World Series

There are certain things that seem to pop up with regularity in the postseason. Rain delays in Philadelphia and Andy Pettitte victories, for instance. Then there are the surprises. Such as Pettitte driving in the tying run with a single or the umpires getting a close call right. Mix in another disastrous postseason start from the Philadelphia Phillies' Cole Hamels, two extra-base hits from the New York Yankees' Nick Swisher and Mariano Rivera coming on to get the last two outs and you have Game 3 of the World Series, which the Yankees rallied to win, 8-5, Saturday in front of a damp but boisterous 46,061 at Citizens Bank Park.

These can be the saddest of possible words: One strike away. Defeat found Brad Lidge one more time this season, perhaps for the last time. He was baseball's perfect closer last year. A generation of Philadelphia fans had lived for the moment when Lidge dropped to his knees last fall, when the Phillies had become World Series champions for the first time in 28 years. The Phillies had been one strike away. Lidge got that strike, and bedlam reigned. The Phillies were one strike away Sunday night, not from winning the World Series but from heading to the bottom of the ninth with the score tied.

The Yankees may have scored the go-ahead run on Alex Rodriguez's ninth-inning double. But if you ask Rodriguez, they won Sunday's game two batters earlier, when Johnny Damon fouled off three two-strike pitches before blooping a single to left to start the game-winning rally. "For me, the whole key of that whole inning was an unbelievable, tenacious at-bat by Johnny Damon," Rodriguez said. "This guy is just a great competitor. Put us in a position to get a big hit there in the ninth."

You can tug on Superman's cape. Even spit into the wind. But hitting Alex Rodriguez with a baseball? That's probably not such a good idea. Because he'll make you pay. Just ask the Philadelphia Phillies. They tried to intimidate Rodriguez by plunking him three times in two days only to watch him hit back Sunday with a tiebreaking double, sparking the New York Yankees to a 7-4 victory that moved them to within a win of their first World Series title since 2000. "There's no question I have never had a bigger hit," Rodriguez said.

If the New York Yankees bid for John Lackey this winter, we'll know why. The Yankees ought not to run out of starting pitchers, or anything else, not with their practically infinite resources. But they could not identify four men to whom they would entrust a playoff start, so they demanded extraordinary labor from CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett. They got away with it Sunday, with Sabathia. They did not get brilliance. They got just enough. They did not get away with it Monday, with Burnett.

The Phillies are taking the World Series back to New York, but they may be missing their starting center fielder when they get there. Shane Victorino was hit on the hand while trying to bunt an A.J. Burnett fastball in the first inning Monday and eventually had to leave the game because of severe swelling. "He had X-rays, and it's not broken," said Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel . "But as the game went on, his finger kept swelling. He couldn't grip the ball and couldn't grip the bat."

Chase Utley saw his first World Series game when, as a 9-year-old growing up outside Los Angeles, he went to see the Dodgers play the Oakland Athletics in 1988. "Game 2," his father, Dave, said. "The game after Kirk Gibson." For two decades that was the closest Utley would come to a dramatic World Series home run until Monday, when he hit two in Philadelphia's 8-6 victory over the New York Yankees in Game 5 of the World Series, extending the Phillies' season for at least two more days.

He'll be on national television tonight, the worst nightmare of many a Dodgers fan: Pedro Martinez , pitching in the World Series for the Philadelphia Phillies. "I'll be watching," Fred Claire said Tuesday. "I've always wanted to see him do well." Claire freely admits his worst trade in 12 seasons as the Dodgers' general manager: Martinez to the Montreal Expos for Delino DeShields . In 1993, the Dodgers considered Martinez a fragile middle reliever, in part on the recommendation of Dr. Frank Jobe . They needed a second baseman, and the cost-cutting Expos had one of the best in the game.

They first took the field together in Columbus, Ohio, playing for a minor league team that finished a distant third in the standings. Tonight, Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Jorge Posada will take the field together again in New York, this time playing for the New York Yankees, the most storied franchise in U.S. professional sports. And Mariano Rivera will be waiting in the bullpen, hoping to win a fifth World Series ring alongside Jeter, Pettitte and Posada. They've been together for much of the last 15 years, and if they win one more game this week they will have won more titles together than any four teammates in more than half a century.

Joe Torre caused quite a stir in 2006 when he dropped Alex Rodriguez to the eighth spot in the New York Yankees' lineup. The Yankees were facing playoff elimination and Rodriguez had one hit in 11 postseason at-bats that year, but the relationship between Torre and Rodriguez was never the same thereafter. Ryan Howard batted .158 through the first five games of the World Series, with 12 strikeouts in 19 at-bats. Philadelphia Phillies Manager Charlie Manuel said he gave no thought to dropping Howard from the cleanup spot for Game 6. "What kind of message do I send to Howard, after three or four years he's been in the big leagues, all of a sudden on a big, important game in the World Series, I drop him?"