Mayors Make a Baseball Bet
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Easing a bit of the enmity surrounding the playoff rematch between the Yankees and the Red Sox, Mayor Bloomberg and Mayor Thomas Menino of Boston agreed to a “friendly wager” yesterday over the outcome of the pennant series.
The mayors offered up a feast of local delicacies – as they did last year before the Yankees and the Red Sox clashed in a seven-game series that featured bench-clearings and the wild scene of Pedro Martinez shoving to the ground a charging Don Zimmer.
A year after the Yankees victory, Mr. Bloomberg this time around is putting up 6 pounds of assorted meat from the venerable Katz’s Delicatessen on the Lower East Side, along with a dozen knishes, three loaves of jumbo seedless rye bread, 2 pounds of mustard, and “sour pickles to go with your grapes,” as the mayor said.
Perhaps buoyed by confidence in the Red Sox team, Boston’s mayor is offering up a far more elaborate platter including:
- A New England clambake for four with lobsters, steamers, shrimp, and clam chowder.
- One marble cake decorated with pin stripes.
- One Boston cream pie.
- Milk chocolate baseballs.
Asked if Mr. Bloomberg’s wager was stingy compared to Mr. Menino’s, a spokesman for the mayor, Jordan Barowitz, said, “The Yankees are going to win. It doesn’t matter what the city puts up.” Mr. Barowitz said Mr. Bloomberg, a native of Medford, Mass., is rooting for the Yankees.