The Big Apple just got bigger. Willed on by a nation as well as a city, and in a manner that bordered on the pre-ordained, the New York Yankees displayed consummate professionalism in brushing aside the Seattle Mariners, sweeping into what promises to be the most emotional and symbolic World Series in recent memory.
The next certainty is that the "Fall Classic", which opens on Saturday, will be the most strictly guarded in Series history. Prompted by terrorism fears, F-16 fighter jets will buzz the skies over the Arizona Diamondbacks' Bank One Ballpark, backed up by a heightened FBI and police presence. The Yankees, seeking their fourth consecutive Series crown - and fifth in six seasons - finished the final lap of their American League Championship Series with a flourish, trouncing the Mariners 12-3 at the Yankee Stadium to take a decisive 4-1 lead in the best-of-seven debate. Andy Pettitte, winning pitcher for the second time in the series, was named most valuable player.
Having came so close to elimination by the Oakland A's in the Division Series, the Yankees pulled off something of a coup in becoming the first side for 37 years to win four successive AL pennants. So confident were they that a cross-country flight to Seattle for a sixth game would not be necessary, they did not bring their suitcases to the stadium.
"Down 2-0 to one of the best clubs in baseball [the A's], you never, never doubted yourselves," said their manager Joe Torre as he toasted his troops. "The city of New York needed something like this. We needed something like this." Torre found an unusual seconder in his opposite number, Lou Piniella, whose home run in a 1978 play-off against the Boston Red Sox remains one of the most treasured in Yankee lore. "The one thought that did come to my mind, strangely, is this city had suffered a lot and let out a lot of emotion," said Piniella, whose ill-advised guarantee that Seattle would take the series to a sixth game was so rudely thwarted.
"I felt good for them, I really did." For the Mariners, who outstripped Torre's 1998 Yankees by winning 116 of their regular-season games, equalling the Chicago Cubs' 95-year-old major-league high, and become the first team in 53 years to lead the league in all three major categories - batting average, fielding and earned-run average.
Not that this prevented Piniella's magnanimous response or Aaron Sele, the losing pitcher, from paying due homage to Pettitte. "He shut us down flat for two games," said Sele, who also lost to Pettitte in the opening game. "We are used to scoring runs and making things happen, and he just didn't allow us to do that."
"It's special for me," he said upon receiving the MVP award. "I'm not a pitcher who goes out and dominates games." Withdrawn after surrendering three runs in the seventh, Pettitte had thrown six shut-out innings but still was not convinced he was a worthy recipient.
"Jorgy [catcher Jorge Posada] told me stuff in the third inning I can't repeat. I was making bad pitches all night," he added.
"I like to think it's destiny," said Tino Martinez, the first baseman whose three-run homer in the eighth inning prompted fans to taunt Piniella, chanting "No Game Six". Celebrations were consciously muted: not a millilitre of champagne was sprayed.
