Damn Nice Yankees!

The one thought that did come to my mind, strangely enough, is, 'Boy, this city suffered a lot, and tonight they let out a lot of emotions.' And I felt good for them in that way," Seattle Mariner Lou Piniella said after losing the American League Championship Series to the New York Yankees. "And that's a strange thought to come from a manager who is getting his ass kicked."

Yankee haters, and this would include roughly anyone who lives outside the New York metropolitan area as well as a million Mets fans within, could perhaps forgive Piniella for such blasphemy. After all, he once wore the fabled pinstripes. But as the Yankees headed into their 38th World Series, the team that only a network television executive could love became the standard bearer for a shattered city and a wounded country. Something unthinkable is happening among baseball fans: this year they happen to like New York. It happened in Chicago. It happened, gasp, in Boston, where fans sang New York, New York to a team they've despised only since 1919. "Where we've been, we've been seeing an outpouring of the fans," noted Andy Pettitte, the winning pitcher in Game 5 against the Mariners and the A.L.C.S. MVP. "Obviously wanting their team to win--but kind of pulling for us a little bit."

Even in a town where fans expect ball in the fall, the Yankee cause has taken on a larger meaning. "I realize," said Yankee manager Joe Torre, "and the players realize that all of a sudden our responsibility was more than just to baseball fans. It was to the city of New York, to represent them and bring a smile to their face." Downtown, in the Battery, the smoldering pyre of the World Trade Center was grudgingly yielding the bodies of fire fighters and cops killed in the attack. Uptown, in the Bronx, Yankee Stadium had become a cathedral of catharsis, the participants emptying their lungs at full volume, as if exhaling a cheer for Jorge Posada ("Hip hip Hor-hay!") might rid them of some of the pain and anxiety of Sept. 11.

Neither Paul O'Neill nor any of the other players had ever heard anything quite like last Monday night at the stadium when the Yanks crushed the Mariners 12-3 to clinch the A.L. pennant. "It was awesome," O'Neill recalled. "I saw so many things go on that night." An enthralling wave of singing and chanting--some of it even printable--washed over the crowd from the first inning and never stopped.

Oddly, this team, although loaded with all the stars that owner George Steinbrenner's lucre could buy, has never resembled the arrogant Yankees of old. The Bronx Zoo of the late '70s, that toxic team of loudmouthed egos like Reggie Jackson and angry drunks like Billy Martin, has been succeeded by a collection of circumspect, workaday millionaires who get along well and play hard. It is also a team that understands loss and suffering. In the past two years, the fathers of star players O'Neill, Scott Brosius and Bernie Williams died lingering deaths during the course of the season. Manager Torre has survived prostate cancer. Pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre, diagnosed with blood cancer, underwent a bone-marrow transplant. Catcher Posada has carried on while his infant son has endured three cranial surgeries.

The Yankees have added drama on the field too, going down 2-0 in the best-of-five divisional playoffs against the Oakland A's. Then, facing elimination and protecting a 1-0 lead in Game 3, shortstop Derek Jeter made a play that instantly became part of pinstripe legend, tracking down an errant throw from right field and somehow redirecting it home to nail the base runner. In Games 4 and 5 in New York, history and destiny reduced Oakland to fumbling Little Leaguers.

In the A.L.C.S. the Mariners--the league's best team, with a record-tying 116 wins--provided surprisingly meek resistance. Dominant Yankee pitching shut down Seattle's Japanese star Ichiro Suzuki ("Sa-yo-na-ra," the bleacher creatures bellowed), and clutch hitting took care of the Northwesterners.

Fans of New York's World Series opponents, the Arizona Diamondbacks, have no longstanding enmity toward the Yanks. That's because the D-backs have no longstanding anything. They've been in the league four years, which is about a year shy of the time Arizona Senator John McCain spent in a Hanoi prison. But the D-backs do have great pitching in Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling and figure to be a tough opponent. In Saturday night's opening game the D-backs won 9-1.

Still, any way you look at it--playoff experience, offense, defense--the D-backs are the underdogs. But just this once, the nation figures to be rooting for Goliath. D-back fans will have to learn to hate the Yankees on their own. It shouldn't take long.