BALTIMORE – Because he has been here before, and because he might be the coolest human being in the world, Derek Jeter tends not to approach playoff games that are tied in the ninth inning with the white-knuckle anxiety of an average person. Take, for example, the AL Division Series opener here on Sunday night, a pearl of a ballgame. Nobody dared blink.

Except Derek Jeter, of course, because these are the Yankees, and there is a fundamental belief Derek Jeter never will abandon: The Yankees are going to win. He has a fistful of ostentatious rings that support his worldview, so not only did he blink, he went somewhere else entirely when Russell Martin's go-ahead home run in the ninth jump-started a blowout inning in the Yankees' 7-2 victory against the Baltimore Orioles.

View photos Derek Jeter congratulates Russell Martin after Martin hit a solo HR Sunday against the Orioles. (AP) More

"I was in the bathroom," Jeter said.

Hold the old prostate jokes and think about what that says: the trust, the conviction, the swagger – that these Orioles, who had pushed the Yankees all season long and were again doing it in Game 1 of the best-of-five series, did not warrant his full attention in the ninth inning of a tied playoff game.





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It is everywhere with the Yankees, woven into their pinstripes if not embedded in their DNA. Even if they're not officially the kings – even if they've won but a single championship in the past decade – they strut around acting like it, and there's something very powerful in that. Whether it scares the Orioles like it has other teams – Seattle and Minnesota spooked easy over the Yankees' great run since 1996 – remains to be seen as the rest of this series develops. Still, what happened at an amped-up, ready-to-celebrate Camden Yards on Sunday did not exactly portend something good.



Gone is the pseudo-home field advantage Baltimore held with the series' first two games at home. The Orioles now must win at least two games at Yankee Stadium, where New York sports the best home record in baseball. And they need to start that resurrection less than 24 hours after watching their impermeable closer turn the pitcher's mound into a fallout shelter over the course of 17 pitches.

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Patient all night, the Yankees took the hacktastic approach with Jim Johnson. On the third pitch of the top of the ninth, Martin hit a monster shot to left field. Raul Ibanez singled to left. Jeter, no longer burdened by nature, moved him to third on a perfect hit-and-run single. Ichiro banged a run-scoring single, and then Robinson Cano shook off four hitless at-bats with a double that brought both of them home. Fans streamed out by the thousands, the ugliness mirroring the last time these two played in the postseason 16 years ago.

"That," Cano said, "was a great inning."

And not just because of the crooked number the Yankees threw up on the scoreboard, a five-spot. It was because Yankees manager Joe Girardi had the temerity to call a hit-and-run with Ibanez, nobody's idea of a good runner, ready to get thrown out had Jeter swung and missed. It was because Ichiro, so bored in Seattle, is still slapping singles as though he's in his 20s and not, like Jeter, 38. That's 76 years atop the lineup card every day, 76 years of that Yankee attitude, a superiority Ichiro adopted very quickly. He fit right in because even as his skills have diminished, he still believes himself to be the best, much like the team for which he plays.

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