THE BUBBLY FLOWED IN THE BX AFTER THE YANKEES MAKE IT TO THE PLAYOFFS!

After 99 other victories this season, after all the comebacks on this side of 161st St., the Yankees were putting some official winning into the new place, about five minutes after 5 Sunday afternoon. They were winning the American League East with style, with one more comeback, this one against the Red Sox, and so of course it had to come down to Mariano Rivera over here, the way it always did over there.
The game had started late because of rain but now there was enough sun out in the top of the ninth that Brett Gardner even lost J.D. Drew's short fly ball to center. And the Red Sox had second and third with two out in a 4-2 game, which meant that a hit from Jacoby Ellsbury tied the game. Only Ellsbury wasn't hitting Rivera, who was here to close out the division again, who was going to make this one more day of baseball when he was the greatest money pitcher in the history of the game.

"There is nothing he could do," Derek Jeter said Sunday, "that you haven't seen from him before."

So Rivera broke Ellsbury's bat with the first inside cutter he threw him and finally he got one in on the kid's hands again and the ball rolled to Mo Rivera's left and he picked up and underhanded it to Mark Teixeira at first and the Yankees had gotten to 100 and won the East and done that with their second sweep of the Red Sox in the last couple of months. Some day. Some season.

The game started Sunday with a clean single to left from Jeter in the bottom of the first and ended with the ball in Rivera's right hand again. Andy Pettitte got the win Sunday. So much has been new this season, so much has changed. Just not everything. If everything goes the way the Yankees want it to, there will be another ending like this, to a much bigger game, the first week of November, the ball back in the great Rivera's hands at the end of another World Series.

So now there have been two games to remember from this September, two ways the Yankees have properly christened the new place. There was the Friday night against the Orioles when Jeter broke Lou Gehrig's record for career hits by a Yankee. Now this. Now this sweep of the Red Sox on the last weekend of September, the Yankees coming all the way back from 0-8 early against Boston to even the series at 9-9 and give Boston plenty to think about if the two teams do it again in the American League Championship Series.

The Yankees, who have hit all year, really got to 100 Sunday with pitching, from Pettitte and Phil Coke and Brian Bruney and Rivera, who got his 44th save a couple of months short of his 40th birthday. Before the game Sunday Jeter was asked to talk about the season and he looked up and said, "We pitch."