It's 2000 Again

New York is much different than it was a decade ago. The Twin Towers and the House That Ruth Built are both gone - one destroyed by terrorists and the other destroyed by greed and tacky commercialism. Meanwhile, Rudy Giuliani handed over Gracie Mansion to Michael Bloomberg and ran for president, while Wall Street struck it rich and - like the Yankees - dug into the taxpayers' pockets in its time of need.

But tonight, when I flipped on the TV and watched the richest team in baseball cash in its voucher for its 27th championship, it felt it was like 2000 all over again.

There was Giuliani, in his FDNY Yankee hat, sitting beside the Yankee dugout.

There was Andy Pettitte on the mound, throwing the ball in a clinching game, just as he was when the Yankees won the Series in 1998.

There was Joe Girardi in pinstripes: except instead of crouching behind the plate as he was in 1996, when the Evil Empire won its first of four in five years, he was in the bench, where Joe Torre used to sit.

There were many new faces - Matsui, A-Rod, Mark Teixiera, Robinson Cano and a former Red Sock who cut his mullet, shaved off his beard and sold his soul - but the Yankees from way back like Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada were on the field.

Even in a new stadium, with new players and a new manager and different Steinbrenners in charge, it was as it was. Watching all of this, it felt the same way it did a decade ago.

Even if I'm a little older, a little heavier and probably not much wiser than I was in the late 90s, I feel no different than I did watching the Bronx Bombers when they dominated.

Yes, even though my chosen team has finally won not one, but two, world championships (and in the process probably turned into baseball's second most hated team) since the Yankees last celebrated a world championship.

Yes, even after seeing the field of the old ballpark in the south Bronx, in pouring rain, one spring day in 2005, when I told a security guard one of the dirtiest lies I've ever told and said I was a Yankee fan, just so he'd let me into the shuttered stadium, past the renovations, to get a brief glimpse of the House That Ruth Built.

After all of this, I can say the same thing I said in 1996, 1998, 1999 and 2000.

Screw the Yankees. And there's always next year.