from the New York Times

November 3, 2001

By BUSTER OLNEY

PHOENIX, Nov. 2- Alfonso Soriano lingered in the Yankees' clubhouse early this morning, still wearing his grass-stained sanitary socks and an unconquerable grin, and he pulled his glove out of his locker - the glove he used to save the Yankees in the 11th inning in Game 5 of the World Series.

An inning later, Soriano singled home Chuck Knoblauch with the winning run in the 3-2 victory.

Soriano's glove is extremely small, barely long enough to cover the fingers on his left hand. Like many kids growing up in the Dominican Republic, he played baseball with his bare hands and with gloves fashioned out of cardboard, and he likes being able to feel a ball he catches. He could not necessarily do that with a larger and thicker glove.

Arizona loaded the bases with one out against Mariano Rivera in the 11th inning of Game 5, and Yankees Manager Joe Torre decided to play his second baseman and shortstop, Soriano and Derek Jeter, at double-play depth, while positioning third baseman Scott Brosius and first baseman Tino Martinez a few steps in.

Torre was taking a large risk with the speedy Reggie Sanders at the plate. Rivera generates an unusually large number of slow rollers because of his cut fastball, and if Sanders hit one of those soft grounders in the middle of the field, the Yankees would probably not be able to turn a double play. There was a chance they would not get the runner at home, either.

If Arizona scored a run, then there was a fair chance the Yankees - who had mustered nine runs in the first 46 innings of the Series - would not be able to match the run in the bottom of the 11th. Playing at home, however, Torre kept Soriano and Jeter back.

"That was something I didn't want to do," Torre said, "especially with Sanders, who runs as well as he does. It's one of those crapshoots, really."

Soriano shifted from shortstop to left field to second base in spring training and has come to love second base. He has made a lot of mistakes in his first year there, sometimes forgetting to cover the base, sometimes making wrong choices on where to throw the ball or where to be. He was late in covering second in Game 1, he failed to turn a crucial double play in Game 2, and in Game 4 he made a horrible relay throw.

But Torre has come to trust Soriano and admire his confidence, which seems to be much like that of Jeter.

Whenever Torre has gone to Soriano with constructive criticism, the manager says, Soriano has absorbed the words without letting them affect his aggressiveness. He can look very bad one day to Torre and rebound in the next game.

With a two-strike count, Sanders smashed a line drive past Rivera, up the middle, the ball seemingly destined for center field. Soriano dived to his right, realized he might not reach the ball, and as he extended his glove hand, Soriano used the sides of his left hand to nudge the glove out farther on his fingers - something he began doing this year, he said afterward, demonstrating with his glove.

He caught the ball with the last two inches of his webbing. Soriano's catch and Torre's defensive alignment saved two runs; Rivera retired the next hitter.

Knoblauch reached second base with one out in the bottom of the 12th, bringing Soriano to the plate. He had won Game 4 of the American League Championship Series by hitting a two-run homer in the bottom of the ninth, and he was just looking to hit the ball hard, someplace, against Arizona's Albie Lopez.

"The one thing about Soriano - for a kid with limited experience, he knows situations and he is really, really good at hitting according to situations," Torre said.

Soriano also seems to have the same postseason gene as Jeter. On the eve of the playoffs, Soriano said he was not nervous in any way, offering an elementary explanation. "We're playing the same game, right?" he said.

In the 12th inning, he lined a single to right field, Knoblauch scored and Soriano raised both hands above his head, attaining the grin that stayed with him deep into this morning.

As he spoke with reporters afterward, his cellphone rang, and Soriano glanced over without answering and smiled even more broadly. It was probably his mother, calling from the Dominican Republic.