New York Marathon

They seem as old as the trash that blows outside their stadium, as tired as the cheers of their hardened fans.

They sweated past a division series, gasped through a championship series, walked carefully and quietly into a Subway World Series that seemed to belong to their younger cross-town rivals even before the first pitch.

This wasn’t supposed to be their year, their month or their week. With two outs to go in Saturday’s opening game, it wasn’t supposed to be their night.

But the New York Mets learned something Saturday, learned it the hard way and the long way, learned it as we all did.

The Yankees are still the Yankees.

They are still baseball’s most patient team, most intelligent team, most team team.

They are still baseball’s best team, by Babe, and will remain so until proven otherwise.

On the verge of otherwise Saturday, Paul O’Neill pulled a career at-bat out of his 37-year-old pinstripes to help tie the game in the ninth inning, then three innings later Jose Vizcaino dropped in the most deafening flare in this city’s memory.

Four hours and 51 minutes after it started, the longest game in World Series history told us something we already should have known.

Yankees still rule. Yankees 4, Mets 3, in 12 innings. Yankees with a record 13 consecutive World Series victories, dating back to 1996, one more victory then even the 1927 Yankees pulled out.

Yankees win after blowing a two-run lead, win after blowing a bases-loaded, one-out situation in the 10th, win with Vizcaino’s flaring single to left field in the 12th.

One minute, they were old and finished.

The next minute, Tino Martinez was lining a single to right, and Jorge Posada was grounding a double up the middle . . . and the next think you know, Vizcaino was looping a single to left and dancing to first base like he rarely did for the Dodgers.

Derek Jeter was leaping over the dugout rail like he does every October.

The Bronx was thundering and shaking as it always does at 1:04 a.m. on a Sunday.

Autumn for everybody else. Spring in Yankee Stadium.

“We don’t allow ourselves to feel sorry for ourselves, it becomes a short season if you do,” Yankee Manager Joe Torre said afterward. “We know we have to bounce back. We’ve done this a number of times.”

You think?

But few times could match Saturday’s, as the Yankees were trailing by one run with one out in the ninth and Met closer Armando Benitez on the mound.

Actually, that was the best thing they had going for them at that time, Armando Benitez on the mound.

The hard thrower squeezes the ball a little tighter in the playoffs, with only three postseason saves in eight save situations before Saturday.

The Yankees knew this. O’Neill certainly knew this.

He stepped to the plate with shaky postseason legs--hitting only .231 before Saturday--yet decided to dig his legs in the dirt and use his hands.

Ball one. Swinging strike. Strike called.

Down to his last pitch, O’Neill dug even deeper.

Foul ball. Foul ball. Ball two. Ball three.

Benitez stopped and stared. O’Neill stared back.

Foul ball. Foul ball.

Benitez finally blinked. Against the Yankees, somebody always seems to blink.

Ball four.

O’Neill calmly jogged to first while the Yankees danced in their dugout.

“That was unbelievable,” Torre said. “You talk about [O’Neill] making up his mind about giving him a tough time. That was a sensational at-bat.”

Inspired by this display of fortitude, no other Yankee that inning swung at the first pitch. And Benitez caved.

Luis Polonia singled. Vizcaino, who had an entire World Series career in his first Series appearance, singled. Chuck Knoblauch hit a fly ball to tie it.

The game was over. It was three innings from being over, but it was over.

The Mets had had a chance to take a two-run lead in the ninth, but the Mets trembled as they trembled all evening.

Todd Pratt, standing on third base with one out, did not try to score on a grounder by Timo Perez to second base. The ball bounced off Vizcaino’s chest, but the out was made at first, and Pratt was eventually stranded.

Maybe if Pratt goes, he gets thrown out. But maybe he doesn’t. The thing was, he didn’t even try.

Just like, earlier, Jay Payton didn’t move on a bouncer in front of the plate that stayed fair, allowing him to be tagged out.

Or earlier, Todd Zeile not moving on a dribbler down the third-base line that darted fair, allowing him to also be easily thrown out.

None of which compares to Perez jogging around second base in the sixth inning on Zeile’s fly ball that he thought was a home run. But the ball bounced off the top of the padding along the left-field wall, and Perez was thrown out at home plate.

Everyone wondered if the Mets would try too hard against the team that had traditionally owned New York. Few could believe that they would do this by not trying at all.

“We came in with very little World Series experience, we got a lot of it in one night,” Met Manager Bobby Valentine said.

The Yankees can tell you, experience is a good thing.

As long as you don’t have to try to hurdle it in a seven-game series.

“I like to think we keep finding a way to win,” Torre said.

We’d like to think that we’ll never get tired of watching it.

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