A Couple of Mr. Octobers Needed Now

History comes alive at Yankee Stadium. Joe DiMaggio throws out the first ball before Game 1 of the World Series, and Don Larsen does it before Game 2.

There are the videos of the Babe and the Iron Horse and The Captain, Thurman Munson.

There is Monument Park with its plaques honoring the greatest of the New York Yankee greats and a photo gallery in the Stadium Club.

A storied tradition has been illuminated by the Yankees’ return to the World Series for the first time in 15 years, but it may be a short stay.

They are 0-2 against the Atlanta Braves, and a history of another sort weighs against them.

--Only two of the 11 teams that lost the first two World Series games at home came back to win the Series.

--Thirty-three of the 43 teams to go up 2-0 went on to a title.

The Braves are devouring a team that rolled through the Texas Rangers and Baltimore Orioles.

First John Smoltz. Then Greg Maddux. In The House that Ruth Built, the proud pinstripes haven’t had a ghost of a chance.

Or haven’t seemed to. Smoltz beat them, 12-1, and Maddux beat them, 4-0, but that pride dies hard.

They expressed respect for the four-time Cy Young Award winner, but some of it came grudgingly.

Take Bernie Williams, who had been mastering October if not Mr. October. Williams had been batting .471 with five home runs and 11 runs batted in, but he’s 0 for 7 in the Series, 0 for 4 Monday night.

Maddux?

“He was hitting spots, working both sides of the plate, but there was nothing special to what he was throwing, nothing out of the ordinary,” Williams said. “He was around the plate, the pitches were there, but we’re just not swinging well. I don’t know. Maybe we’re being too selective. Maybe we’re trying too hard. We just can’t let it affect us. We’re still alive. We still have a chance.”

Then there was Joe Girardi, who accounted for three of the 19 ground-ball outs Maddux produced in eight innings and said he is the same pitcher he was as a Chicago Cub pitcher in another lifetime.

“Strike one, strike one, strike one,” Girardi said of Maddux’s get-ahead style.

“I can’t take anything away from a guy who owns the Cy Young Award, but there’s some hitters in this room who should take blame, and I’ll take a lot of it. He kept the ball down pretty decently, but we had pitches to hit and we didn’t hit them.”

Neither did the Dodgers and St. Louis Cardinals before them. The Atlanta pitchers are on a roll--covering about five years.

“That’s true,” Girardi said. “They have a very good staff. The numbers show it every year, but they’re human.

“I’ve seen them give up runs. We just have to jump on them early, put some pressure on them.

“I mean, we’re not intimidated. I was with Colorado last year and we had them on the ropes [in the division series]. We’re a better team than the Rockies were. We just have to execute, get our heads straight.”

Good idea. Base hits instead of the bravado and wishful thinking that seemed to permeate the Yankee clubhouse. Then again, they have to believe. . . .

Darryl Strawberry does. He was a member of the 1986 Mets, who lost their first two at home to the Boston Red Sox, then came back to win the Series.

“I told a couple of our guys that it ain’t over yet,” Strawberry said. “There ain’t no loss of confidence. We’re as good a team as they are. We’re all professionals. They probably do have the best pitching staff in baseball, but I ain’t ever going to say another team is superior.”

Strawberry aggravated his broken toe in Game 1 and didn’t play Monday night. He hopes to play against Tom Glavine tonight, but the lefty-lefty duel makes it doubtful.

Too bad for Strawberry because he said of Glavine: “He ain’t no big thing to me.”

Walter Johnson? Sandy Koufax? Cy Young himself? Bring ‘em on, the Yankees seemed to be saying, having possibly lost some timing and sanity in the six days they didn’t play between the Orioles and Braves.

One thing is clear. If the Yankees do beat Glavine, David Cone will have to control a team that has scored 48 runs in winning five in a row.

Cone, of course, has fought back from the aneurysm that sidelined him for four months this season. There is some concern his arm strength isn’t what it should be, but he too has to believe.

He said he wasn’t a savior but wouldn’t trade tonight’s opportunity for anything. He was going to prepare for it by flying to Atlanta Monday afternoon. He was on the plane on a LaGuardia Airport runway when it developed problems. Cone asked for permission to get off and returned to Yankee Stadium, saying he didn’t want to be away from the team anyway.

This meant he wasn’t expected to be in Atlanta until almost 4 a.m.

“It won’t be the first time I’ve been up that late,” the former Broadway bachelor said. “If this Series hinges on my sleeping patterns, we’re in trouble.”

Now that’s something a Yankee ghost named Ruth could relate to.