From the Daily News: THE CHOKE’S ON US and (this is a classic, I think) HELL FREEZES OVER. Accompanying the latter is a picture of Pedro with his hands upraised and the caption: “Pedro Martinez celebrates in his daddy’s house.”

From the New York Post, sad and succinct: DAMNED YANKEES.

After the game, out by the gigantic bat in front of Gate 4, most Yankee fans were downcast but magnanimous, considering the fact that the Red Sox fans—there were plenty of them—were delirious with joy, pounding each other on the back, giving and receiving high fives, pogoing up and down. One large, hairy man grabbed me around the waist and whirled me around thrice, screaming, “Stephen! Stephen! We won, ya scary sonofabitch! I LOVE YA!”

“GO, RED SOX!” I screamed back. It seemed safe enough, and besides, it was what I felt.

“GO, RED SOX!” the large, hairy man screamed. “GO, JOHNNY DAMON! GO, MANNY! GO, YOU LONGHAIRED SONSABITCHES!” Then he was gone.

From behind me there came a dissenting note—three Yankee fans, teenagers by the sound (I did not turn around to see), who wanted me to know that “Red Sox suck, and you suck too, Steve.”

A mounted cop clopped by, leaned down, and said, “Tell ’em to blow it out their asses. Tell ’em you been waitin’ eighteen years.”

I might just have done that little thing, but he clopped on, magnificent on his steed and in his riot gear.

Such memories are like raisins in some fabulous dream cake. There are others—the churlish, childish failure of the Yankees to congratulate the Red Sox on their electronic scoreboard; the downcast Yankee fan who hugged me and said he hoped the Red Sox would go all the way this time;two crying children, a boy and a girl, slowly mounting the steps and draggingtheir big foam Number One fingers disconsolately behind them on the concrete, headed out of Yankee Stadium hand in hand—but mostly what I remember this morning are the lights, the noise, the sheer unreality of watching Johnny Damon’s grand slam going into the right-field stands, and being wrapped in a big Stewart O’Nan bear hug while he screamed, “We’re going to the World Series!” in my ear.

And that’s a fact: we are indeed going to the World Series. Right now, after coming back from the dead to beat the Yankees four straight, it almost seems like a postscript…but yes. We’re going to the World Series. It starts in Boston. And it matters. It’s part of an American life, and that matters a lot.

SO: We DID IT! And it was great to be there with you to see it. It’s a win no one can ever take away from us. History, baby.