| | NEW YORK -- There really is no turning point to dig up from the final
game of this World Series, because the final game was like the other three,
as though the New York Yankees strung together 37 of the damnedest innings
of baseball you and the Atlanta Braves ever saw.
Such was the Yankees' dominance of this Series that it all came out so
seamlessly. Orlando Hernandez was David Cone was Roger Clemens, in
precisely the same way that Derek Jeter was Chuck Knoblauch was Chad Curtis
was Bernie Williams was Tino Martinez.
|  | | Roger Clemens allowed four hits in 7 2/3 innings and left to a rousing ovation from the home crowd.
|
Before long, you got the sense that Joe Torre was Casey Stengel was
Joe McCarthy was Miller Huggins. These Yankees had shown Generation X the
baseball that Generations T, U and V learned as children -- the one where
the Yankees did the talking and the other teams did the walking.
By playing the baseball of their forbears, these Yankees gave the final seasons of this decade a tone and texture that it might not otherwise have had. On a
smaller scale, it gave Clemens a place to defend his inclusion on the
All-Century team with the one
thing his detractors thought they could use on him -- the absence of a World Series ring.
Clemens put the final coat of paint on his career with a Clemensian
masterwork in New York's 4-1 victory in Game 4. Or, to be more precise
about it, a Madduxian masterwork. Clemens, the great strikeout pitcher of
his age, got only four Braves to whiff, but he didn't allow any of them as
much as a outfield fly. He threw 17 ground-ball outs and two infield popups
to go with those four strikeouts. If he
wasn't dominant, he was surely smothering.
Turning point? Fine. Take his first inning, when he struck out leadoff hitter Gerald
Williams and then induced grounders to short from Bret Boone and Chipper
Jones. Whatever nerves or adrenal imbalance his reputation said he could
not control were never in evidence.
"I don't need to take credit," Clemens said afterward. "I heard
people say I could be rattled and things like that. Nothing. I don't get
rattled. Maybe earlier in my career, big games. What are big games? I put
pressure on myself tonight to rise to the occasion."
And he did. A 10-pitch second inning. A six-pitch third. Clemens
wasted nothing. He went out, got outs, and went back in. Even John Smoltz,
who watched another superb performance die of loneliness, noticed. "I
wasn't in the dugout (between innings) very long at all tonight," he
laughed when asked if the brevity of Atlanta's third inning may have affected
him in New York's third, when the Yankees scored three runs.
"If I pitch 10 games like this one against the Yankees, I think I'd win
nine of them," Smoltz added. But they won tonight. It's amazing. That's why they're who
they are.'"
And that's why there was no turning point Wednesday night. The turning
had already been done, and the only thing left was to let it play itself
out. These Yankees, after all, are just like those Yankees of yore, and
they rarely bothered with turning points. That, too, is why they're who
they are.
Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Examiner is a regular contributor to ESPN.com.
| |
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