Galaxy Ready to Turn on Its Afterburners

So we have been given another chance, as bright as those blue rockets singing into the Pasadena sky Thursday night, as loud as that insistent drumbeat below.

So one more time this century, Los Angeles has been given one more chance to end the professional sports championship drought that has haunted us for more than a decade.

And you’re not going to believe who’s giving it to us.

It’s not a guy who’s making $12 million a year.

It’s guys who make a tenth that amount--combined.

It’s not guys who celebrate with a strut or swagger.

It’s a guy who, after scoring the game-clinching goal Thursday, celebrated by pulling up his jersey to reveal a T-shirt containing a birthday wish to his son.

It’s not the usual heartbreaking Los Angeles assortment of big names who disappear in big games.

It’s guys who, fighting through a chilly Rose Bowl night with shirt sleeves and grass-stained elbows, just got bigger. At times Thursday, with 25,703 fans pounding and screeching and sounding their air horns, this didn’t even seem like Los Angeles, but another galaxy.

If that’s the point behind professional soccer in this town, then it was a point perfectly made during the Galaxy’s 3-1 defeat of the Dallas Burn in the deciding game of the MLS Western Conference finals.

Even those who have nil idea about this deal can understand the import of what happens next.

The Galaxy advances to the MLS Cup championship game on Nov. 21 in Foxboro, Mass.

If it wins that one game--against either D.C. United or the Columbus Crew--they will be MLS champions.

This city’s first pro sports champions since the Dodgers of 1988.

Whether you throw it or dunk it or bounce it off your head, it still counts the same.

With 10 of the 20 players and their head coach having Los Angeles connections in some ways, it might count even more.

“This city has been starved for a winner,” said Sergio del Prado, Galaxy general manager. “‘It would be nice to be the first to break through and give it to them.”

He said this before he brought out a bottle of champagne and sprayed it into the crowd.

“We all know what’s happened lately with L.A. teams in championships,” goalkeeper Kevin Hartman said. “We want to represent L.A. the way it should be represented.”

He said this after he posed for photos with fans.

During the equivalent of a two-hour party Thursday--the best football the Rose Bowl has seen this fall--the Galaxy already represented us in a new way.

Because this is the game that recent Los Angeles teams usually lose. Not the championships game, but the much harder game or series that puts them there.

This is the game where Los Angeles teams, looking beyond to the heat of a title fight, get smoked.

And didn’t Coach Sigi Schmid, a good Los Angeles guy from way back, know it.

“When opponents play L.A. teams in big games, their litany is always the same,” the former UCLA coach was saying early Thursday evening. “They tell themselves that they can outwork the L.A. team.”

Then he smiled as if, not this team. Not this time.

“We are an L.A. team that rolls up its sleeves, gets in the trenches and battles,” he promised.

His players then overcame that reputation thing to back him up.

Dallas had won the second of this three-game series with a comeback in the final 16 minutes Sunday, and that unsettling feeling was still hanging there at Thursday’s kickoff.

Then two minutes later, it wasn’t.

A spiraling kick by Mauricio Cienfuegos in front of the Dallas goal was foolishly tapped by the arm of Dallas’ Paul Broome.

Greg Vanney calmly nailed the penalty kick, and it would be no understatement to say that the game was never again close.

The Galaxy had nearly twice as many shots as the Burn.

The Burn’s star scorer--Ariel Graziani, with three goals in the two previous series games--was held without a shot.

Stopped by another longtime local, Paul Caligiuri

“I just thought, we’ve had enough of him,” Caligiuri said. “I just wanted to shut him down.”

While Caligiuri and Robin Graser and Ezra Hendrickson were pounding the Burn on defense, Carlos Hermosillo was reminding everyone of priorities on offense.

When he knocked in the second goal from 10 yards out after the ball slipped off the hands of goalkeeper Mark Dodd only 20 minutes into the game, he immediately covered his head in his jersey.

An odd celebration? No, a birthday card.

His T-shirt underneath read, “Feliz Cumpleanos Carlitos te amo.”

Or, Happy Birthday Carlos, I love you.

You’ll never guess how old Carlos turned on Thursday. Yep, he’s 11.

“What, it’s been 11 years since a professional team from this town has won a championship, right?” Caligiuri said. “This is a big step to changing that.”

The Galaxy took a similar step back in 1996, remember? Played D.C. United at Foxboro for the inaugural MLS title, remember?

Blew a two-goal lead late in the second half and lost in overtime.

A typical ‘90s L.A. team then.

They will have 90 minutes in suburban Boston next week to prove they are different now.

“There are guys on this team who remember that game,” Schmid said. ‘There are guys who want to erase that memory.”

Me too. This is already fun. I’m ripping off my shirt, and you can’t stop me.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at his e-mail address: bill.plaschke@latimes.com.