August 15, 2005

American diners relish the power of the tip to reward or punish their servers, and the servers want them to have it.

As Hideki Matsui stepped to the plate with two outs in the bottom of the fifth inning yesterday, rain began to fall on Yankee Stadium, offering some relief on a hot and humid afternoon. But the crowd did not seem even remotely satisfied. The Yankees had given up an early lead and were trailing the Texas Rangers by a run. The fans stood and urged Matsui to deliver relief of a different kind.

MAYBE there is a silver lining, instead of lightning, in the clouds that forced the carryover of the 87th P.G.A. Championship's final holes at Baltusrol to this morning. Maybe the organizers of the three major tournaments in the United States will realize that they should stop bowing to the Great God Television and schedule Sunday's final-round tee times early enough to better assure enough daylight, even if a playoff is necessary, for the finish.

Cypriot passenger plane crashes into uninhabited gorge north of Athens, Greece, killing all 121 people on board; Greek fighter pilots shadowing plane report seeing co-pilot of Helios Air jet slumped over controls and no sign of pilot; Greek Air Force says plane, apparently on autopilot, continued flying for 43 minutes before crashing; flight was charter from Larnaca in Cyprus en route to Prague via Athens; crash, Greece's worst airline accident, baffles many aviation experts; terrorism is being discounted; state-run news media report malfunction in oxygen system might have precipitated crash; photos; map (M)

David Carr column on New York Post's rough coverage of Jeanine F Pirro's bid to unseat Hillary Rodham Clinton as US senator from New York; says a very real detente is under way between Clinton and Rupert Murdoch, News Corp chairman and Post publisher, born of political and business exigencies; says that for all his commitment to conservative agenda, Murdoch is primarily committed to winning and has no romanticism for lost causes; photo (M)