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Baseball was berra, berra good to him

Let the rest of the metropolitan New York baseball world assemble in lower Manhattan. Big deal. What’s a World Series ticker-tape parade when compared to the cultural event of the year. The Van Gogh exhibit in D.C.? Monet in Boston? Nah. The dedication of the Yogi Berra Museum.

“This means a lot,” said Berra, the Hall of Fame Yankees catcher. “When you have places like this, you’re usually dead or gone.”

Yogi was very much alive and kicking off Friday’s ceremony on the campus of Montclair State University, near his home in Little Fall, N.J. The Yogi museum won’t officially open for a couple of weeks.

So, technically, it ain’t open till it’s open.

Call him the education mayor

Mayor Rudolph Giuliani gave his blessing to skip school Friday, and hundreds of New York City students - and some teachers - needed no further prodding.

On a brisk, sunny afternoon, they joined hundreds of thousands of other celebrants at the Yankees’ World Series victory parade.

“The mayor told us to stay home. I told my mother Giuliani said it’s OK,” said Jessica Chironna, 15.

When only 15 kids out of 36 showed up for their morning global history class, Chironna said, “Forget this, we’re going to the Yankees parade.”

Giuliani, a die-hard Yankees fan, let his son, Andrew, and daughter, Caroline, skip school and suggested others do the same, because, he said, baseball teaches lessons they can’t learn in school.

Still first at something

The Los Angeles Dodgers were named the “most successful organization in major league baseball during the 20th Century” in a study done by Street & Smith’s SportsBusiness Journal.

The Dodgers finished first with a “century performance index” of 7.63 on a 10-point scale, based on a formula that evaluated on-the-field and ticket-window success of each of the 35 major league teams that played at least 10 seasons between 1901 and 1998.

Best defense is a good offense

A national magazine is out with another survey on the NFL’s dirtiest players, but Raiders defensive tackle Darrell Russell would like to submit that not all the culprits’ names are in print.

“Maybe the guys not in the polls aren’t as productive,” said Russell, in his second season out of USC. “But in my five years of playing in college and pro, I know of players who only know how to play dirty.

“They only know how to push people around piles, go for your knees and jump on backs. That’s their technique and some of them are effective. It gets a lot of players on their tippy-toes, but it never takes me out of my game because I make sure I shoot at them first.”

One ringy, dingy …

Steve Rosenbloom in the Chicago Tribune:

“A Russian soccer team was fined and banned from five home games after one of its fans broke the referee’s nose by whacking him with a cell phone.

“Good to see hooligans going high tech.”

The last word …

“We have a pitcher from Cuba, a pitcher from Japan, a pitcher from Panama and Boomer Wells from Mars.”

- Tino Martinez, discussing the diversity of the Yankees’ pitching staff