I generally try not to say nice things about the Yankees, but as the Mets were fighting with their closer after K-Rod’s season finished prematurely after a fight with his kids’ grandfather, Joe Girardi, Joba Chamberlain and Tino Martinez, among others, were schlepping on New Jersey Transit and the subway to accompany a blind Yankee fan and her guide dog to the Stadium for last night’s contest against Detroit.

It’s part of HOPE Week (Helping Others Persevere and Excel) for the Yankees, when the guys do nice things for people in need. (The Mets, meanwhile are conducting the less wholesome BUYFIL Week (Beat Up Your Father-in-Law.)

The pinstriped posse picked up the blind woman, Jane Lang, at her Morris Plains home, then took New Jersey Transit to Penn Station, and switched to the D train to get up to the Stadium.

You can view the slide show here.

Kudos to them for making the woman’s day–and for taking public transportation.

There’s a heartbreaking Page 1 story in today’s NY Times about a 13 year old boy who, fearing a scolding at his Bensonhurst home, ran away and spent the next 11 days riding the rails. Francisco “Franky” Hernandez Jr. eluded both the police and his frantic parents until a transit officer paired the boy up with the picture on a handmade “Nino Perdido” sign at a Coney Island station Oct. 26.

Franky was diagnosed with Asperger’s, sort of a high-function autism condition, in recent years. He’d run away on the rails once before; in January, Hernandez–also in trouble at school at the time–rode the subway but returned home five hours later.

The story offers a tragic look at a mother’s efforts to connect with an Asperger’s child, who typically has extreme difficulty expressing emotion, and a school system’s apparent inability to find a productive environment for such a kid. It doesn’t make the NYPD and the city’s extensive surveillance system in the subways look so hot either.

The boy rode the D, F and 1 train and subsisted on food purchased at newsstands: chips, croissants, jelly rolls. He drank bottled water and used the bathroom at the Stillwell Avenue station.

Franky’s mother, Marisela Garcia, isn’t about to throw away the stack of Nino Perdido signs she made last month.

“It’s not easy to say it’s over and it won’t happen again,” she said.

Some of us experience intense anxiety when thinking about being stuck in a locked subway car.

Add a knife-wielding maniac to that bete noir, and you’ve got a fairly miserable evening commute.

That’s what happend for 30 unfortunate straphangers on the D train Saturday after Jerry Sanchez stabbed a man in the neck with a steak knife, killing the guy.

Reports Metro:

When the train pulled into the Seventh Avenue stop at 53rd Street, the NYPD told the motorman to keep the doors locked tight so Sanchez, 37, couldn’t escape. Terrified passengers huddled on one end of the car for five minutes waiting for the cops, while Sanchez calmly sat in his seat, according to reports.

From Facebook today:

So, is it wrong or some sort of profiling to look around for Chinese people sitting down before the train gets to Canal St (so you can get their seat)?