World Series prediction: Damn Yankees will prevail in seven

The pipsqueaks and the poseurs are gone now (yeah, we're talking to you, Cardinals, my ill-fated World Series pick two weeks ago), and it's time for the heavyweights to take center stage.

The Yankees and Phillies provide us with a World Series of uncommon heft, a cavalcade of power — power bats, power arms, even power fans.

While we all love upsets and upstarts, there's also something to be said for the championship coming down to the two biggest, baddest bunch of hombres in the land.

Each led their league in homers and runs. Each can throw a former Cy Young winner on the mound for Game 1 (former Cleveland teammates, and good buddies, C.C. Sabathia and Cliff Lee). Each is dripping with superstars, and both are backed by some of the most passionate (and unforgiving) fans in all of sportdom.

They are separated by a mere 90 or so miles, leading this to be dubbed, alternately, The Turnpike Series and the Amtrak Series. Let's just call it the Statue of Liberty/Liberty Bell grudge match.

On one side is the most decorated team in baseball history, the Yankees, with their 26 World Series championships and limitless supply of self-importance.

On the other side are the Phillies and their Santa Claus-booing faithful, with just three titles in their history but a chance to be the first National League squad since the Big Red Machine in 1975-76 to go back-to-back.

Whoda thunk that the Phillies, and not the Yankees would be the team that could check "World Series experience" as a positive factor in their favor? Hey, the Yankees have never even played a single World Series game at their own stadium.

There's a small contingent of Yankees with multiple rings, to be sure, but even the Derek Jeters, Mariano Riveras, Andy Pettittes and Jorge Posadas have gone six long years without sniffing the World Series, and nine unforgivable years (to the Steinbrenner clan) since winning one.

Much of the last Yankees decade, in fact, has been about letdowns and failures — Rivera's ninth-inning meltdown against Arizona in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series; the six-game defeat to Florida in 2003; the epic collapse against Boston in 2004, the early ousters in '05 through '07, and the humbling exclusion from last year's postseason.

Now they have a chance to rebrand themselves as the Damn Yankees of old, but they'll have to get by a poised, seasoned and charismatic Phillies team — one that became a haven for Seattle transfers when Pat Gillick took over as general manager in 2006.

Gillick has retired (though still active as an adviser to first-year GM Ruben Amaro), but the Phillies still boast longtime Mariners executive Benny Looper in the front office, ageless icon Jamie Moyer rooting them on in the dugout despite being sidelined with a groin injury, and Greg Dobbs on the bench.

And then there's the ever-popular Raul Ibanez, for whom the entire baseball world is happy as he glides into his first Fall Classic.

The Yankees, on the other hand, have Alex Rodriguez, and all his attendant baggage. While A-Rod's resurrection as a clutch player has been one of the major stories of the past fortnight, he's just one 2-for-18 World Series away from regaining his "choker" label. Such is the burden that Kate Hudson's beau carries, and we'll see if he can overcome it one last time.

The specter of Pedro Martinez, the Phillies' Game 2 starter, looms large as well, his career inextricably linked to New York. For four years, he was a member of an underachieving Mets' team that annually succumbed to the pressure, most of it applied by Philadelphia.

And before that, as the Red Sox ace, he waged battle after battle against the Yankees, and once boasted, "Wake up the Bambino, I'll drill him in the ass."

Yet it was also Pedro, despondent after a loss to Yankees in the 2004 American League Championship Series, who uttered words that were instantly immortalized on T-shirts throughout the Bronx: "What can I say? I tip my hat and call the Yankees my daddy."

Martinez's Red Sox, of course, had the last laugh that October with four straight wins after falling behind three games to none. In fact, their fans have never stopped cackling. Who's your daddy, indeed?

The atmosphere should be electric when Martinez steps to the mound Thursday (or whenever the frigid, rainy weather allows him to. The series dragging into November is an unpleasant yet pervasive story line, one that baseball has coming to it for acceding to Fox's scheduling dictates).

Charlie Manuel, the folksy ol' Phillies manager, who stands in stark contrast to the officious Joe Girardi, well recalls what happened to folksy ol' Grady Little when he left Pedro in too long in that fateful Game 7 at Yankee Stadium in 2003. You know — the Aaron Boone game, the Yankees' last moment of real glory until Sunday; the one that cost Little his job as Boston manager.

Manuel proved last year in October that he can be artful in utilizing his bullpen, and those final three innings loom as the great decider in this series. The Yankees have the peerless Rivera to wrap it up, but the bridge to Mariano has been rickety so far in the postseason. Phillies closer Brad Lidge, meanwhile, was a disaster during the regular season, but seems to be edging toward the reliable form that proved so decisive in Philadelphia's 2008 title run.

In the end — the very end, with menacing Ryan Howard at the plate and the game on the line — I trust Rivera more than Lidge against any of the Yankees' All-Star lineup. And so I will give the Yankees an ever-so-slight edge in seven games.

But I wouldn't bet a cheese steak on it.

Larry Stone: 206-464-3146 or lstone@seattletimes.com.