Left by the side of the Rhodes

Why is it that some dramatis personae never seem to change in October Baseball?

Arthur Rhodes played for the Baltimore Orioles when the Jeffrey Maier incident unfolded back in 1996, and the Yankees returned to the winner's circle after 18 long years without a world title.

Rhodes then came up against the Yankees in October last year as a member of the Seattle Mariners. Even more specifically, he inherited a 1-0 eighth-inning lead in a game that, if won by the Mariners, would have given Seattle the inside track toward the World Series and a victory over The Team That Just Doesn't Lose In October.

Rhodes blew it.

Fast forward to Sunday night's fourth game of the 2001 ALCS. I was sittin' in the ol' catbird seat, otherwise known as the sofa of my living room, as Rhodes inherited... yup... a 1-0 eighth-inning lead in a game that would have completely reversed the trajectory of the series.

Without getting into the details, Rhodes blew it.

Then, when Mariano Rivera needed all of three pitches to retire the Mariners in the top of the ninth, making him available for the 10th and 11th innings -- as Tim McCarver astutely noted -- I walked to my room to check my e-mail and read college football game reports... to stay. I listened to the radio... feel-good oldies, of course. Certainly not a baseball game -- and by extension, a series -- that I now knew the outcome of.

While contemplating this Saturday's Oklahoma-Nebraska donnybrook, one of my roommates came up to me and said, "Did you hear? The Yankees won! Soriano hit a home run."

Oh, really? I was perfectly calm and cerebral. News of the Yankees' latest ho-hum close-game triumph had all the force of a single strand of hair. Now what is the status of injured Nebraska tight end Tracey Wistrom anyway?

In every sport, there comes a time when momentum is there for the taking, and when opportunities that emerge once in a lifetime must be seized. Sunday night, the Mariners had to win that ballgame 1-0. They couldn't let it get away; couldn't let Mariano Rivera enter the picture; couldn't put a rusty Kazuhiro Sasaki on the mound in a tied game, which is not his normal role; couldn't let the Pinstripes and a boisterous Yankee Stadium crowd bring out all the ghosts and mystifying, mystique-laden magic of decades upon decades of Octobers seared into memory. When Bret Boone hit that homer, it was "Six outs or bust" for the team that compiled the best regular season in professional baseball's 132-year history.

Rhodes, once again in the spotlight -- oh, how I feel for him -- once again became victimized.

The story is the same for Armando Benitez and Greg Maddux. Benitez, an awesome setup man and closer for much of his career, gave up stunning homers to Marquis Grissom and Tony Fernandez in the 1997 ALCS, as the underdog Cleveland Indians shocked the heavily-favored Baltimore Orioles in six games. Two years later, it was Benitez who couldn't seal the deal in the ninth inning of Game 6 of the 1999 NLCS between his Mets and the opposing Atlanta Braves. Yet one year later, Benitez blew a ninth-inning lead to the Yankees in Game 1 of the Subway Series of 2000. Amazing, isn't it?

How about Greg Maddux, the greatest "pitcher's pitcher" of his generation (i.e., a non-power pitcher who wins with brains and resourcefulness)? Seems like the ghosts that follow the Braves are specifically focused on him, and that they get back at "The Professor" by means of sabotaging his defense, sometimes his own Gold Glove-winning form.

In 1999, Maddux was cruising along in Game 1 of the World Series against... guess who?... the Yankees, when his strike zone suddenly got squeezed during a pinch-at bat by Darryl Strawberry that became a walk in -- yes -- THE EIGHTH INNING OF A 1-0 GAME! (How many times can the stars be aligned in favor of one team? The human mind can't comprehend it...) The next batter laid down a bunt that Atlanta first baseman Brian Hunter threw away, opening the floodgates for a decisive four-run inning that sent the Yanks on their way to another title.

Fast forward to 2000: Maddux's first playoff inning, against the St. Louie Cardinals in Game 1 of the NLDS, featured two errors by the defense behind him. Before he could blink, Maddux was down 4-0, and the Cards went on to deck the Braves in three quick games.

Now this year: Maddux, in a make-or-break game, sees errors by his two most dependable infielders, Chipper Jones and Rey Sanchez. Possibly staggered by such lapses, Maddux then made jawdropping errors -- one mental and one physical -- on successive plays in a nightmare of a third inning. He got a tailor-made double-play comebacker when he needed it... except for the fact that he came up with a rare form of Madduxus Crainius Crampus. Yet again, in a postseason trend whose negativity is exceeded only by the blessedness of the Yankees' dynastic run, the Braves exited the stage without being the ones to score the decisive walk-off run or get the final out against their opponent.

The examples of those who encountered pressure -- and who all encountered the Yankees at some point in their postseason adventures -- brings up the question, once again, of why the Yankees always manage to win. Looking at the past five years, it seems impossible that the Yankees could do what they've done.

However, baseball -- especially in October, isn't about the long haul. Baseball from April through September is, but October Baseball is the ultimate mental cauldron, the emotional arena whose fires either refine the great ones into greater performers, or melt the mental toughness of lesser players. Quite simply, the Yankees have excelled wearing that NY on their caps and jerseys. They're confident, and always have been. When faced with a wrenching late-inning situation, the Yankees are so used to coming through that they inherently seem to possess a performer's relaxed focus, that supreme calmness of the highest order that always makes the difference. And when new Yankees step into this spotlight, they can't help but feed off it, and so the dynasty continues. Defense Exhibit A of this reality? Alfonso Soriano's heroics on Sunday night.

October Baseball involves very little margin for error. And since each pitch, each inning, becomes magnified exponentially, the screws naturally tighten. The Yankees are the one team that is consistently loose and confident without any shred of falsity, and therein lies all the difference.

The Seattle Mariners were not and are not inferior to the New York Yankees as a baseball team. The Mariners, 21 games better than the Bombers over six months, were not better in the seventh month, the month where a season comes down to a 1-0 lead in the eighth inning of one game, as opposed to a 162-game slate.

While the Yankees celebrate their 38th pennant -- that's another story for the next few days -- the Mariners, who have slowly but surely evolved as an exceptional team and organization, might now have the full measure of knowledge needed to bring down the Yankees... in 2002. But don't rip the Mariners: until someone else beats the Yankees in their October domain, it's hard to cast the first stone at Seattle.