Sports

NEVER FORGET WHO’S BOSS

THERE was no reason for this. There was no rhyme for this. The Yankees were not only dead, their ashes had already been scattered. Mets fans, who really should know better, had already fled for the Grand Central, hoping to beat the traffic with a 4-0 lead, with the Yankees’ JV awaiting Billy Wagner, the closer who looked like Superman less than 24 hours earlier.

Then again, there are times when the Yankees simply like to remind you they are the Yankees, and that goes for everyone: Mets fans, cynics, small-market apologists, skeptics who see their doom lurking around every corner. There are times when they still make you shake your head, even when it seems all the walls are collapsing around them.

Even then.

Especially then.

Twice this week, they were hopelessly buried. Once it came against the Texas Rangers, when they erased a couple of nine-run deficits then, for kicks, won by the wonderfully improbable score of 14-13 when Jorge Posada hit a ninth-inning ball over the moon. But that was against the Texas Rangers.

This time, it was against the Mets, which means this time it matters twice as much, even if the standings will refuse to admit as much, even if the principals will refuse to concede what everyone else understands as gospel. This time the Yankees had been handcuffed for eight innings, looking as helpless as a professional team could possibly look on offense, on defense, everywhere else.

It was 4-0 entering the top of the ninth.

It was 4-4 leaving the top of the ninth.

And it was 5-4 when everybody left for home about an hour later, after Andy Phillips delivered the game-winning RBI in the top of the 11th, scoring Miguel Cairo, sending the lingering Mets fans home with spasms of sickness and Yankees fans home feeling as bulletproof as ever.

“If it’s possible,” Joe Torre said, “I think this was even more improbable than the other night.”

Of course it’s possible, and of course Torre is correct. These Subway Series games in this year have become more than simply an intriguing matchup between the city’s two teams. They have become litmus tests, referenda designed to identify ownership of New York’s baseball soul. The Yankees have held the deed for over a decade, undisputed. The Mets believe they can make a move on that monopoly this year. Friday night was a step forward.

Yesterday would have been another step, maybe two.

Only the Yankees have been doing this for a long, long time. They knew what was at stake. They knew the ramifications of going down meekly in the ninth inning.

“We knew,” Johnny Damon said, “that if we lost, we’d be down oh-two in the Subway Series, and there wasn’t one of us that wanted to be staring at that.”

Yes, Wagner imploded, in a more shocking and staggering way than Braden Looper, Armando Benitez and John Franco ever did. But it was Melky Cabrera who bled Wagner dry with an 11-pitch walk in that fateful ninth, the at-bat that broke Wagner’s spirit and hobbled the Mets’ knees. It was Damon who Carl Lewis-ed his way down the first base line a few batters later, escaping a double play by an eyelash. It was Cairo who stole second base and third base in the 11th, when he saw the Mets were conceding them to him, putting himself in position to score the winning run.

And it was Phillips, struggling at the plate all season long, who delivered that game-winning run with as professional a piece of hitting as he has provided in his young career to date.

The Mets opened the door, and the Yankees barreled through it. It’s what they’ve been doing for damn near 100 years. It’s what they do better than anyone else in the sport.

“It sounds crazy,” Phillips said, “but on the bench in the ninth inning there really was a buzz. Then we got a man on, and a couple more, and we were thinking, ‘We could really do something here.’ ”

Of course they were thinking that. They’re the Yankees. Every now and again, they choose to remind everyone of that. Sometimes twice in a week.