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© St. Petersburg Times, published November 6, 2001
PHOENIX -- When the World Series that was never over finally was, when it was okay to take a breath again, the Diamondbacks began to realize exactly what they had accomplished.
"Someone just told me we beat the Yankees and Mariano Rivera," first baseman Mark Grace said Sunday amid champagne showers in the Arizona clubhouse. "I still don't believe it, even though I'm wearing the T-shirt."
There will be plenty of souvenirs and memories to last a lifetime from an enthralling Series that ranks as one of the best, a fall classic that truly was a classic.
For Phoenix-area sports fans, it is their first major championship after losing NBA Finals appearances by the Suns in 1976 and 1993 and an unsuccessful bid by Arizona State for the 1996 national college football championship.
"This town can now say with pride that we are champions," managing general partner (and Suns owner) Jerry Colangelo said. "There are wannabes all over the place, and we broke through that door.
"The psychological impact, especially in a time of high stress, when people are losing their jobs, it's going to have an incredible effect on the people of Arizona."
For the D'backs, it is validation of a business plan that allowed them to go farther faster than any previous baseball expansion team, winning the championship in their fourth year.
The D'backs, who started at the same time as the Rays, proved the handicaps of the expansion process can be overcome with the right plan, with the right amount of money, with the right baseball decisions and with the right amount of luck.
"I wanted to compete, and when you make a commitment to compete, you don't stop halfway," Colangelo said. "You go for it, and the fact that we were able to close makes me very proud."
For Major League Baseball as an institution, it is a reminder that the game itself still can be captivating, that it can thrive despite the occasional ineptness of its leaders.
Interest among even casual fans soared coast to coast, and television ratings were higher than they'd been in 10 years.
Even a defeated George Steinbrenner acknowledged the benefit to the game. "It was a great series, a tremendous series for baseball," Steinbrenner said.
"A building block," Colangelo said.
The D'backs won for a number of reasons, starting with their two dominant starting pitchers, Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling. They won because rookie manager Bob Brenly -- contrary to popular opinion on some days -- made the right moves more often than not. They won because they had a core of talented veterans who hungered to win a championship and had an idea, even without much firsthand knowledge, of what it took to get there.
But in the end, they beat the Yankees by being the Yankees, playing the game until the last out, never believing they were beaten.
"Tonight was no different than what this ballclub has done since the first day of spring training," manager Bob Brenly said. "Either we're too dumb or too determined to know when to quit."
"We have a lot of inner drive and desire," said Luis Gonzalez, the Tampa kid who now has a place in Series lore after his winning hit in the ninth inning. "This team's got a lot of heart.
"This could not have been scripted better for our ballclub. The way we have battled, fighting tooth and nail all year. Up 2-0 in this Series, go back down 3-2 with two tough losses, playing the way we did (in Saturday's 15-2 win), and then Game 7, the way it ended. That was a storybook ending for our team."
Colangelo said it's not the end, either. Even though he has had to get additional money from investors twice, even though he has had to get a loan from MLB, even though he had to get a dozen players to defer salary, Colangelo says the organization's finances are fine.
He insists he is not going to tear the team apart.
"It's not going to happen."