NEW YORK, N.Y., Oct. 27 — The average baseball fan is a person with a sense of history, as the sport really was the first to enthrall the American public. The Babe and the Yankees put baseball on the map of American experience, and the combo has reaped a bountiful harvest in at least two fields ever since. Once the Babe joined them the Yanks started winning, and now they have 26 World Championships. And the Babe and the Yanks have continued to make headlines through the years. Some other historical perspectives:

Five years ago today, the Yanks won Game 6 of the 1996 World Series. One perspective would see it as the first finger (the pinky?) in the drive for this team’s fifth, the one “for the thumb.”

Oct. 2, 1996, The Yanks win their first playoff game that year (Game 2 of the ALDS) when Dean Palmer throws away Charlie Hayes’s twelfth-inning bunt, scoring Derek Jeter for the 5-4 win. In a feature the rest of the baseball world has been slow to pick up on, the Yankee bullpen hurls 5-2/3 shutout innings in the win.

Remember the Playoff Bowl? I’m not surprised. It was a different world back in 1960 when the NFL felt that the American public had a thirst for (and would pay good money to see) runners-up play. The widespread criticism Atlanta gets for failing to fill the “Ted,” drawing only 35,000+ for Game 5, is perhaps misplaced (as might also be said about Arizona’s attendance in the ALDS). Some call the recent series in which Arizona topped Atlanta the NLCS. Others would think the name Playoff Bowl is a better fit. The American League has won 12 of the last 17 World Series and, if form holds, the Yanks already won the World Series when Bernie’s third-inning two-run blast off Aaron Sele on October 22 cleared the Yankee Stadium left-center field fence.

But the D’backs do send two great starting pitchers out there. Let’s hope the Yanks continue to excel in such games, as they have in those started by Pedro Martinez. Easy? No. A real battle, perhaps, like a former Arizona-based struggle, the Gun Fight at the OK Corral, which occurred 120 years ago yesterday.

YANKEE BASEBALL!!!