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Sporting News, The, Nov 6, 2000 by Michael Knisley

Several Yankees did hoist a visibly emotional Torre to their shoulders to carry him toward the dugout, but the onfield celebration was over almost as soon as it began.

Could be that they were too exhausted for more. Each game, as Jeter suggested, was close and tense, including Game 5, in which the Yankees didn't score the winning runs until the top of the ninth inning. The pressure on both teams to win the first Subway Series in 44 years was draining. Lose to the crosstown Mets, and much of what the Yankees built over the last few years would be undone.

Could be, though, that this is just old hat to them, as it apparently is to much of the nation outside New York City. Fox's ratings for the World Series were astronomical in New York but dreadful elsewhere, partly because of the length of the games, partly because of the provincial flavor and, probably, partly because baseball fans didn't see much new from the Yankees this time around.

In some ways, the games played like a series of reruns, a too-familiar show already in syndication and playing in a late-night time slot. As close as each game was, the ratings were by far the worst in the 40 years the World Series has been televised. This in a year in which Major League Baseball set a new single-season total attendance record.

In any event, these Yankees aren't exactly an openly emotional bunch. They don't readily provide the golden video moments, save maybe for Torre's post-Series tears and Roger Clemens' irresistible impulse to hurl a broken bat in the direction of Mike Piazza.

"This team is very low-profile," said first-base coach Lee Mazzilli. "These are mild, low-key people. You get on a bus or a plane with us and you would not know if we won, 10-1, or lost, 10-1. We don't get too high, and we don't get too low. That comes from the Godfather in there (Torre), and it funnels down. They don't wear their emotions on their sleeves.

"That's just the experience we have. I think if the experience factor wasn't there, if these guys hadn't been here before, they may not have been able to make the adjustment from the regular season to the postseason. But when we enter the postseason, I can honestly say that we expect to win. It's a confidence thing. This team believes. I mean, this is not a cocky team. They don't pop off. They don't talk much. They just believe."

Winning is a learned behavior, and the Yankees seem able to call on the lessons they've learned whenever they come up against a postseason opponent who isn't as familiar with the process--which, of course, by now is every postseason opponent.

As much as anything, that was the difference between the Yankees and the Mets.

The Mets, for instance, played charitably in Game 1, when they made four baserunning blunders that kept a 3-2 late-inning lead from being any bigger. Two of those mental errors were committed by young outfielders Timo Perez and Jay Payton, neither of whom had been in a major league playoff game until this year. When the Yankees tied that game in the ninth, somehow you knew they were going to win it. In the 12th, they did.