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The Big, Bad Apple

The Babe, Reggie and Tom Terrific thrived in New York. Others are filled with terror when they see the big buildings and even bigger headlines.

Playing in the Big Apple is different. As John Rocker and Juan Gonzalez recently learned, everything is magnified. What’s trifling in Texas makes you notorious in New York.

“You have to have real thick skin - the thickest skin there is,” said Dodgers catcher Todd Hundley, a former Met.

How thick?

Ask Yankees second baseman Chuck Knoblauch, who had three errors in a game June 15, then woke up to banner headlines of “CHUCK-E-E-E.”

Rocker, who returns to town today, has been vilified since his comments about hating New York. The Yankees backed off trading for Gonzalez when they became convinced he didn’t really want to play in a big city.

“If you have a bad game and you are not at your locker, they’re going to bury you,” Hundley said. “You wake up in the morning, you get buried in the paper. You turn the radio on, you get buried on the radio. But if you’re there at your locker and you’re honest, everything is fine. The one answer that they respect there is, `Hey, I messed up. I had a bad game.”’

Others say it’s not worth the effort.

“Nine times out of 10, you don’t want to go to a place like that,” said San Francisco’s Ellis Burks.

Loooooooooser

Greg Rusedski took a beating at Wimbledon, losing his first-round match to Vince Spadea to end the American’s record 21-match losing streak. He also got beat up in the British papers.

“World’s biggest loser rolls over Rusedski,” The Independent said.

The Daily Mail said: “He fought like a dog but played like one.”

The last word …

“They’re playing for a T-shirt, remember that.”

- Police Officer J.M. Mertens, who was called on last weekend to break up fights between Hoopfest competitors.