Yankees 6, Braves 5
NEW YORK -- The fans were gone, the lights were off and the trash sweepers were out in force at Yankee Stadium after Game 3.Their brooms might have a whole new meaning tonight.
As in: Yanks in four, goodbye Braves.
A 3-0 edge sure didn't look likely for most of Tuesday night. Atlanta had everything going its way until New York once again found a way to win, rallying for a 6-5 victory on Chad Curtis' 10th-inning home run.
"I'm still amazed, and yet I'm not amazed," Yankees manager Joe Torre said. "We go out there and play nine innings. And good things happen."
Or even extra innings.
New York trailed 5-1 against Tom Glavine -- the home fans were booing -- before Curtis homered twice and Chuck Knoblauch and Tino Martinez also connected. The Yankees won their 11th straight World Series game, putting them one victory away from a second consecutive sweep.
"It would have been nice to have won," Atlanta manager Bobby Cox said. "It would have gotten us going real good. This was a big one to lose."
Knoblauch's two-run homer in the eighth off right fielder Brian Jordan's glove made it 5-all and finished Glavine.
In the 10th, Curtis hit a 1-1 pitch from Mike Remlinger into the Braves' left-field bullpen for the first game-ending homer in the Series since Joe Carter's Game 6 shot won it all for Toronto in 1993.
"I have a tendency when I get up there in that situation, I try to hit a home run," Curtis said. "So I went up there and tried to hit it up the middle, and I hit a home run."
Curtis made his first-ever start in the Series and ended up as the hero with the first walk-off homer he could remember hitting. Until Tuesday, he had homered just once since May 23 and had not hit one at Yankee Stadium since Sept. 23, 1998.
"Always somebody you don't expect," Cox said. "You never know where it's going to come from."
Roger Clemens, who joined the Yankees this spring in hopes of winning his first World Series ring, gets a chance to close it out in Game 4 tonight against John Smoltz.
No team in baseball history has overcome an 0-3 deficit in postseason play. The Yankees are trying to win their third World Series in four years, a streak that began when they beat Atlanta in 1996.
"We swept four before, but not in the World Series," Cox said.
Mariano Rivera, Mr. Automatic in October, pitched two innings for the victory. He has not allowed a run in his last 41 2-3 innings and has a postseason streak of 24 1-3 scoreless innings.
While the Braves lost their seventh straight Series game, the Yankees moved within one victory of tying the longest Series winning streak. The record was set by their Murderers' Row teams of 1927, 1928 and 1932 -- the 11th win in that streak was the game in which Babe Ruth supposedly called his shot at Wrigley Field against Charlie Root.
Glavine, scratched from his Game 1 start because of the flu, fortified himself with a plate of ravioli and pitched like a two-time Cy Young Award winner. And Atlanta looked every bit like the team that led the majors with 103 wins.
Bret Boone hit three doubles in the first four innings against Andy Pettitte and finished with four hits. Every Braves batter had a hit by the fifth, and by then it was 5-1 and the sellout crowd of 56,794 was booing.
Boone could been seen huddling in the dugout with batting coach Don Baylor, checking out what appeared to be hitting charts. During Monday's workout, Baylor held an extended session of batting practice and stressed patience at the plate and emphasized hitting to the opposite field.
It all worked in the early going for a team that hit .121 in the first two games. After that, the Yankees quickly hit their first four home runs of the Series.
"We're not a home-run hitting team, but sometimes these things happen," Torre said.
Curtis hit the 11th game-ending homer in the Series history and the first for the Yankees since Mickey Mantle in 1964. It also was the Yankees' second such shot in this postseason -- Bernie Williams did it to Boston in Game 1 of the AL Championship Series.
"It was a change-up," Remlinger said. "It looked like it got too much of the plate."
Scratched from the lineup in the opener when Glavine became ill, Curtis took advantage of this opportunity. A backup left fielder, he did not play at all in the 1998 sweep of the Padres.
"I never stepped on the field," Curtis said. "I wasn't pouting, we won the World Series. By the same token, I felt like I was more congratulating my teammates than celebrating with them."
Kept on the Series roster instead of Shane Spencer, Curtis delivered.
"I think somewhere between second and third, I felt like there was electricity running through my legs," he said.
The Series win was the 11th in a row for Torre, breaking the record set by Joe McCarthy of the Yankees.
Torre, however, was not certain Curtis' heroics would get him a spot tonight.
"I'm going to wait on that and see what happens," Torre said. "It's normally Ricky Ledee against right-handers."
New York won in its 200th World Series game -- the Yankees are 120-79-1 overall, with the St. Louis Cardinals' total of 96 games ranking second.
Notes: Chipper Jones has an 11-game hitting streak in the World Series. . . . Derek Jeter extended his postseason hitting string to 16 games. That ties him with Pat Borders for the second-longest ever; Hank Bauer holds the record with 17, all in the World Series.