The Patriots, one week later

The 1998 and 1999 Yankees were, quite simply, the greatest baseball team ever assembled. Even the best baseball teams have a glaring weakness or two. The 1927 Yankees had no team speed--not that they needed it. The 1976 Reds had mediocre starting pitching, and the 1989 A's starters were awful after Dave Stewart and Bob Welch. (It is telling that A's, for all their talent, only won the one World Series interrupted by an earthquake. This happenstance allowed them to sweep: two games were won by Stewart, two by Welch--each, two weeks apart). Both the Reds and A's boasted explosive offenses, above-average defenses and deep, suffocating bullpens--give them a lead after six and you were done.

The Yankees came close to both the A's and Reds in offense and had a significantly better bullpen, anchored by the Hammer of God himself, closer Mo Rivera. Their starting pitching put the A's and Reds to shame; the '98 model had two Cy Young Award candidates (David Cone, David Wells) supported by Andy Pettitte and Orlando Hernandez; the '99 version boasted Roger Clemens as its fourth starter.

The dominance of the 98-99 Yankees can be summed up in three statistics. First, the team went 22-3 in the postseason over those two years. In the three-tiered Wild Card era, there isn't even a second place. Second, the Yankees went 8-0 in two World Series. Two consecutive sweeps in a row is without precedent. Third, the eight wins over two years are part of a 14-0 World Series run that began in the 1996 Series and continued through the 2000 Series. The '96 and '00 editions were lesser versions of the '98-'99 juggernauts for different reasons. The '96 team was an odd mixture of veteran badasses (Tim Raines, Cecil Fielder, Darryl Strawberry, Mariano Duncan, David Cone), top journeymen at their absolute peak (Paul O'Neill, Tino Martinez, John Wetteland, Jimmy Key, Joe Girardi), and Stick Michael prodigies coming into their own (Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera). Add one Hall-of-Famer enjoying his clover (Wade Boggs) and one clutch-hitting back-up catcher (King Leyritz) you have a champion.

The 2000 club was the outlier, the 87-victory fluke, the team that invoked all the cliches, winning "on pure pride" or whatever over three teams that were, each of them, probably more talented--in the case of Seattle, demonstrably so. The A's and Mariners both thought they had the Pinstriped Monster beat; and the Mets, in the Series, played as if winning were a formality, and found themselves on the tail end of at least two games they should have won.

As this run from Heaven was going on, I asked myself a few questions:

How would I react when it was over?

How would I react when I had my heart ripped out, the way this Yankee team ripped out the hearts of so many others?

How would I react when Mariano Rivera, the Hammer of God, failed to get it done?

(Digression here. How great is Mo Rivera? Imagine an all-time starting line-up: nine position players, right-handed pitcher, left-handed pitcher, reliever. Babe Ruth goes in right field. Walter Johnson, your right-handed pitcher. And Mo Rivera is your reliever. These are the three who defy argument. I drive between campuses all day, this is my job, and when a current ballplayer is on a sports radio show, and Mo Rivera comes up in conversation, I swear, there are a few seconds of silence, after which the current ballplayer whispers something like, "The guy's a freaking witch.")

Little did I know that all three of the above would happen at once--literally the instant that Luis Gonzalez blooped that sawed-off, one hundred and twenty-five foot dying quail over Derek Jeter's glove. The Diamondbacks, that Series, outplayed the Yankees in every aspect of the game except closer, and the difference in the respective abilities of Rivera and Byung-Hung Kim was reflected in the fact that the Yankees--who three times had starting pitchers chased in the early innings (Pettitte was tipping his pitches, and Game One starter Mensa Mussina was driven bonkers by a week-long layoff and by having to pitch in an unfamiliar park) and sported the worst batting average in an extended Series since the 1919 White Sox (who, let us not forget, lost the World Series on purpose)--were still able to scrape their way to a 3-2 lead in games heading back to Phoenix for Game Six.

We all know what happened in Game Seven. Rivera's inexplicable meltdown: three hits allowed, one hit batsmen, one crazy wild throw that pulled Jeter off the bag and prevented an easy double play. For years, the domestic shorthair cat who had moved into my apartment had served as a harbinger of Yankee fortunes: if Jeter or Paul O'Neill or Brosius came up to bat in the late innings, Ferris would run to the bedroom, anticipating my joyous screams. When Rivera would appear in the ninth, Ferris would fall asleep in my lap, certain that all was well.

And it was, in the years between Sandy Alomar's home run in the '97 playoffs, Rivera's first year as closer, and Gonzo's bloop. I had been so certain the Yankees had done it, had won their fourth Series in a row, I actually relaxed.

This was when my heart was ripped out. Two friends had come over to watch the game; after they left I turned all the lights out and stared at the ceiling. Eventually I fell asleep, only to wake up again and again, every ninety minutes or so, and to one thought: Someone tell me that didn't happen. It didn't happen. Didn't.

But of course it had.

This was the moment I remembered watching the end of the Patriots' game last Sunday. And that's all I have to say.