Spirit of the Night Carries Yankees

NEW YORK —  There were no costumes allowed at Yankee Stadium Wednesday, so we must assume those visitors breathtakingly banging the ancient doors in the final moments of Halloween were real.

In the ninth inning, Lou Gehrig.

In the tenth inning, Babe Ruth.

After that, ghosts everywhere, swirling through the old hallways with a roar, lifting the New York Yankees into a suddenly clear sky, twisting the Arizona Diamondbacks into instant remorse.

Before this World Series, Diamondback pitcher Curt Schilling scoffed at the notion of Yankee tradition, jokingly claiming that mystique and aura were nothing more than a couple of nightclub dancers.

In Game 4 Wednesday, he sat helplessly on the bench while both of them went deep.

In the ninth inning, the guy did not have a hit in 10 World Series at-bats.

One swing with two out, and Tino Martinez turned a 3-1 deficit into a 3-3 tie.

“Other teams think the game is over,” he said. “We know the game is never over.”

In the 10th inning, the guy had one lousy single in 15 World Series at-bats.

One swing with two out, and Derek Jeter gave the Yankees a 4-3 victory and a two-games-apiece series tie.

“The great thing about the postseason is that every time you come to the plate, you can do something huge,” Jeter said.

This was not that. This was bigger than that.

This was the most stunning victory in baseball’s most stunning six-year title run.

This was a loss that probably meant a lost series transformed--as quick as you can say boo--into a victory that will probably mean another title.

This was 26 world championships sneaking up behind the wide-eyed Diamondbacks and throwing them down the stairs.

This was not a victory, it was a haunting.

And in the Diamondback dugout, Bill Buckner.

Just as the heroes of this epic were mythical, so, too, was the goat.

His name is Diamondback Manager Bob Brenly, who was not just saddled with a loss, but a question that will take much longer to disappear.

Why?

Why remove Schilling after seven innings and only 88 pitches and only three hits allowed?

And why replace him with an erratic 22-year-old closer making his first World Series appearance?

And why, then, use Byung-Hyun Kim for more than two innings?

If Brenly had used his closer like virtually every other manager uses their closer--one inning, with the lead--then perhaps Kim would have struck out the side in the ninth, not the eighth.

Once Kim reached the ninth, and was worked to a full-count opposite field flare single by Paul O’Neill, he was obviously gassed.

Once Martinez crushed his first pitch over the right-center field fence to tie the game, he was obviously done.

Yet it was Kim on the mound again in the 10th, and by the time he worked his way to Jeter with two out, it was a typical Yankee mismatch.

Foul. Strike. Ball. Foul. Foul. Ball. Ball. Foul. Home run over the right-field fence.

Players leaping off the Yankee dugout railing.

Shaking fans rattling the stadium until it sounded like a human Number 4 train.

So Brenly said he was thinking about keeping Schilling fresh for Game 7.

So Brenly was trying to steal one from the Yankees.

So maybe now he knows, that is not possible, at least not in their house, not in this month, and never on a night already drunk with spirits.

“Certainly, that entered into it somewhat,” he said of his thinking that Schilling would be needed for Game 7. “But ... we had a lead,we had six outs left to go in the ballgame, and that’s the way we hoped it would work out.”

Let us back up a second.

Game Seven?

Did Brenly forget that the reason he started Schilling on three days’ rest Wednesday was because he didn’t dare want this series to go to a full seven games?

Now that the Yankees are the Yankees again after a two-game sabbatical, does anybody think the Diamondbacks would even have a chance in a seventh game?

The Yankees throw embarrassed Mike Mussina against flighty journeyman Miguel Batista today. “Tonight’s game won’t mean anything unless we win (Game 5),” said Jeter.

Not wanting to argue with him at the moment, here’s guessing the Yankees win today, meaning they must win one of two games this weekend in Arizona against Randy Johnson and Schilling for the championship.

They couldn’t do it last weekend. But then, they forgot who they were last weekend.

Now they know.

Two guys dived across the grass in helping them to win Game 3.

Two guys crawled out of a ditch to help them win Game 4.

First, Martinez, who is a free agent this year and already considered gone.

George Steinbrenner, Yankee owner, is reportedly tired of him and would like to sign A’s star Jason Giambi.

A lousy postseason average--.156--had sealed the deal.

All of which convinced Martinez to swing at the first pitch he ever saw from sidewinding Kim.

“Just try to take a big hack at it,” he said.

Maybe something Lou Gehrig would have said.

Second, Jeter, arguably the best postseason player in history but indisputably the reason the Yankees had struggled in this series.

“The big thing with our team, who cares what the scoreboard says your stats are,” he said. “You come up big in big situations.”

Big, as in flying toward home plate with the winning run, landing in a mob of blue jerseys, maybe it was the 2001 Yankees, maybe the 1927 Yankees, maybe the 1961 Yankees, anymore it’s impossible to tell.

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Bill Plaschke can be reached at bill.plaschke@latimes.com.