cities, and even longtime Yankee-haters confessed that this year they were rooting for the Yankees. So if these people were pulling for the Yankees, you can imagine how Yankee fans felt.

The playoffs opened badly for the Yankees; but they won some dramatic games and came back to beat the Oakland A's, a younger, more talented team. It was nice to imagine that this was a metaphor for the city: almost defeated, but rising up to triumph. They easily beat Seattle, which had tied a record for most wins in the season ("SA-YO-NA-RA!" cheered the fans in right field). And as the Yankees progressed in the playoffs, the cheers at Yankee Stadium were louder, deeper, more prolonged than ever before; it was as if such screaming might chase away the sense of loss and the anxiety that had built up in the city since Sept. 11.

And then, when we should have been panicking over the anthrax fatality, we found our attention riveted on the Bronx. A cartoon in the New Yorker magazine showed a couple in front of a TV; the man, holding the remote, asks, "Anthrax or baseball?" Most of us chose baseball. After losing the first two games of the World Series, the Yankees won the next three, including two miraculous games in a row, in which the Yankees, losing with two outs in the ninth, came back to win. The city was delirious. People talked about destiny: After all that had happened to New York, the Yankees were fated to win.

They were not, as it turned out; my son went to bed with tears in his eyes tonight after Arizona, the Yankees' opponent, came up with their own miracle finish, to win the 7th game and the Series. So it is over.

So the city will wake up tomorrow without a baseball game to look forward to. All the thought and emotion focused on the Yankees will have to be shifted elsewhere. There are plenty of candidates: anthrax, or the dead still trapped in the rubble of the World Trade Center, or the economic crisis facing the city, or the form the next terrorist attack will take. It gets dark around 5 p.m. now. Baseball, the game of summer, is over. Somehow one gets the feeling that it is going to be a long winter.

Shukan ST: Nov. 16, 2001

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