MLB

Yankee Stadium gets first dose of do-or-die theater

Imagine if this were to happen tonight: The Tigers lead the Yankees, 3-2. In the bottom of the seventh inning, the bases are loaded, and Derek Jeter is up. In from the bullpen walks Justin Verlander, who turns out not to be so unavailable after all. And Verlander — working on fumes — strikes out Jeter, silencing the huge throng at Yankee Stadium, letting the air out of the 2011 Yankees season.

But wait, there’s more:

It’s the bottom of the ninth. The Tigers still up, 3-2. With two outs, Alex Rodriguez walks. The faithful stir back to life. Mark Teixeira is up. He’s been scuffling a bit, but he’s still Mark Teixeira: one swing of the bat, and so forth. The crowd is on its feet, roaring. It’s do-or-die at Yankee Stadium, the tension is palpable, the noise is deafening …

And then A-Rod tries to steal second.And he gets thrown out.

And in the funereal silence, a lone, agonized voice can be heard: “Ballgame over! American League Division Series over … !”

Crazy, right? We might have to print six different back pages tomorrow in order to properly roast everyone who deserves roasting. Talk radio might, quite literally, melt down, the fury spilling out of the speakers and into the city streets. Jeter, as always, will be able to take cover under all the A-Rod outrage. And A-Rod? Well … Anaheim is a beautiful place to live, isn’t it?

COMPLETE YANKEES COVERAGE

Tonight is the first time the new Yankee Stadium will host a decisive, win-or-be-gone postseason game. Across the street, where the old Yankee Stadium used to stand, this very same outcome greeted the very first do-or-die game ever played in The Bronx, Oct. 10, 1926. Students of history know how to substitute the names: Tigers for Cardinals, Jeter for Tony Lazzeri, hung-over Grover Cleveland Alexander for arm-weary Verlander, Bob Meusel for Mark Teixeira. And Babe Ruth for Alex Rodriguez.

There were only 38,093 in the house for that one (man, how sports talk would’ve loved to seize upon that), but it was a wonderfully auspicious start to what has been, across the years, one of the most reliable ways to find drama and tension and glory in the baseball place best known for all three:

Have a Game 7 here. Or a Game 5. One game, nine innings (at least), for the whole blessed shebang. Nine times that happened across the way, and the results of those nine games are a cornucopia of snapshots that can tell a brief history of the sport itself.

Aaron Boone earned himself a new middle name here in 2003, updating what always had been one of the most satisfying moments in team history, Chris Chambliss making a Mark Littell fastball disappear over the right-field wall in 1976. Derek Jeter added a bloody dive into the stands against the A’s in 2001, four days after The Flip. Reggie Jackson hit his final postseason homer at the Stadium in the first-ever, strike-mandated Division Series against the Brewers in ’81, rescuing the Yankees.

Part of the reason this roster is so special, though, is because the Yankees didn’t win every time. There really are no guarantees in life if the Yankees can go only 5-4 in nine games with such dire stakes in play.

So Next Year finally arrived for the Dodgers, Game 7 in 1955, thanks to Johnny Podres’ arm and Sandy Amoros’ glove, and the Curse of the Bambino finally was assassinated here 49 years later, thanks to an unwelcome invading army of Idiots. Milwaukee’s Lew Burdette, an old discarded Yankees farm hand, finished off the home team with a 5-0 shutout for his third win of the ‘57 Series. And, of course, there was the Babe, lumbering toward second, gunned down by a St. Louis Cardinals catcher named Bob O’Farrell.

Over There, the scorecard was Yankees 5, Baseball 4.

Over Here, it’s 0-0. The real history of the new joint is unwritten. Starting tonight, that changes. Ever since it opened two years ago, a common complaint has been that so much of the mystery, the noise, the intimidation has been scrubbed away by the mall-like environment. You would think Game 5 should change all that, that for one night at least it can summon the spirit of the old place.

You would hope.

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com