Yankees Go Home

The next step en route to a World Series repeat was a turnpike rematch with the Baltimore Orioles, their Eastern Division neighbor.

The New York Yankees hit the road Monday night, but it was merely back to the Bronx for a hard winter.

In the riveting final of a riveting division series, the Cleveland Indians sent the Yankees packing with a 4-3 victory in the fifth and final game before 45,203 boisterous partisans at Jacobs Field.

Now it’s the Central Division champion Indians who will be heading to Baltimore for the American League’s championship series that begins Wednesday night.

A Yankee fan named George Steinbrenner accepted the setback with unusual equanimity.

“I’m very proud of them,” he said of his Yankees, congratulating each player in the clubhouse. “The way they fought back and never quit.”

Fought back to almost catch the Orioles in the East.

Fought back from a 4-0 deficit Monday night before Mike Jackson, Paul Assenmacher and Jose Mesa supplied 3 2/3 innings of shutout relief after rookie Jaret Wright lit up the speed guns again in an impressive stint of 5 1/3 innings to become the fifth pitcher to win two games in an AL division series.

Wright got the Indians a split at Yankee Stadium, and the Indians won it by winning Games 4 and 5 after falling behind, 2-1, in the best-of-five series.

“We knew it would be tough after losing the first game at home,” said shortstop Omar Vizquel, “but nobody laid down or hung their head. We stayed focused through the whole thing.”

Champagne flowed in the Cleveland clubhouse. There were tears in the New York clubhouse.

“As much fun as we had last year, this season is empty,” catcher Joe Girardi said. “It’s going to be a long winter. It stinks.

“There’s a lot to think about, a lot to motivate us.”

Said shortstop Derek Jeter: “You play 162 games to get in position to win a championship. We had a team good enough to do it again. It’s a miserable feeling not to have done it.”

The Indians did some small things Monday night, adding up to a second series victory over Andy Pettitte, who gave up 15 hits and 11 runs in the 11 2/3 innings of the two losses, both to Wright.

Pettitte retired the last 11 batters he faced in Monday’s stint of 6 2/3 innings, but only after the Indians had taken a 4-0 lead.

Three of the runs were scored in the third when Marquis Grissom and Bip Roberts singled, Manny Ramirez drilled a two run double to center and Matt Williams followed with an RBI single.

Ramirez was two for 18 in the series, hitless in his last 13 at bats, and Pettitte had him down 0-and-2.

“I’ve got to expand the zone there,” the Yankee left-hander said with regret, “but I got too aggressive. I tried to overthrow. I tried to throw it past him and got it up over the heart of the plate.”

A leadoff double by Sandy Alomar Jr. got Pettitte in trouble again in the fourth. Cleveland Manager Mike Hargrove chose to build on his lead by playing little ball with a slugger who rarely is asked to play it, but Jim Thome laid down a perfect bunt to advance Alomar. It was Thome’s first sacrifice since 1994 and second of his major league career and it enabled Alomar to score on a fly to right by Tony Fernandez--the fourth run proving decisive.

“If you’re going to beat the New York Yankees you have to do those little things, you have to make those plays,” said Thome, who would provide another in the seventh, after the Yankees had closed to 4-3.

Jeter had opened the inning with a single off Jackson, who was replaced by left-hander Assenmacher for another duel with the torrid Paul O’Neill, who batted .421 in the series.

This time, O’Neill drilled a ground ball toward right that seemed likely to put runners at first and third with no outs.

Thome, however, made a diving stop, and from a prone position made an accurate throw to force Jeter at second, and Assenmacher then got Bernie Williams--unstoppable in the 1996 postseason but a .118 hitter in the division series--to ground into a double play.

“I’m not supposed to make plays like that, but I just bounced off the bag and flopped my big body on the ball,” said Thome.

The Yankees weren’t through, but Mesa survived a pair of two-out singles in the eighth and a two out double by the persistent O’Neill in the ninth, as Wright, 21, watched anxiously from the dugout.

He had delivered 115 pitches on three days rest, striking out five and scattering eight hits with three walks. Two of the walks and a single by Williams led to two runs in the fifth, and a pinch hit single by Wade Boggs after Mike Stanley doubled got the Yankees within one in the sixth.

Wright left to a standing ovation in that inning, having tied an AL division series record with nine shutout innings before the Yankees got their first run.

“It’s a lot easier when you have 50,000 people on your side,” Wright said. “It helps you reach back for a little extra. This was the first time I’d pitched with three days rest. I wanted to go as hard as I could for as long as I could.”

The wild-card Yankees went as hard as they could for as long as they could, but it wasn’t nearly as long as they had hoped or as long as they had gone a year ago.