ShareThisThe game ended shortly after midnight, with the Yankees going back to the World Series, and with champagne.
And this time it was well deserved.
This wasn't champagne for winning the American League East, which is the baseball equivalent of everyone getting a trophy in Little League.
This was champagne for going to their first World Series since 2003, back when going to the World Series seemed like part of the schedule, back when Joe Torre was in the dugout, the Boss was in the owner's box, and the Yankees were the undisputed class of the American League. Back before they blew a 3-0 playoff lead to the Red Sox and the world changed in the American League.
This was champagne for a Yankees team that has gotten its groove back.
This was champagne for a team that is going to the World Series.
And it was only fitting that it happened with Andy Pettitte giving the ball to Mariano Rivera; only fitting that Derek Jeter was at shortstop and Jorge Posada was behind the plate -- four Yankees who were there in the glory years, the only ones left.
That was what had started to become the Yankees' public secret, namely that for all of the high-priced free agents, and all of the glitzy press conferences, and all of the money spent, these were the only four leftovers from the last time the Yankees had won a World Series.
But there they were Sunday night, as if nothing had changed; there they were as if it were still the late '90s, back when the Yankees in the World Series seemed like the natural order of things.
And it shouldn't be taken for granted.
Forget the money for a second. Forget the fact that the Yankees always have the biggest payroll, and the advantages that come with it.
It is not easy to play in New York.
The president pays dearly for his White House? The Yankees pay dearly for being the Yankees and the expectations that come with it; pay dearly for being in the media capital of the world, and two tabloid newspapers that all but survive by throwing people under the bus. Most of all, they pay dearly for the mindset that says if the Yankees don't win another championship banner, then somehow they have failed.
You could see that during the series with the Angels, when second-year manager Joe Girardi was castigated on the back pages of both tabloids for questionable decisions in a game the Yankees lost, complete with the theories that if the Yankees didn't get to the World Series, then there was no question Girardi was out.
Does anyone else in the game get this kind of treatment?
Not really.
Welcome to New York, New York.
You could see that ever since Alex Rodriguez has been in New York, his postseason problems have taken on a life of their own, as if not coming up big in the postseason invalidates everyone else, makes you a poseur.
That's been the knock on A-Rod ever since he's been in New York, the perception that he always comes up small in the postseason, his failures a metaphor for the Yankees' failures.
So it was somehow symbolic that A-Rod had been one of the certified stars of this postseason, the kind of player the Yankees thought they were getting in the first place. The irony is this has happened in a year that began as a nightmare, the steroids admission during spring training, the hip surgery that caused him to miss a big chunk of the early season, the Serena Roberts book that was like a fastball to his head, the immolation of Rodriguez as a baseball icon.
Why is it different now?
Who knows?
Maybe it's simply the vagaries of the game, the sense that who gets hot and who does not in October is determined as much by the baseball gods as anything else.
Still, the word is that A-Rod is calmer now, more in the moment than he used to be. Maybe that's because he's finally more accepting of his teammates, finally learned that it's not all about him, that he doesn't always have to be a superman with a bat in his hands. Maybe the fact that he was so tarnished back in the spring, it took some of the pressure off.
Whatever the reason, he is in the middle of the postseason of his life, and the Yankees are back in the World Series, a year after failing to make the playoffs.
This is not to say the Yankees' journey is over.
But there's the sense that much of the pressure is off them, the sense that if they had failed to get back to the World Series it would have been seen as another disaster. It's the sense that this is now all about trying to win their 27th world title, not trying to justify themselves.
That's what beating the Angels did.
It took away all of the talk about dysfunction and being spooked by all of those ghosts from 2004, when the Yankees self-destructed as the Red Sox changed their history.
It took away all of the memories of all their past free agent busts that had begun to haunt them.
That's what Sunday night did.
The World Series is frosting.
(Contact Bill Reynolds at breynold@projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Providence Journal
