“I’m happy right where I am,” Lyle said, “because that standard applies to me also.”

So says Lyle, who was the glue of that title team four decades ago and who rescued the Yankees during an extraordinary playoff outing against the Kansas City Royals. The whole year, from the start, was a payback mission after a four-game extinction in the 1976 World Series.

“Cincinnati went through us so quickly we didn’t even know what happened,” Lyle said. “But then with the acquisitions over the winter, there was a calm over everybody next spring training. We’re looking around, thinking, ‘Boy, this looks pretty good.’”

Lyle, earning $142,000 that season on a new contract from George Steinbrenner, appeared in an impressive 72 games and went 13-5 with a 2.17 earned run average and 26 saves while winning the Cy Young trophy. The left-handed reliever did this by relying almost exclusively on a single pitch: a well-located, 88-mile-per-hour slider. When Billy Martin ordered catcher Thurman Munson to signal a fastball to Lyle on one memorable occasion, the pitcher stepped off the rubber and told off his manager in colorful fashion.

As it turned out, the Reds never made it to the Series in 1977, and the Yankees had to settle for beating the Dodgers in six games. To get that far, however, they needed to survive the dangerous Royals in the American League Championship Series. The Yankees were down two games to one in the best-of-five series, clinging to a one-run lead with two outs in the fourth inning of Game 4. Martin reluctantly signaled for Lyle, who went on to pitch five and one-third innings of scoreless, two-hit relief — after going two and one-third innings a day earlier.