The Yankees recover all their swagger

Once they have got over the jubilation, the same 56,000 will be back here tonight for game five, convinced that they can take the lead for the first time, before flying to Phoenix for the deciders over the weekend. The Diamondbacks, a four-year-old mob built from nothing in the Arizona desert, may have forced them into temporarily contemplating the prospect of being the victims of one of US sport's most unlikely upsets, but now the old cockiness was back as if they had remembered this was supposed to be their birthright.

Of course, New Yorkers no longer believe in certainties. This time last year, when thousands of Mets and Yankees fans piled off the subway at 161st Street to watch the interborough Series, it was a simple, glorious expression of a city's self-confidence. How dreadfully different it has become.

At that same stadium stop, as the Yankee supporters were anxiously digesting news of the first Anthraxrelated death in the city and of the latest warnings about more possible terrorist attacks, there were police snipers patrolling the platform. Going to the ball game was never meant to be like this. Huge lines of punters having to endure security checks, police riflemen in the stadium and military jets circling the no-fly zone up above. Even the Americans' love of dressing up on one of their favourite nights of the year was not allowed for security reasons. Anyway, this was a Hallowe'en when mock horror stood uneasily alongside reminders of real terror.

Inside, there were moments when the baseball itself seemed of secondary importance to the opportunity for thousands to comfort themselves in a shared expression of American pride, with as many clad in caps bearing the legend FDNY (Fire Department New York) as the Yankees logo.

All the usual sugary, showbizzy apple pie stuff which has routinely surrounded major sports events here down the years - the renditions of the anthem; of 'God Bless America'; the sight of a bald eagle soaring into the stadium on to the arm of a handler on the pitching mound - have suddenly taken on a powerful and genuine poignancy.

When President Bush made his solitary walk out into the spotlight of the park to deliver the ceremonial first pitch on Tuesday (Berra filled that roll last night), it was a remarkably affecting image. Somehow, he did look extraordinarily vulnerable, yet the cries of "USA" which greeted him showed genuine appreciation that his was somehow a perfect illustration of defiance.

Regulars who attended Tuesday's game reckoned they had never heard a Yankees' crowd so muted in a World Series game, as though their minds were understandably elsewhere. For a while last night, the masterly pitching of Schilling, who gave up only one run and three hits in seven innings, kept them mumbling ominously.

The Bleacher Creatures got to him just once, when they greeted him with a cry of "Schilling sucks" in the third inning. Seconds later, Shane Spencer clouted him for a home run.

Yet the real drama only began once Schilling retired after the seventh inning with Arizona 3-1 up and their finishing pitcher, Byung-Hyun Kim, came to the mound.

The poor bloke is the first Korean to pitch in a World Series. Will he be the last? He chucks in a bizarre style they call "submarine", where he whips the ball in from about calf height, but once Martinez and Jeter figured him out, Arizona sank.

The Yankees, though, just march on and it is hard to imagine after this Fall Classic masterpiece that a sports team ever reflected the spirit of their city so memorably.