Roger Clemens has done the candidates no favours. The burly, irascible pitcher for the Yankees is the sole topic of debate in a city obsessed with the "Subway Series", the world cup of baseball.
Not surprisingly the state's Republican Senate hopeful, Mr Rick Lazio, spent the last week out of town, upstate, and the Democrats' Ms Hillary Clinton was yesterday again heading for Rochester and Syracuse, a full 200 miles from Manhattan.
What chance for the politicians when the Yankees face down their city rivals, the Mets, in the finals of the World Series for the first time since 1956?
And then on Sunday, in the second enthralling game of the nightly series that sees the fans commute from stadium to stadium on the subway, Clemens splinters the bat of Mets star Mike Piazza with his pitch and in a rage picks up a splintered piece of the bat and throws it at the bewildered Piazza.
"Should have been sent off," says half the Big Apple, particularly as there's history here. Clemens decked Piazza with a ball to the head last time they met.
And so Ms Clinton, a self-professed Yankees fan, was on dangerous ground when she turned up to an 800-strong Queens Democratic Party/trade union rally on Monday night. Queens, the home of the Mets.
Congressman Anthony Weiner from Brooklyn touched the raw nerve in his warm-up. "Elections are not about who you like," he said of the dull but affable Mr Lazio. "And she likes the wrong team. Waddya do?"
Husband Bill was along, too, in a determined drive to get out the core vote - polls show Ms Clinton's 4-7 per cent lead narrowing. The respected Zogby poll yesterday put Mr Lazio ahead 43-42 per cent, with 15 per cent undecided.
Yet this is a state with 1.8 million more Democrats registered than Republicans.
Ominously for Ms Clinton, who inspires fierce dislikes, the rise in undecideds appears largely to be the result of a moment of doubt in the ranks of conservative Jews, traditional Democrats, upset by US abstention on the UN Israel resolution recently, a decision she has been forced to oppose publicly. That is an issue on which you don't equivocate.
Ms Clinton has also been hurt by claims she is a carpetbagger, not an authentic New Yorker. In Queens she had her answer ready. "This borough is the most diverse in New York," she said. "That means it is the most diverse in the US, and therefore in the world. We are probably here at the centre of diversity of the universe!" she claimed, to roars of delight.
The most recent census records that 40 per cent of those living in the city, she said, had not been born there, "which makes me feel very much at home". Observers of her campaign say that in the last year she has become a better candidate, softer at the edges, more human. Mr Lazio plays the ethnic card for all it's worth, with "Rigatoni for Rick" and "Linguine for Lazio" fund-raising dinners, drawing in the support of the Italian community in the heartlands of his upstate support base.
But this experienced member of the House sometimes shows that he has a less sure touch than the consummate pro, Mr Rudi Giuliani, whose place he took on the ticket when the latter announced he had cancer.
And Mr Lazio's liberal credentials have been severely dented by his closeness to the far more conservative House Republican leadership. A deeply inconsistent voting record on issues like abortion, gun control and campaign financing reflected his desire to retain his position as a whip, and Ms Clinton has pilloried him as a clone of the ultra-radical Newt Gingrich. Stand up the real Rick Lazio!
He has returned fire with fire, but in a scattergun campaign that observers say has lacked a theme. In the last few days he has concentrated on Ms Clinton's failure to achieve reform of the health system when appointed head of a task force by her husband in 1993.
Her hugely complicated proposals, aimed at providing all Americans with health insurance, reflected a naivety about how to deal with a Republican-dominated Congress. "Bad medicine for New York which would have put one-seventh of our economy under government control," says Mr Lazio.
She responds that maybe she should have proceeded more carefully, that she has learned from the experience, and that he is unwilling to propose any alternative.
Mr Lazio's attempt to use the much-admired retiring Senator Pat Moynihan's opposition to her package against her has backfired.
Mr Moynihan has since made quite clear where his loyalties lie.
The Clinton-era legacy is a decidedly mixed blessing, with the Lazio campaign uncertain whether it should blame her, too, for its failures or highlight her differences, on say Israel, with her husband.
But on the subway they have only one question. Did Clemens mean it?