The Great 'Sandman' Battle

SULLIVAN: The issue is: Billy Wagner or Mariano Rivera-who should use "Enter the Sandman"? Well, of course, Wagner can use the damn song. Say what? The Yankees now own Metallica air rights in NYC? The real question should be, "Why would he?"

Mariano Rivera has been coming into Yankee games with that song blaring; his entrance meant that the game was over. And for the most part, it was. Rivera may be one of the most valuable players I have ever watched. The Yankee World Series wins in '96,'98,'99 and '00 were tied into his effectiveness. If the Yankees had a lead going into the seventh inning, it was a 95 percent chance that they would win.

Given all that, Wagner has almost been as effective as Rivera for far worse teams. Now the Mets get their own closer, and on his second attempt he blows a lead. Sandman or no Sandman, a blown save is a blown save. Yankee fans are in a snit that the Mets dare use their legend's song.

Oh, shut up! I have grown so weary of Yankee fans, Yankee tradition, even the name Yankee. Yankee go home! The only problem I have with Wagner using the song is I like my Mets as different from the Yankees as possible. I think the Mets used it to shoot the bird at their cross-town rivals. I don't like any music at the ball park, but that train left the station years ago. After 1989's Major League, with Charlie Sheen coming into games with "Wild Thing" blasting, it was a fait accompli that baseball would follow suit. The shame of it is that baseball ended up taking its cues from Hollywood-not vice versa. Now baseball feels it needs to spice up its product and blare useless noise. God forbid a stadium should grow slightly quiet.

HOLLANDER: I suspect in these matters, C.J., you suffer from what legendary Hollywood director Billy Wilder described as "Van Gogh's ear for music."

How lame is it that Billy Wagner comes to New York and can think of no other intro music for himself than the same Metallica riff that Mariano Rivera, the greatest closer in New York professional baseball history, has been using here for the last 10 years? I'll tell you, it's pretty lame.

What if the Yankees decided to place a huge red apple in centerfield that exploded in neon delight every time someone on the team hit a home run? They wouldn't. Why not? Because that's what the Mets have been doing at Shea Stadium since their inception. Would the Yankees use some annoying jester in pinstripes and an inflated baseball head as their team mascot? No, they wouldn't, because that traditional ballpark inanity belongs to the Mets.

Though neither team seems willing to budge on this ridiculous music issue, there are solutions.

Customarily, when a newly acquired player wants to wear his old number but someone on his new team already has it, he buys it from the new teammate. Wagner should make an offer to Rivera. Rivera hates the song anyway, so it shouldn't be a problem.

Or, let Metallica decide. They seem to have no problem bullying file-sharing teenagers, so why not obnoxiously insert themselves in another controversy where their precious music is at issue?

The best solution would be for Billy Wagner to take this opportunity and establish a new musical identity for himself. What better choice could there be than his namesake, German composer Richard Wagner? In particular, he would be wise to choose Das Rheingold, the first in the cycle of musical dramas collectively titled Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelungs).

Not only would this solution help attract the coveted old-school, anti-Semitic, classical-music-loving baseball fan demographic, but it could also land Billy a fat local beer endorsement contract. In the '90s, they called that "synergy." It's the same decade Billy Wagner should've left Metallica behind.

SULLIVAN: I see, Dave. You want to get all German on this thing. Why not have Wagner dropped on the mound via helicopter to Wagner's "Flight of the Valkeries"? On the Jumbotron, they can show Duvall sniffing the air and saying, " I love the smell of napalm in the morning."

Here's the thing: You are correct that Rivera hates the song. I'll bet Wagner didn't even pick it. Like Rivera, a suit picked it for him to mess with the Yankees. Guess what? It worked. They are screaming about that instead of their ineffective and aging pitching staff that could keep them in the Bronx in October.

Your history needs correcting. That Big Apple thing didn't make its way to Shea until the '80s. Mr. Met, that 6-foot-10-inch encephalitis case, has always annoyed me from the jump and I think it is lame. That the Yankees don't use a mascot is the right move. Neither do the Red Sox or a host of other teams.

Let's ban music and steroids from ball parks. Stop the noise now! I don't need it and neither does baseball. The game is the thing. As it was in the beginning, it shall be in the end.

HOLLANDER: I'm all for banning music in arenas for any sport. These overproduced "game presentations" with the high-decibel audio and endless video kills the basic experience. The most entertaining bits are still the simplest-the Yankees Stadium groundskeepers choreographing "YMCA," the scoreboard Subway-car race and even the communal "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" during the 7th inning stretch. That's enough for me.

But it's tit-for-tat time in the corrections department, C.J. A Mets staffer didn't pick "Enter Sandman" for Wagner to tweak the Yankees. Jeff Bagwell chose the song for Wagner during his rookie year with the Astros in 1996. This is not a case of the Yankees getting a Matsui, and then the Mets getting a Matsui a year later. Wagner has a long and legitimate interest in this song.

If we must have music at the games, I suppose players should be allowed to choose what they like. That's better than then the days when management made comical attempts to match an organ tune with a player's ethnicity, e.g. Ron Blomberg, "Hava Nagila"; Rick Cerone, "Arrivederci Roma"; Benny Agbayani, the theme from Hawaii Five-0; and "La Bamba" for every Latin player no matter where they were from.

Yet here we are. The Yankees are pissed off and Mets are telling them to shove it. All this over a song! I like Tom Glavine's idea-to take the heat off Wagner and to piss off the Yankees even further, Glavine suggests all the Mets pitchers should use "Enter Sandman."

From the ridiculous to the sublime, baseball's rock opera continues.