MLB

Boone, Bernie: Erase taste of ‘03

Aaron Boone perfectly recalls something about the last time the Yankees were in the World Series. The ending to that Fall Classic six years ago was filled with both unwanted noise and overwhelming quiet.

“Unfortunately my most vivid and clear memory is the Marlins celebrating on the field at Yankee Stadium,” Boone, the Yankees’ 2003 ALCS hero, recalled recently.

“And just kind of an eerie, deafening silence and hearing their voices out there celebrating the final out was something that’s kind of stuck with me and something I remember like it was yesterday.”

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That Yankees season ended bitterly, but it featured an impressive playoff run beforehand, highlighted by an ALDS win over the Twins (sound familiar?) and a classic ALCS triumph over the Red Sox (led by Boone’s 11th-inning walk-off homer in Game 7).

In that game, as you probably remember, the Yankees trailed 5-2 in the eighth inning before storming back.

“It was a great moment,” Bernie Williams recalled in regard to Boone’s homer, “because we thought the game was pretty much done.”

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But as Williams said, “I think that [the game] really epitomized the character of the team that year.”

Both Williams and Boone are big fans of the current Yankees team that’s now back in the World Series for the first time in six years.

“They have every aspect of the game sort of covered right now,” Williams said. “And in any given situation, there’s no really weak spots in the lineup from top to bottom. So it’s a very tough team to beat.”

Boone, who spent this season with the Astros, gushed of the 2009 Yankees, “I think they’re great. And I think CC [Sabathia] now at the top of that rotation and doing now what he’s doing in the playoffs, I think is everything that the Yankees could have hoped for when they signed him.

“And now obviously Alex [Rodriguez] playing the way he is so far this postseason and not having to deal with those kinds of questions and stuff, this is a team that’s just kind of out there playing, and playing with a purpose and they look like they’re going to get their crack at another title.”

As for Yankees-Phillies, Boone sounds like he couldn’t be more excited for Game 1.

“It is an awesome clash of the titans,” he said. “I think clearly [they’re] the two best teams meeting up, and two extremely relevant franchises that have huge fan bases. … I think it’s one of the best matchups, World Series matchups we’ve had in years. It’ll be a battle.”