York Post

They seemed to pity the "rich, handsome" baseball player who reportedly stepped out on his wife and into a strip club with another woman. Alex Rodriguez got caught. And the New York Yankees are at an all-time low under manager Joe Torre this late in the season. Those poor, rich Yankees. During the early innings of ESPN's Sunday night baseball game between the Yankees and Boston Red Sox, commentators Joe Morgan and Jon Miller talked about the unfortunate timing of A-Rod's alleged infidelity, how the already-struggling Yankees now must also deal with this so-called off-field distraction.

If the Gray Lady didn't have enough problems battling industrywide woes, now she has Rupert Murdoch to worry about. The media billionaire has made no secret of his desire to take aim at The New York Times once his News Corp. acquires Dow Jones & Co. and its flagshipThe Wall Street Journal in a $5 billion deal expected to close this fall. Murdoch said during an earnings conference call last week that he wanted the financial newspaper to have "more coverage of national, international and nonbusiness news ... all to better compete with The New York Times and other national newspapers."

NEW YORK -- What's in the Daily News? I'll tell you what's in the Daily News. Story about a Brooklyn highway crew goofing off while the city "suffers through its worst pothole season in memory!" That's what's in the Daily News. What's in the New York Post? I'll tell you what's in the New York Post. Story about a local mob boss getting rubbed out because the other mob bosses didn't like what they're now calling his "Fairy Godfather" lifestyle. That's what's in the New York Post. What's happening all over?

NEW YORK -- Rupert Murdoch may be running the New York Post by Monday morning, thanks to a conference-call putsch that all but ousted publisher Abe Hirschfeld yesterday.The international media mogul will ask Federal Bankruptcy Court for permission to operate the paper for 60 to 90 days.lTC Once assured that government regulations will not prohibit his owning both the Post and WNYW-TV in New York City, Mr. Murdoch is expected to repurchase the paper he owned from 1976 to 1988."We won what we think is a very important, major, but not complete victory in terms of trying to save the newspaper," said Post editor Pete Hamill, who has been battling Mr. Hirschfeld since the real estate developer took over the paper two weeks ago.Bankruptcy Judge Francis Conrad ordered Steven Bumbaca, the Post's controller, to immediately take over from Mr. Hirschfeld responsibility for authorizing checks and paying bills.

THE REVIEWS ARE IN, AND THEY GLOW "... Hairspray is, above all, Nice. This may be regarded as faint praise in New York, capital of Type A personalities. But Nice, in this instance, doesn't mean bland. Think of it spelled out in neon, perhaps in letters of purple and fuchsia. That's the kind of Nice that Hairspray is selling. And it feels awfully good to pretend, for as long as the cast keeps singing, that the world really is that way." -- Ben Brantley, New York Times "OK, so the new musical Hair- spray doesn't offer a cure for cancer, or the nose-diving Dow for that matter, but if the infectious jubilation currently spritzing from the stage of the Neil Simon Theater were bottled and sold across the country like, say, hair- spray, consumer confidence would not be a problem.

PHOENIX-- --Once again, we meet at the intersection of sports and politics, and once again I'm going to ignore the glaring "Don't Walk" sign and cross right over into my first Super Bowl stream of consciousness. If you haven't already noticed, Hillary Clinton's New York Giants are down here in John McCain's backyard to play Mitt Romney's New England Patriots, and the latest ESPN poll shows that Hillary's team is preferred by a solid majority of America's football fans. The New York Post went so far as to declare the Giants "America's Team" in Sunday's editions, and if you can't believe the New York Post, well, I think we've got a serious crisis of national confidence on our hands at a critical time in our country's history.

NEW YORK -- Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown, you think you've got problems with the New York tabloid press? Say hello to John Gotti.The Arkansas governor and the former California governor have spent the last week sparring with the oft-times irreverent Fourth Estate here. Mr. Clinton has even run a television ad complaining about how the tabloids have been kicking him around.But while Tuesday's New York presidential primary could be decisive in determining the Democratic nominee, the tabloids -- and local television -- have found a more inviting whipping boy in Gotti, the Mafia don found guilty of multiple murders and general mayhem.

James T. McCain, 83, a longtime civil rights activist, died Thursday in Columbia, S.C., after being hospitalized with pneumonia for several weeks. Mr. McCain was field secretary of the Congress of Racial Equality from 1957 to 1966, responsible for several Southeastern states including South Carolina. He taught students about nonviolent protest during that time and helped aspiring voters register and arranged sit-ins. "I remember one night when he pulled me out of a social event in Sumter, and we drove to Rock Hill to get someone out of jail, one of the Freedom Riders," said Ernest Finney, retired South Carolina Supreme Court chief justice who became CORE's legal counsel in South Carolina.

Stop the pressesThe Oakland Athletics' Jose Canseco was in New York Thursday. Madonna was in New York Thursday. Early Friday morning, Canseco was seen outside the apartment building where Madonna lives. Instant headline."Madonna's Batboy?" was the offering from the New York Post, which published two Page 3 photographs of Canseco outside the Central Park West building. The Post did allow that it did not know whether Canseco was visiting Madonna or someone else in the apartment house.The Post reported that Canseco arrived at the building at 11 p.m Thursday and left about two hours later.

NEW YORK -- It's morning again in the Big Apple, and the tabloids are beating up on Bill Clinton and Jerry Brown."If Bill Clinton is Slick Willie, then Brown is Jerry the hypocrite," writes Bob Herbert, a Daily News columnist."