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The unsinkable Yanks Now one win away, the Yankees can taste the three-peat
Updated: Thursday October 26, 2000 8:01 AM
By John Donovan, CNNSI.com NEW YORK -- The visiting clubhouse at Shea Stadium on Wednesday night was sunk, awash under maybe six inches of water. A pipe apparently broke, forcing the New York Yankees to do their post-game media thing out in the open air. There was evidently no truth to the rumor that a sometimes hot-headed Paul O'Neill took on a faucet and the faucet lost. Whatever the cause of the flood, the Yankees made it clear that, if they have their way on Thursday night, the clubhouse again will be awash. This time, though, it'll be in champagne.
"Obviously, we're very confident being up three games to one," reliever Jeff Nelson said after the Yankees got to within a game of their third consecutive World Series title and the fourth in five years. "But the last two times we had a chance to clinch a series [against Oakland in the Division Series, and Seattle in the American League Championship Series], we didn't do it. "But we're very confident." As the Yankees milled about on the Shea Stadium field after the game -- a strange bit of foreshadowing, perhaps, to a possible clinching Game 5 on Thursday? -- players talked about the tough road they've traveled to get this far this season. Mostly, they talked about the last step they have to take. "This is almost kind of difficult to believe. We've been considered the underdogs throughout the playoffs," reliever Mike Stanton said. "But we're not going to rest until this is over." The Yankees came into the 2000 postseason on a seven-game losing streak and with the worst record of any of the playoff teams. The A's took them to the limit in the Division Series, and the Mariners took them to a Game 6 in the ALCS. The Mets have been tough in the World Series, too. The four games have been decided by a total of five runs. In fact, the only game that wasn't decided by a run was the Mets' 4-2 win in Tuesday's Game 3. The last thing the Yankees wanted Wednesday was to have the Mets pull even at two games apiece. So the Yanks put together three runs in the first three innings and made them hold up. And now, they have three chances to win one game. "It was the biggest game of the year," Stanton said on the field just outside the third-base dugout. "And not simply because it was the World Series. But because it was today's game. "Tomorrow [Thursday] will be the same thing." Under the stands of Shea, in the room that used to serve as the New York Jets' locker room, a dry, but weary Joe Torre contemplated capturing another World Series title with a win Thursday. Outside the soaking clubhouse, owner George Steinbrenner breezed through a hallway shaking hands. On the field, there were smiles all around. Paul O'Neill, at 37 a Yankees' hero and the possible Series MVP (he's hitting an incredible .563), seemed simply thankful to be a part of it all. "This is the time of year where individual things are set aside because, obviously, it's just a race to four," O'Neill said. "You want to go out and play right now. You don't want to go home and wait. You're anxious." The New York Yankees are this close to another World Series title. They are confident. They are ready. They are, in a word, unsinkable.
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