Wild Horses Couldn’t Keep Yankees Away

Asked this week whether he had dreams about Game 6 of the American League Championship Series, David Cone allowed that, well, yes, it sounds crazy, but he had one.

“Horses,” he said. “I want to see the horses.”

At 19 minutes before midnight here Tuesday, he got his horses.

Huge, police-saddled animals that pranced on to the Yankee Stadium warning track to strains of “New York, New York.” Giant pin-striped players who trampled over the Cleveland Indians while winning the American League pennant. At 19 minutes before midnight, Mariano Rivera made one more incredible pitch. Tino Martinez caught one more throw at first base. Joe Torre made one more little leap out of his dugout seat.

The final score flashing over the monuments of Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig clearly read “Yankees 9, Indians 5.”

Everything else became a blur.

The players rushing to the pitching mound, the riot police rushing to the foul line, the horses galloping through the outfield, Frank Sinatra filling the loudspeakers, streamers falling, old men dancing, this old house shaking.

But somehow, during a splendid baseball season when the most valuable player has been tradition, all of it made sense.

At age 95, the Yankees are going home.

For the 35th time, to the World Series.

“A lot of great things have happened here,” said David Wells, standing in a champagne-soaked clubhouse where every locker is adorned with a miniature of the famed Yankee Stadium facade. “And a lot of great things are going to happen here.”

Another one happened here Tuesday when the Yankees shrugged off last weekend’s night sweats and defeated a proud Indian team that finally, unquestionably, unconditionally, collapsed.

Some would say the Yankees, after being good enough for a league-record 114 wins in a season and a baseball record 120 wins in one calendar year before Tuesday, finally just got lucky.

First inning, none out, runner on second. Hot-hitting Omar Vizquel inexplicably insists on bunting until he fouls one off for strike three, the Indians don’t score.

Sixth inning, Indians have turned a 6-0 deficit into a 6-5 thriller. Vizquel, one of best fielding shortstops in postseason history, throws away a grounder by Scott Brosius.

Still sixth inning, three batters later, runners on first and second. Derek Jeter hits a playable fly ball to the right-field wall, except Manny Ramirez loses his head and runs from it.

While Ramirez is leaping the wall with his back turned--don’t even ask--the ball bounces off the wall at his feet for a game-clinching triple.

Yep, the Yankees got lucky.

But they annotated it with good. So much good that they will be going home to the World Series this weekend like any of us would like to go home after a one year absence.

Smooth, strong and swaggering.

“They are warriors,” said owner George Steinbrenner, who we now assume will not fire anyone for another week or so. “It sounds trite, but they are warriors and they don’t quit.”

Remember Chuck Knoblauch, the forgetful one?

He ended the series to a pregame standing ovation from a crowd that only last week was calling for his head. Ended it with a couple of hits, a couple of good double plays, and new confidence.

“You go up, you go down, and you get stronger,” Knoblauch said. “This was a dream season.”

Then there was Scott Brosius, who started Tuesday with an ill-advised grab of a bunt headed for foul territory, and promptly threw it away.

He ended it as a hero with a three-run homer in the third, and a diving stop in the ninth.

“We never panic, this team just does not panic,” said Wells. “Scott Brosius, he’s ‘The Man.’ ”

Torre admitted that last Saturday, with the team trailing 2-games-to-1, the pressure of trying to live up to their regular season greatness rattled them like a Manhattan siren.

“It was really tough around here for a while,” he said.

Then Wells walked through the clubhouse hollering at everybody. Orlando Hernandez took the mound fooling everybody. Smooth Chili Davis stalked out of obscurity with a big double.

The Yankees won, 4-0, and the series was suddenly tied at 2 games all.

But not really.

“I felt the pressure leave us after that Saturday,” Torre said.

The Yankees didn’t lose again. In fact, they never trailed again.

At some point during Tuesday’s celebration of a bullpen that had been near perfect, of three starting pitchers that mostly dominated, of an offense that finally started hitting, some of the Yankees started thinking.

Maybe they really are as good as all that.

“I’d like to think we’ve got a good chance,” said Wells of the upcoming World Series. “We’re in the driver’s seat.”

And if there’s another accident or two along the way? Well, more important than anything else in this series, baseball’s most sparkling team of 1998 proved it can handle a little dent, a little smoke.

Immediately after the players entered the clubhouse late Tuesday, they headed for the trainers room. Once there, somebody announced a phone number. Somebody else dialed a phone.

Answering on the other end was Darryl Strawberry, their teammate still hospitalized after surgery for colon cancer.

One by one, they picked up the phone to talk.

One by one, Strawberry told them he loved them.

One by one, they told him that, for goodness sakes, don’t go jumping out of your hospital bed for this.

There’s plenty of time for that, they said. Plenty of time.