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NEW YORK (CBS) ― Yankees "fandemonium" will take over lower Manhattan on Friday when the World Series Champion's ticker-tape parade returns to New York City.

The procession will begin at Battery Park at 11 a.m. and head uptown to City Hall where the team will receive keys to the city from Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Some fans will be lucky enough to attend the ceremony thanks to a contest Thursday afternoon, and others will be able to watch from the sidewalks surrounding the area.

Fans are thrilled to be able to attend the parade, after a nine-year wait from their last championship, which seems like an eternity to many.

"In 2001 we should have won, but you know what, maybe it wasn't meant to be because the city was mourning at the point in time. Now it's time to rock and roll," one New Yorker told CBS 2 HD.

CBS 2 HD also got a first look at the floats that will be used in the Yankees parade, and workers in Clifton, N.J., are busy at work, adding the finishing touches.

The company has been responsible for creating the floats for the Yankees' parades since 1996. The owner, Rob DeVito, said it never gets old.

"Ever since the first parade – the first parade was, of course, the best – but this is good," DeVito said.

Proud moments of past World Series are strewn on the walls of the business, which is a family effort. DeVito's son has been decorating floats since he can remember.

"Real excited, you know, I was pretty much born a Yankees fan," Rob's son, Tony DeVito, said.

The one prerequisite to work at the DeVito family business is obvious.

"We're all Yankees fans over here," employee Kirk Mackinson said. "I think it's a job qualification that you have to have to work here."

All of the floats will be hooked up to trucks and taken into New York City early Friday morning.

One traditional measure of any such parade is the volume of confetti that's thrown. At one time it was paper from a ticker-tape machine.

In Lower Manhattan, shredded paper was bagged by the Downtown Alliance to be delivered to buildings along the parade route.

"This brings two million people to lower Manhattan to see their heroes whether they're sports figures, astronauts, world leaders," said Bill Bernstein of the Downtown Alliance.

The biggest parade of them all was for the Allied victory over Japan in 1945. More than 5,000 tons were swept up, compared to last years celebration for the New York Giants when a scant 36.5 tons were thrown.

Fortunately and coincidentally for New Jersey children, school is out Thursday, but even if it wasn't, classrooms may have been empty anyway because many of the littlest fans have come down with bad cases of Yankee fever.

School is out due to a teacher's convention, and the Rendine family from Rutherford are already gearing up for their big day with a shopping spree at Modell's.

"I am really looking forward to tomorrow," Michael Rendine told CBS 2, adding that even if there was school, he'd still be attending the parade.

For adults who have to work, it may be one of those days where many will fudge it for a sick day.

"I just want to lie to my boss and go," said John Warnet, of Bloomfield. "He doesn't need to know, right?"

Fans will find extra trains and ferries to see the champs honored.

The Port Authority will operate extra PATH service between the morning and afternoon rush to and from Newark, Hoboken and the World Trade Center.

NJ Transit will add two extra trains each in the afternoon on the Northeast Corridor, North Jersey Coast and Morris & Essex lines.

NY Waterway is adding extra ferries from Weehawken to Wall Street and the World Financial Center. One of the boats includes the Yankee Clipper, which is wrapped with photos of Yankee players and normally takes fans to Yankee Stadium.

The ticker-tape parade is scheduled to begin on Broadway at Battery Place.

For complete World Series coverage, be sure to check out WCBSTV.com's World Series section.

CBS 2's John Slattery and Christine Sloan contributed to this report.



 

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