NEW YORK | When Mariano Rivera fired a final fastball into Jorge Posada’s mitt with flashbulbs popping, Frank Sinatra playing in the background and the New York Yankees subsequently mobbing each other on the mound, the first October at the new Yankee Stadium felt a lot like so many others at the old one.
And why shouldn’t it? The $1.5 billion palace was built to look like a replica - albeit a tricked-out replica - of the venerable cathedral across the street where the Yankees built their postseason mystique. Now, they’ll finish the first year in the new building the way they’re simply expected to close the year: in their 40th World Series in team history.
Delayed a day by a rainout - and postponed by six years in a larger sense by bad contracts, poor playoff showings and the Boston Red Sox supplanting them in baseball’s aristocracy - the Yankees made their way back to the World Series for the first time since 2003, defeating the Los Angeles Angels 5-2 and bringing a sense of propriety back to sports’ most storied franchise after a stretch of early exits.
They will play host to the Philadelphia Phillies in Game 1 of the World Series on Wednesday night.
The way the Yankees did it looked like something from the library of their 1990s championship teams. Left-hander Andy Pettitte was his usual impenetrable self, winning for a record 16th time in the postseason and becoming the first pitcher to win five series-clinching games. The Yankees ground out a few bloops and forced the Angels into a few mistakes in a meandering 3:40 game, and Rivera finished the timeless formula with another October save.
“I think the biggest difference is we had players play big in the series,” manager Joe Girardi said. “We’ve had big players do big things, and that’s why we’ve got a chance to go to the World Series.”
Pettitte - the last pitcher to start a World Series game for the Yankees - came out throwing like he wanted to get back there for the seventh time with New York and eighth overall. He challenged Angels hitters all night, which brought about a few jams when the Angels were able to hit him, but pitched out of them with a strong complement of off-speed pitches.
“He’s unbelievable. He was so calm,” said ALCS MVP CC Sabathia, who will start Game 1 of the World Series after Pettitte ensured he wouldn’t be needed for a Game 7 of this series. “He pitched well, and that’s what you expect him to do.”
Angels starter Joe Saunders, hardly Pettitte’s equal in big-game situations, never even came close to matching up on Sunday night. In just 3 1/3 innings, the Springfield native walked five batters and gave up seven hits, somehow escaping with only three runs allowed despite the 12 baserunners he allowed. Still, with Pettitte cruising, that was too much.
All three of the Yankees’ runs off Saunders came in the fourth inning, when the left-hander walked three and gave up three singles. With the bases loaded and New York up 2-1, he walked Alex Rodriguez to bring in another run and was lifted right there for Darren Oliver.
Still, the Angels managed to stay within two runs, aided by a Yankees offense that left nine on base in the game’s first six innings.
But they couldn’t score on Joba Chamberlain after Pettitte gave up a one-out single in the seventh. And with the lead still at two to start the eighth, Girardi bypassed setup man Phil Hughes, who gave up the go-ahead run in Thursday’s Game 5 loss, for closer Mariano Rivera.
The thinking was simple: Rivera is the surest thing in postseason baseball, with lapses between blown saves and earned runs spanning a third-grader’s entire life. So why not try to milk him for two innings?
The move didn’t come without a cost; Vladimir Guerrero punched a two-out single to right off Rivera, cutting the Yankees’ lead to one in the eighth inning.
It was the first postseason earned run allowed at home by Rivera since Oct. 22, 2000. But the Yankees got it back in the bottom of the inning when the Angels, who have made defensive mistakes in every game of the series in New York, twice failed at the simple act of retiring a runner after a sacrifice bunt.
After Scott Kazmir walked Robinson Cano, he cleanly fielded Nick Swisher’s sacrifice and threw to second baseman Howie Kendrick, who was covering first. But Kendrick couldn’t handle the throw despite Kazmir hitting his mitt, and Swisher was safe at first.
Then, the Yankees repeated the exercise with Melky Cabrera at the plate, and the result was even more disastrous for the Angels.
Kazmir babied a throw toward first that sailed well over a leaping Kendrick, and Cano scored as the Angels scrambled to retrieve the ball. He issued another walk two batters later, and Mark Teixeira drove in Swisher with a sacrifice fly to center that extended the Yankees’ lead to three, all without a hit in the inning.
Then it was back to Rivera for the predictable ninth-inning conclusion: a quick groundout, a flyout, a strikeout and another closed chapter in Yankees legend.
“That’s what you play for,” said Rodriguez, who has transformed himself from playoff scapegoat to hero in the span of two series. “To win a World Series, you have to get there first. I feel like a 10-year-old kid.”
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