Surprise ending

If life followed a script, the Yankees would have won the World Series. But it doesn't, and they didn't.

By King Kaufman

Nov. 4, 2001 | If life were the kind of movie that they just don't make anymore, the New York Yankees would have won the World Series.

The Yanks, that gritty bunch of survivors so adept at finding a way to win when defeat seems inevitable, that gang that has stood so tall as a symbol of a wounded but defiant New York and, by extension, America, would have taken their 15-2 beating in Game 6 Saturday because that's baseball, because sometimes, ya see, Ma, sometimes you send a pitcher out there, even a good one like that Andy Pettitte fellow, and he doesn't have his best stuff. And the other guys knock you all over the yard that night.

And the thing about baseball, Ma, the thing is, the next night you go out there and it's nothing-nothing again. And you send another pitcher out there, a guy like that Roger Clemens, and even though he's hurting he finds a way to get the job done, and it's like the other team's hitters are mesmerized. Down they go, one after the other, and you've got a chance to win that one. And that's all you can ask for in this crazy world, Ma: a chance to win.

But life isn't like that kind of movie. Life is life. There's no script, and things don't happen for symbolic reasons. For all they've meant to the rescue workers and mourning citizens of our largest city, for all the sentiment in certain quarters that it was every American's patriotic duty to root for the Bronx Bombers to bring a championship home to a grieving New York, the Yankees failed to win the World Series because they ran into a better team, because Luis Gonzalez plopped a little single into center field with the bases loaded, because they couldn't hit the Arizona Diamondbacks' two best pitchers, Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson, and they couldn't hit much against the Diamondbacks' other pitchers either.

We already knew, as Mariano Rivera took the mound to pitch the bottom of the eighth inning, that Game 7 would be a classic.

The Yankees had flown to Phoenix for the weekend with a three games to two lead and a feeling of destiny. They'd gotten off the mat and won three straight to eliminate the Oakland A's in the first round of the playoffs. They'd destroyed the Seattle Mariners, easily the best team in the regular season, in the League Championship Series. And now, having lost the first two games of the World Series in Phoenix, they'd swept three straight in the Bronx, all by one run, the last two with jaw-dropping, spine-tingling rallies in the ninth inning and beyond.

In Game 6 all their momentum fell away. They were smoked, humiliated. It was 15-0 by the fourth inning, and the dominating Johnson was on the mound. They were never in the game. But hey, baseball's like that. Get 'em tomorrow.

And so in Game 7 Schilling and Clemens locked fingers, gritted teeth and wrestled to a standstill into the seventh inning. The Diamondbacks scored on an RBI double in the sixth by Danny Bautista, who had started in place of regular cleanup hitter Reggie Sanders on a hunch by Arizona manager Bob Brenly. The Yankees tied the game in the seventh on a hit by Tino Martinez, who had hit a tying two-run home run in the ninth inning of Game 4 in New York, a game won in extra innings by the Yankees. The Yankees won Game 5 the same way, a ninth-inning two-run homer, this one by Scott Brosius, and then victory in extra innings.

As Rivera warmed up for the eighth inning of Game 7, the Yankees were leading 2-1, and either New York would win its fourth straight World Series because of yet another late-inning home run, this one in the top of the eighth by a rookie, Alfonso Soriano, or Arizona would do the impossible and mount a comeback against Rivera, arguably the best relief pitcher in baseball today and certainly the best relief pitcher in the 98-year history of the World Series.

Rivera struck out the side in the eighth. Three outs to go.

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