It was the first meeting of the season in this vicious old rivalry, and the tears filled Torre's eyes on his walk to home plate with a lineup card. He beat prostate cancer to return to the job, and Boston could see past its hatred of New York to honor the fight of a good man.

What moved him to sobs in May moved him to a fit of rage in October, when Fenway's humane fans turned into an unruly lot of louts and drunks. The bottles, cans and coins flew out of the stands, turning Game 4 of the AL Championship Series into scenes out of an English soccer match.

"What they did was inexcusable," Torre said. "To have people throw stuff, it's disgraceful."

From Fenway Park to Shea Stadium, where Mets fans turned into a lynch mob at the sight of Braves reliever John Rocker in the NLCS, sportsmanship and civility took a pass in the baseball playoffs. Wherever the World Series ends up, New York-New York, or New York-Atlanta, our expectation of seeing the games played in a safe, sanitized environment has never been so in doubt.

"I guess it depends on what city and what the frustration is," Torre said on the decaying decorum of the sporting culture. "New York, you hear things you don't hear in St. Louis. Chicago, you hear things you don't hear in Minnesota. What's allowed that to happen ... look at TV, go to the movies, listen to the radio. Everything's down now. There are no barriers anymore."

Torre has been witness to the best of baseball times in the boroughs of New York. Joe Torre lived on Avenue T in Brooklyn when his older brother, Frank, scored him a ticket for Game 5 of the 1956 World Series. Torre cheered on the perfect game of Don Larsen, all the way until catcher Yogi Berra leaped into Larsen's arms. He hasn't been afraid to romanticize over the possibilities of a Subway Series in New York, fantasizing right along with the fans.

"I grew up with the Yankees and the Dodgers, or the Yankees and the Giants," Torre said. "It was always a Subway Series back then. I thought that's the way it was supposed to be."

People pulsated over the prospects, but the events of this era of sports and society make the possibility frightening. Maybe a suffocating presence of security could stifle blood feuds in the stands and protect the players on the field, but this would be a rivalry played out in the streets and barrooms, the school yards and break rooms. Law and order could take a pass for nine days of breathless baseball.

Still, this isn't just a New York problem. Nor just baseball's. We're bringing up a generation of kids on the twisted images of WWF Raw and the ever-growing belief that a torn ticket stub is a coupon for criminal behavior in the ballpark. People come, get good and loaded and figure anything goes.

One fan in Milwaukee sprinted out of the stands in September and blindsided the Astros' Bill Spiers in right field. A month later, Braves coach Frank Pultz had a bottle bounce off his head at Shea Stadium. Sox fans were raining debris onto the field, just missing the umpires and Yankees down below. They wanted blood for a couple of blown calls and could not have cared less whose.

What happened at Fenway was especially disturbing, perhaps, because Red Sox fans hadn't had a reputation for violence since the late 1970s, when Mickey Rivers was the target for so much of the angst over the rivalry with the Yankees. Ever since, Sox fans had been considered among the smartest, most clever in the game. Fenway had conspired to rattle Roger Clemens to the showers in Game 3, a good, old-fashioned tribute to the power of these impassioned people.

"The stuff they were chanting with Roger the other day was fine," Torre said. "You know, 'Ha-ha, we beat you,' that's fine."

Once more, they've pushed past a line. Right there, on national TV, the umpires, fearing for everyone's safety, had to clear the field for eight minutes to restore order. What has happened to make everyone so edgy, so angry, so overcome with venom? Perhaps it starts with a resentment over rising salaries and ticket prices, over disgust for the transient owners and players using the paying public as pawns. Whatever has happened, one thing's for sure: People think they're owed the right to boorish behavior.

Worst of all is the sight of a grown man cursing an athlete with the most vulgar and reprehensible language, all with the his wide-eyed child sitting next to him, absorbing every word. This could be baseball, the NBA or the NFL. What do you think impressionable young fans learned in Philadelphia a couple weeks ago, when Eagles fans rose to cheer the possible paralysis of the Cowboys' Michael Irvin as he lay on the Veterans Stadium turf?

The loss of common decency isn't just baseball's problem, but this is the game's time to stand and take its bow with the world watching. For the sake of everyone's safety, consider it a blessing the Sox never made it back to New York for a Game 6. In the aftermath of Game 4, Yankee reliever Jeff Nelson issued an irresponsible and downright dangerous challenge for New York fans to exact a measure of revenge.

"(The Sox) better lose," Nelson said. "I don't think 56,000 or 57,000 (Yankee) fans are going to appreciate what their fans did to us."

And on and on it goes. You get our guy, we'll get yours. As these playoff games lurch toward midnight, with bellies of beer and fits of frustration taking over, it's hard to see our pastime as a pleasant escape anymore. These days, it's center stage for our fury, and most frightening of all this October is that, perhaps, we haven't seen anything yet.

Adrian Wojnarowski, a columnist for the Bergen (N.J.) Record, is a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at NJCOL1@aol.com.