One inch.

That was the difference between a 7 train full of miserable souls heading home from Shea Stadium, and a boisterous bunch with the illogical image of October baseball in their minds.

One inch.

That was the difference between a Carlos Beltran line drive in the bottom of the 9th slamming into the webbing of Micah Hoffpauir’s glove, yet another Mets rally snuffed out in jarring fashion, and the ball skimming off his leather and trickling safely into shallow right.

The “Let’s Go Mets!” chants bounced off the cheap corrugated walls and ceiling of the 7 train platform, and a giddy gaggle of mostly young, mostly white males jammed onto the arriving 7 to head back to Gotham.

Once on board, these men tuned to Blackberrys and cell phones, looking for updates for the extra innings contest between the feisty Brew Crew and the feckless Bucs, with grand implications for fans of the Amazin’s. (Alas, that one would not follow the New Yorkers’ script.)

The 7 express was just efficient enough to get us to Queensborough Plaza with a glimmer of hope about making that 11:09 to Hummerville. Alas, we missed it by that much, as a certain doddering superspy used to say, and had to wait nearly an hour for the next one.

11:15, the cops shuffle around the concourse, deciding who’s homeless and who’s merely waiting for their train, and acting accordingly. They nudge an older Latina woman sleeping a few feet from where Google had its transit display up just days before. She’s missing teeth. She has a cigarette behind her ear. She’s got white tube socks on and a pair of flip-flips sit nearby. She’s grouchy when she wakes.

11:30, I see similarly white tube socks in the lower-level bathroom, a man drying them with the hand dryer. The hot air fills a sock to the size of a woman’s foot and ankle. Satisfied with its dryness, the man removes his hosiery from the nozzle and starts on his other sock.

11:40, back on the main level, the yellow golf cart cruises the floor; I don’t know what the driver’s purpose is, and it appears he doesn’t either.

People run for trains. They mill about. They read old news in the morning’s Post.

Revelers stream in from the entrance on Vanderbilt, near Michael Jordan’s. They’re loud when they enter, but like walking into church, they fall into line when they notice the quiet hush of Grand Central near midnight.

A wobbly woman sprints for the 11:45 to Stamford. The doors shut just as she approaches, and heads out into the tunnel. Dejected, she walks back up the platform.

One inch.

The difference between triumph and tragedy, joy and sorrow, an inspiring win and a soul-crushing loss, gainful steps toward home and a lonely wait in a desolate train station.

One inch.

Today’s NY Times reports that William Shea, the high-powered New York lawyer for whom the Mets park Shea Stadium is named, dabbled a bit in some high-profile transit endeavors.

According to Richard Sandomir, Shea helped broker New York’s acquisition of the Long Island Railroad. He also served on the Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s board.

Shea also was an adviser to several mayors.

Sandomir mentions how Shea would joke about how few people knew who the stadium, which sees its final opening day today before the Mets shift to Citi Field next April, was actually named for.

[Shea] wrote about two fellow train commuters who thought he was an old ballplayer killed in World War I. (He wished they had thought he had been killed in World War II.)

The Straphanger’s Campaign has released its ninth annual “Subway Shmutz” cleanliness study. The survey revealed that subway cars are slightly cleaner than in 2005, and that the L train, with an 88% cleanliness rate, is the pick of the, well, litter.

“Passengers on the L and 7 are riding cleaner cars, thanks to more cleaners and better use of them,” said Gene Russianoff, campaign staff attorney. “We congratulate New York City Transit and hope that riders on the other lines will soon be seeing cleaner subway cars.”

The study looked at 2,200 subway cars between September and January, with surveyers tasked with noting a car’s cleanliness. Exactly half of the inspected cars were deemed “clean”, a slight bump from the 47% in 2005.

The worst performers were the E and the Q, both with 29% of their cars considered clean.  But the E can take heart–that’s quite a jump from the 2% clean rate it posted in 2005. (The Straphanger’s Campaign did not do the study in 2006, when it decided the NYC transit administration was too new to put to the test.)

The Subway Shmutz study’s results were vastly different from the Transit Authority’s own study; both use similar methodology, but the Transit Authority decreed that 87% of its cars were clean, compared to the Straphanger’s Campaign’s 50%. (The Campaign is part of NYPIRG.)

While the L train took top honors, the biggest improvement came from the 7 train, which jumped from 22% clean in 2005 to a whopping 78% in 2007–good for second overall.

So pop a little champagne on the 7 train…but be a dear and clean up after yourself.

Flushing Line

I took the 7 train. Not my usual run, but this morning I found myself during rush hour, 8:42, mixing with the straphangers on the above-ground line.

I was on my way to the South Bronx for work. Here’s what I noticed compared to the Lexington line from the week before.

§         It was packed with about 50 people in the car.

§         I counted 12 seated passengers who were asleep, or at least with their eyes closed and seemingly asleep.

§         There were easily 15 people reading papers. Three read the Daily News and the other 12 read Chinese or Korean papers, their characters alien script to me. A man read a paperback book – I couldn’t see the title.

§         There were three people on cell phones–the beauty of the elevated train is you can still stay in touch electronically [Editor’s Note: Beauty?]. Two people were holding phones and seemed to be; by the way they stared, reading messages.

§         There were four visible pairs of white ear buds for iPods and two old-style CD players.

§         Winter parkas abounded. Women wore thick coats with the hoods lined around the edge with faux fur. Men wore sport coats without ties. A couple of guys wore hoodies. I saw two briefcases and lots of backpacks. At least half of the people in the car wore sneakers.

§         One woman had a coffee with her. She didn’t drink it. She just held it and seemed to stare past it. It wasn’t from Espresso 77 – I could tell because the brown heat-shield wasn’t stamped with its red logo.

§         The advertisement that covered the wall above me was for “the mother of all vodkas from the motherland of vodkas – Stolichnaya.” There was no mention of pie or pi.

§         I dropped a bookmark and a man across from me said, “Hey–you dropped something.” It took me a moment to realize he was talking to me and that I had dropped something. I said thanks, impressed with the kindness.

To cross the East River we went underground and the world closed in around us. My ears popped.

At Grand Central the car emptied almost completely. I transferred to the 5 going to the Bronx. The train was packed up until 86^th Street, then cleared out. By the time I got to 149^th Street/3^rd Avenue stop I was one of half a dozen left.

Up on the surface, the South Bronx spread out before me and I moved from one world to the next.

–Joe Lunievicz

Some eagle-eyed readers of Trainjotting have noticed the new ads adorning the top of our pages. Indeed, Trainjotting has partnered with with Google to feature ads that aim to have something to do with the content on the page, which results in the reader clicking on them to buy stuff, and Google’s stock climbing north of $600 a share.

Trainjotting gets paid for each “AdSense” click. Some clicks are literally worth pennies, and some are actually worth a decent chunk of change–which means we mayl be able to buy a Starbucks card (or Espresso 77 t-shirt) for Straphanger Joe, maybe a pint of Pale Ale for G. Francis, perhaps a miniature 7 train whose wheels don’t stick for Little G.

If the program takes off, Little G may even have options other than Westchester Community College when he’s 18.

Hopefully us whoring ourselves out to Google won’t detract from your Trainjotting experience. And let’s face it–we’ll all be partnering with Google in some way or other somewhere down the road.

Since the docile souls on the 8:16 gave me nothing to write about this morning, I’m forced to be creative. So here it is, off the top of my head and with a little help from Google, my four favorite instances of ballplayers taking the train to the game.

4. Former Met first-sacker John Olerud, unassuming as Ugly Betty, would take the 7 train to Shea because he lived on the Upper East Side and it was the easiest way to get to work. I remember reading how he used to grab a pizza after the game; wearing his Mets cap, the guys from the pizza place just figured he was a big Mets fan. 

3. Former Phillies hurler Randy Wolf thought he found his soulmate while waiting for the 7 (or at least a really hot chick) 2003, and enlisted the local beat writers to help find her. (Teams visiting Shea typically stay at the Grand Hyatt, located right above the 7 stop at Grand Central.) He never did find her.

2. To get themselves psyched for the 2000 Subway Series, then-Mets Matt Franco, Kurt Abbott and Rick Reed rode the subway to Yankee Stadium. Franco told SI.com: “I got recognized by one guy in a Mets jersey who said, ‘Good luck.’ I just wanted to experience it. Tomorrow, I’m taking the team bus to experience that.”  

1. John Rocker, of course.  “Imagine having to take the [Number] 7 train to the ballpark,” he famously told SI’s Jeff Pearlman, “looking like you’re [riding through] Beirut next to some kid with purple hair next to some queer with AIDS right next to some dude who just got out of jail for the fourth time right next to some 20-year-old mom with four kids.