NOTES

Lost in the late-inning Game 4 heroics was the second superb defensive play in as many nights by Yankee left fielder Shane Spencer.

Spencer, whose diving catch of Matt Williams’ liner in the sixth inning of Game 3 saved two runs in an eventual 2-1 Yankee victory, threw out Tony Womack at the plate in the fifth inning Wednesday night, preserving a 1-1 tie. Womack was trying to tag up on Luis Gonzalez’s medium fly to left.

Spencer had an accomplice. His one-hop throw was actually a few feet inside the line, but catcher Jorge Posada caught the ball and made a lunging tag of Womack, with the ball in his bare hand, before Womack crossed the plate.

“When I threw it, I knew it wasn’t going to get there, but Jorge made a great play,” Spencer said. “I didn’t even know he tagged him with the ball in his bare hand. Usually the ball falls out in those situations.”

Spencer, who sat out the second half of 2000 and the first month of 2001 because of knee surgery, was a spot starter and late-inning defensive replacement in the first two rounds of the playoffs, but Chuck Knoblauch went hitless in his first 12 World Series at-bats, so Manager Joe Torre replaced him with Spencer in Game 4.

With his two great defensive plays and a home run Wednesday night, Spencer appears to have locked up the left-field spot for the rest of the Series.

*

Arizona first baseman Mark Grace called New York’s 4-3 win “one of the best games I’ve ever been a part of as far as excitement, emotion, and highs and lows.”

Asked if he felt the ground shaking when Martinez hit his homer, Grace said, “The ground was shaking because I was stomping up and down.”

Joe Garagiola Jr., Diamondbacks’ general manager, called the game an instant classic. “When you put great players on a big stage, whether it’s Curt Schilling, Tino Martinez or Derek Jeter, they do great things,” he said.

Garagiola figured it might be a tough day Wednesday when, on the team’s bus ride from their midtown Manhattan hotel to Yankee Stadium, they passed a Catholic church on Madison Avenue.

“A priest was standing outside, and as we drove by he gave us two thumbs-down,” Garagiola said. “Geez, I know this is a tough town, but give us a break. Let God watch the game.”

*

Schilling, who was pulled from Wednesday night’s game after a seven-inning, one-run, three-hit, nine-strikeout performance on three days rest, admitted the loss, especially the repeated television replays of Arizona center fielder Steve Finley leaping above the wall in vain for Martinez’s homer in the ninth, kept him up all night.

“I kept thinking if I watched it long enough, he might catch it,” Schilling said.