I Love New York

By Chrys Kefalas CPKSports.com Editor-in-Chief

Watching the Yankees beat the Athletics on Monday surprisingly wasn't too difficult.

Because you know what, they deserved it. They played the way Championship teams should. The Athletics, well, didn't.

You can't make errors, you can't make mental mistakes, you can't leave 13 men in scoring position and expect to win. Not against the Yankees, especially in the playoffs.

"The Yankees are a good team but when they get into the playoffs they become the super Yankees," said injured Oakland A's outfielder Jermaine Dye.

Dye should know. Watching the from the Braves dugout, he saw the Yankees come from an 0-2 deficit against Atlanta in the 1996 World Series and win the Championship.

For him it was just deja vu.

Game one of the World Series promised to be a classic pitching match up between Cy Young candidates John Smoltz and Andy Pettitte. It proved to be anything but.

While John Smoltz didn't give up a hit until the fifth inning, Andy Pettitte gave up six hits and seven earned runs in 21/3 innings. Andruw Jones added to the decimation with two home runs for a total of five RBI on route to a 12-1 thumping of New York.

In game two, Maddux threw Atlanta's second straight gem with eight scoreless innings, throwing a mere 82 pitches in a 4-0 shutout. Things appeared bleak. The Yankees would face Tom Glavine in game three with Denny Neagle and John Smoltz waiting in the wings for games four and five at Atlanta's Fulton-County Stadium.

Advantage: Braves.

So Dye and his mates thought. Perhaps even after David Cone defeated them 5-2 in game three. But that win seemed to energize the Yankees.

"I was thinking before this game, New York had waited 15 years for a World Series, and then for us to have played the way we did, it was sort of an embarrassment," Cone said. "We came to Atlanta with the idea of letting it all hang out. We wanted to make sure we'd be as relaxed as we could. Because, if you think about it, there wasn't much left to lose." If game three didn't shift the series' momentum, the 10th inning of game four absolutely did.

After the Yankees came back from a 6-0 deficit to take the series into extra innings, the Braves decided to walk Bernie Williams, loading the bases in the top of the 10th. Braves pitcher Steve Avery walked a run in. 7-6, New York. Then with Charlie Hayes at the plate and Brad Clontz on the mound, Atlanta's back was broken.

Hayes, jammed by Clontz's fastball, lifted a gentle, routine pop-up to Ryan Klesko at first. Incredibly, impossibly, Klesko lost the ball in the lights, allowing the Yankees their second run of this shocking comeback.

The rest, as they say, is history, as the Yankees took both games five and six, leaving Dye shell-shocked.

"We went into New York and swept those first two games, everything looked great. It sure changed," Dye recounted.

The Yankees comeback in this year's ALDS versus Atlanta was nearly as dramatic. The dazzling starting pitching performance by Mike Mussina and the improbable cut-off and pitch-it throw by Derek Jeter at home plate in game three; the gusty performance by Orlando Hernandez in game four; and, the typical lights out late inning relief that sealed the deal in game five.

Was anyone really surprised that they came back?

"Surprised? I guess I can't be," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "We've done a lot of things in the last six years that make me proud, and this certainly goes up there among the proudest moments."

The Yankees showed the A's how to play playoff caliber baseball. Yet, Dye's seen it before. So many other players have seen it before, and so have we on many previous Octobers and at this rate many more.

Might as well start showing some love.

Article courtesy of CPKSports.com.