Like millions of baseball-crazed New Yorkers, Bomber legend Whitey Ford is rooting for a subway series.
The Hall of Fame hurler – nicknamed the Chairman of the Board when he led the pitching staff on the great Yankee teams of the ’50s and early ’60s – said a Yankee-Met series showdown would be a grand slam for the city.
“It would be so fabulous for everyone,” Ford told The Post yesterday from his Long Island home.
“The city would be electric. The fans would go crazy. I’d love to see a subway series. It would be a great battle,” said Ford, 70.
“There would be such a frenzy. It would be great for the city. I think it could be bigger than the ones I played in, with the way the media is today,” said Ford, who played in three crosstown championships – 1953, 1955 and 1956 against Brooklyn.
Ford, who won 236 games during a superlative 16-year career, waxed rhapsodic about the epic Yankee-Dodger wars of the ’50s.
“It seemed like every year we were playing each other for the championship,” said Ford, who holds eight World Series pitching records, including most wins, strikeouts and innings pitched.
“All the Subway Series were special. I have such great memories. I remember in the 1955 World Series we were down three games to two to the Dodgers when me and Mickey Mantle went on The Ed Sullivan Show,” he recalled.
“I basically guaranteed on TV that I was going to win the next game. The next day I went out and pitched a great game and we won 2-0. I won two games in that series,” said Ford, who was inducted into the Baseball Hall of Fame in 1974.
“We lost the series in a Game 7 to Johnny Podres, who just shut us down. It was the only time the Dodgers won a Subway Series.”
The last Subway Series was in 1956 when perfect-game pitcher Don Larsen and the Yankees beat the Dodgers.