There’s No Place Like Their House

He showed up early, stepping alone into the Bronx sunlight, tiny red shorts, high red socks, an accidental tourist.

David Eckstein draped himself over the Yankee Stadium dugout railing and stared.

High above home plate, a couple of guys were carefully hanging the aging red, white and blue bunting that seemingly has not changed since Babe Ruth played.

“Careful,” shouted one. “This hasn’t been out of the bag since opening day!”

Out in left field, another guy was guarding the monuments that will shadow the Angel bullpen, Mickey Mantle over one shoulder, Joe DiMaggio over another.

“It’s sacred in there,” the guard said.

Beyond the glistening white center-field facade, an elevated train roared past, the sound of an October crowd after a playoff home run in the most spooky postseason spot in sports.

Inside Eckstein’s head, thoughts raced.

“Something magical happens here,” he said later.

He paused, wrinkled his nose.

“If we are overwhelmed by it, they are going to eat us alive.”

*

The last time the New York Yankees played a postseason game here, one of them hit a ninth-inning, two-run, two-out, game-tying World Series home run.

For the second consecutive day.

In the stands, thousands held hands and swayed and sang, “New York, New York” long after midnight.

For the third time that week.

When the Angels take the field today for the first game of their division series, they will be battling not only a team, but a chill.

Just as your kitchen is a different place at dinnertime, Yankee Stadium is a different place in October.

It’s as tangible as the steam coming out of the mouths of cursing fans.

It’s as pungent as the odors wafting from the nearby Bronx fast-food joints.

Yankee history fills every corner of this aging palace with photos and plaques and wrinkled old cigar-chomping men.

With the timing of Yogi and the toughness of Gehrig, it is a history that awakens every fall to remind the team of who it is.

“Have you been here? Then you know it,” Yankee shortstop Derek Jeter said. “I don’t know how to explain it other than ... the game is never over.”

During last year’s World Series, the Arizona Diamondbacks’ Curt Schilling didn’t believe in it, even laughed about it.

Mystique and aura?

He said they “sound like dancers at a nightclub.”

Shortly after the Yankees beat the Diamondbacks in consecutive games here on consecutive game-tying, ninth-inning homers, a banner was unfurled over a Yankee Stadium wall.

“Mystique and Aura Appearing Nightly,” it read.

Whatever it is, it’s real.

“Definitely a different animal here,” Yankee first baseman Jason Giambi said. “I’ve been on the other side, and it’s great to be on this side.”

Since this four-championship dynasty began its run in 1996, this chill has appeared at the oddest times, making people do the oddest things.

In that first year, in the league championship series, a 12-year-old boy named Jeffrey Maier lunged out of the right-field stands to grab a ball and give Jeter a home run that inspired a pennant.

Last year, even though the Yankees eventually lost the Series, they were hosts of President Bush’s perfect pitch and those two perfectly amazing comebacks.

In between, there was that October game when two shaken San Diego Padre relievers threw wildly enough to lose an entire World Series in about seven minutes.

Then there was the time Chad Curtis hit a 10th-inning home run that essentially ended a World Series in about five seconds.

Yankee Stadium is where Roger Clemens, jacked up beyond reason, threw a broken bat at Mike Piazza.

And Yankee Stadium is where, at the start of tonight’s game, I fully expect him to throw a fastball at Eckstein.

It’s the style of a pitcher who has won 19 of his last 21 decisions here.

Said Clemens: “I’ll try to break him down the best I can.”

It’s the manner of a team that recklessly approaches October home games as if playing with a stacked deck.

“Derek Jeter was telling me the other day how this is a magical place, and how it rubs off on everybody,” outfielder Rondell White said. “I can’t wait to see.”

Neither can the Angels, although they have no idea what they will find.

Although they are an enviable 17-16 at Yankee Stadium since 1996, they are acutely aware that none of those games was during the fall.

“We know we can beat them here, but what does that mean now?” Tim Salmon said. “I don’t know.”

They are aware that, also since 1996, they have the majors’ second-best record against the Yankees at 35-34.

Which means nothing when it’s 11 p.m., and you can see your breath, and the dugout toilet is clogged, and thousands are chanting about your ex-wife, and Babe Ruth is on the video board, and here comes Mariano Rivera.

“I’ve been here 10 years, and right now I feel like a rookie,” Salmon said. “It’s all new to us. We have to try to figure out ways to keep us ready to play.”

This being only a best-of-five series, they will have to do it quickly. The Yankees are watching. The Yankees know.

“When people come here for the first time in the postseason, something happens,” Jeter said. “They get flustered. You can see it on people’s faces.”

The Angels must prove they are not like other teams, and, to have a chance in this series, they must prove it tonight.

Beating Clemens in Yankee Stadium in October is like beating Lombardi in Lambeau Field in December.

The easy part is overcoming greatness. The real pain is scaring away those ghosts.

Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.