AP Photo

It had to boil down to this, didn't it? That's always been Alex Rodriguez's rarest gift, the way the moment seeks him out, stalks him, finds him. That hasn't always been a good thing, but those moments all seem another lifetime ago. In these playoffs, in this year, there is nobody better equipped to seize them.

And nobody the Yankees would rather see stepping to home plate.

"He's the reason why we’re sitting here and in Philadelphia right now," Johnny Damon would say later, after everyone could start breathing again. "Without him, who knows where our road may have stopped? He's been huge."