MLB

Title shared by fathers & sons

EVEN in the middle of the clamor and the clatter, even at the top of the world, this remains a game about fathers and sons, about the passage of time and the passing of the seasons. All around the freshly crowned champions of baseball came offertories of joy and resounding crashes of glee.

A good chunk of the 50,315 who passed through the turnstiles were still here, chanting themselves hoarse, singing along with Sinatra, periodically stopping to boo Joe Buck, finally rising to a crescendo when Derek Jeter raised the Commissioner’s Trophy high over his head.

“It’s good to be back!” Jeter said, a preacher speaking to a rapt secular congregation. “This is right where it belongs!”

It wasn’t long after, when Joe Girardi, the man who had the audacity to slap a No. 27 on his back to signify the 27th title he would chase down, tried to slip away unnoticed, cradling his son, Dante. Girardi’s own father, Jerry, had harbored his own baseball dreams once, had introduced the game to Joe and in Joe’s heart he carried a fierce love with his father, afflicted in the late stages of Alzheimer’s.

And in his arms, he carried Dante.

“This is the kind of team,” Girardi said, his voice cracking as he tried to hustle off the field and leave that team to relish its spotlight, “that you dream about being a part of. They bring you a joy that’s hard to describe.”

YANKEES BLOG

BOX SCORE

BLOG: VAC’S WHACKS

VACCARO ON TWITTER

He looked at Dante, who looked tired but whose face beamed.

“We did it,” father told son, “as a team.”

A few yards behind, another pair of sons tried very hard to maintain their composure, especially as they heard their catcher, Jorge Posada, bellow into a microphone.

“Don’t forget,” Posada said, “that this one is for Mr. Steinbrenner!”

On the field at Yankee Stadium, the field made possible by their father’s vision and his team’s unmatched success, Hal and Hank Steinbrenner smiled broadly, clapped their hands, looked around the stands, still stuffed with celebrants.

On the Stadium’s main video board, a poignant message had already been posted: “Boss, This Is For You.”

Hal and Hank know him by another name.

“Dad,” Hal said, “is very, very happy.”

So many fathers and sons, so many mothers and daughters, so many mingled generations were feeling that same feeling all around the ballpark, all around the city. A wonderful gentleman named Hideki Matsui had slaughtered baseballs all over this beautiful new ballyard all night, and a tough club fighter of a lefty named Andy Pettitte had gritted his way through 52⁄3 innings on short rest, and at last the most reliable of all Yankees, Mariano Rivera, had closed it all out, stuck the last five outs in his back pocket.

The final was 7-3, and the reaction the moment Shane Victorino’s grounder reached Robinson Cano’s glove, and the instant he flipped it over to Mark Teixeira, was instantaneous. You wondered if Yankee Stadium could replicate the jazzy riffs of joy that used make the old place rattle and hum?

Now you knew. Now there was this, a celebration nine years in the making, a 27th world championship that surely will dye the rest of baseball green with envy and crimson with anger, but even the rest of baseball must concede this much: The sport is never more interesting, and never more intriguing, than when the Yankees lord over late October and early November.

Especially when they’ve been gone for a bit.

“I don’t want to say we didn’t think we’d ever be back, because you start every season thinking it’s going to end this way,” Posada rasped. “But it sure feels good to be back. It’ll sure feel good to be in that parade [tomorrow].”

It will mark another passage, another rite. Fathers have been bringing sons to these coronations in the Canyon of Heroes for decades, for generations, for as long as there’s been ticker tape to toss and funny hats to wear and championship merchandise to buy by the armload.

“The one thing Dad always wanted the fans to know,” Hal said, “was how much winning would matter to the Yankees.”

You have known, and you know it still. You have seen it. Your father saw it with Mickey Mantle’s style and Whitey Ford’s flair. Your grandfather saw it in Joe DiMaggio’s graceful gait. Maybe your great-grandfather saw the Babe hit one over the short porch built specifically for him across the street.

One generation to the next. Father to daughter to grandson. Mother to son to grand-daughter. Jerry to Joe to Dante Girardi. George Steinbrenner to his boys. Even in the middle of a joyous pile of noise, it still boils down to this, doesn’t it?

michael.vaccaro@nypost.com

Hey Bud: no more Nov. ball

BUD Selig was in attendance last night, because when the Commissioner’s Trophy is in the house, the commissioner is sure to be there, too. Hopefully, he noticed that it was awfully damned cold.

And also that it was November.

And maybe he can do what must be done about the World Baseball Classic, which will wreak havoc in New York from season’s beginning to season’s end.

Of the six Mets who played in the WBC, all spent time on the DL. And now, we have a World Series where at least three and maybe four games will be played in November. It isn’t good when hot-water bottles and longjohns become standard equipment.

The WBC is a good idea. But it needs a better plan. This can’t happen again.

No Pedro envy now

1. ARE there really any Mets fans left who pine for Pedro Martinez after what they saw of him last night? Last night reminded me of what it used to look like watching Pedro try to get the Phillies out.

2. Talk about chalk: In the same calendar year, the Steelers, Yankees, Lakers, Florida Gators football team and North Carolina Tar Heels basketball team won titles. Cinderella is officially dead.

3. Charlie Manuel already sounds like Grady Little, and last night he managed like him, too. But Pedro Martinez was allowed to let the game get away. Phillies fans should be allowed to sue for malpractice.