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Give The D-Backs Their Due

© Brian Igel

If you’re like me, you couldn’t help but crack a smile Sunday night watching those imposters from Arizona celebrate their implausible World Series victory. It was an incredible series, maybe the most entertaining ever. The Yankees, exhausted from two incredible series in their own right with Oakland and Seattle, hit just .183 against the Schilling and Johnson led D-Backs. The Yanks were out scored (37 - 14), out pitched (1.94ERA - 4.41ERA), and outdone in the field. That said, the Yanks had them right where they wanted them going into the ninth inning.

The Yankees staved off elimination time and time again this year, including being down to their last out twice in two magical nights last week in NY, and found themselves poised for their fourth title in as many years when rookie Alfonso Soriano hit his eighth-inning two-out homer off Schilling. All that was left was for Mariano Rivera, the most dominant reliever in history, the veritable Paul Bunyan to baseball’s biggest bats, to turn out the lights and close the door.

But then the karma police finally showed up.

Rivera worked a nasty 1-2-3 eighth inning, but got into immediate trouble in the ninth when Mark Grace led off with a single. With David Dellucci pinch running, Damian Miller bunted back to the mound. Rivera picked it up and fired to second in attempt to get the lead runner. His throw sailed left of Jeter and into center field, putting runners on first and second with no one out. Dellucci was then thrown out at third on another sacrifice bunt attempt by Jay Bell, but Tony Womack lashed a 2-2 slider into the right-field corner to score the tying run and put the winning tally on third. After hitting Craig Counsell with a pitch, Rivera gave up a weak single to Luis Gonzalez that looped over Jeter's head and into center field, ending the 'Team of Destiny’s' dynasty.

It seemed like a mistake but, of course, that’s exactly what made it so great. Baseball is not a scripted movie. The growing Yankee Myth was not a god-given right bestowed upon the Bombers each year, but rather, one that they fought incredibly heard to earn and preserve each year. Their accomplishments over the past 6 years now seem all the more amazing.

Mariano is not a machine. He is a human being who finally lost one under pressure. Mr. November, Derek Jeter was so banged up he could barely walk let alone come up with one last miracle grab on Gonzalez’s feeble blooper. You can only trap lighting in a bottle so many times and, while the perfect Hollywood treatment would have had the Yankees, the team that would not give up, winning it for the city that would not give in, the real world is much more random. When stories like that do occur in real life, they are that much more enjoyable.

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