Much has changed in the 44 years since New York baseball fans were treated to a Subway World Series. One constant remains the same. The New York Yankees had no difficulty in defeating the city's National League representative. In the past, the Yankees regularly disposed of either the Brooklyn Dodgers or the New York Giants. This year, the New York Mets, whose fan base is strongest on Long Island, won their first pennant since 1986, only to fall short to the Yankees in the Fall Classic, which nowadays is bumping precipitously close to the winter months.

There might be a bigger Yankee fan in Roslyn than Marshall Bernstein, a village Board of Trustee member or a more loyal Met partisan than Brad Barth, a Roslyn Heights resident and Manhattan-based journalist formerly employed by Anton Community Newspapers; if so, we haven't found them.

New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani enjoys reminding people that he was a Yankee fan while growing up in Brooklyn during the height of the Dodgers' great run during the 1950s. But he wasn't the only Bomber fan living in hostile territory. Marshall Bernstein was also a Yankee fan from Brooklyn and like Mayor Giuliani, he remains loyal to the team enjoying yet another great run in its storied history.

Mr. Bernstein had kind words to say about the Mets, noting that every game in the series could have gone either way, including game two when the Mets made a "mind-boggling" ninth-inning comeback from a 6-0 deficit only to lose 6-5. "The gods of baseball were smiling on them," said Mr. Bernstein of his Yankees. There was not only Todd Zeile's drive in game one that missed being a two-run homer by inches, but also Zeile's ball in the game two rally that was pulled back into the ballpark for an out by reserve Yankee outfielder Clay Bellinger, put into the game by Joe Torre for defensive purposes: A few inches in another direction and the Mets may have won the two games at Yankee Stadium.

Otherwise, the Yankees' superb bullpen pitching led by the invincible Mariano Riveria helped to carry the day. Met fans, Mr. Bernstein noted, might be disappointed now, but the team, he said, had nothing to be ashamed of. Even Yankee fans live the blues now and then. Mr. Bernstein recalled the 1963 series, when the Los Angeles Dodgers swept the mighty Yankees in four straight games; he also remembered defeats from the Mickey Mantle-Roger Maris era in 1960 to the Pittsburgh Pirates and in 1964 to the St. Louis Cardinals.

Other than the games themselves, the World Series will also be remembered for a notorious bat throwing incident featuring Yankee pitcher Roger Clemens. In game two, Clemens threw a fastball to Met catcher Mike Piazza. Piazza fouled of the ball, but in the process he broke his bat, with the fat part sailing out toward the mound. A flustered Clemens fielded the bat and slung it in the vicinity of the Yankee dugout, almost hitting the stunned Met catcher. The two, as they say, have a history. During interleague play, Piazza had "owned" the Yankee pitcher, batting well over .500 against him, including a grand slam in the club's first meeting this year. Last July, Clemens, as is his habit, brushed back Piazza, in the process beaning him with a 90-plus mile per hour fastball. The bat throwing incident dominated Series news for several days.

Mr. Bernstein emphasized that back in 1998, he had been opposed trading David Wells to the Toronto Blue Jays for Clemens. While pleased that Clemens had pitched well in the clutch this year, Mr. Bernstein had no explanation for the "bizarre" bat throwing incident. He didn't think Clemens was trying to hit Piazza with the bat, but at the same time, he couldn't understand what would make Clemens throw the bat in such a "vicious" manner.

Due to their most immediate success, most baseball fans in the New York area were clearly rooting for the Yankees. Still, it safe to be either a Yankee fan or a Met fan no matter where one lived in the New York area. That wasn't the case during the halcyon days of the Subway Series in the late 1940s and '50s. While Yankee fans in Brooklyn, Mr. Bernstein, along with his twin brother, were discreet as possible when things went the Bombers' way. He recalled leaving the house with his brother after a Yankees World Series victory and seeing the other neighborhood boys, all Dodger fans, distraught and on the brink of tears. The Bernstein brothers would "not say a word" to anyone; they only walked around, "feeling good inside" and careful not to gloat in front of the crestfallen Dodger fans.

All throughout the 2000 season, it was clear that anything less than a pennant for the Mets would constitute a failed season. The Mets came through under intense pressure of their own; still, Mr. Barth was disappointed by the World Series loss. Three of the four Mets losses were decided by one run. Game five was lost by two runs; it ended with Mike Piazza hitting a shot to the warning track with a runner on base. "The Mets lost the kind of close games they usually pull out," Mr. Barth said.

For next year, he thought the Mets need to find another run producer for the offense, while trying to resign as many of their free agent pitchers as possible, including Mike Hampton. Asked about the Clemens-Piazza incident, Mr. Barth said it would have been difficult for the umpires to do something as controversial as throwing Roger Clemens out of a World Series game, even though throwing a bat during a regular season game automatically gets a player tossed. Either way, the Mets should not have allowed the incident to "throw them out of their game," even though Mr. Barth admits that is what may have happened.

Despite this year's disappointment, Mr. Barth's earliest baseball memories, like Mr. Bernstein's, are happy ones. He became a Met fan in 1986, the year that team won the World Series with a seven-game triumph over the Boston Red Sox and has remained with the team throughout the lean years of the early '90s and the revival it has enjoyed under manager Bobby Valentine in the past two years.