By Sam Mellinger

McClatchy Newspapers

(MCT)

NEW YORK — The night was intended to be about Pedro Martinez and his daddies, or the Yankees and their superstars, one or the other, but what fun would baseball be if it always went by script?

And so it became about Hideki Matsui, that sweeping swing from that peculiar stance where he holds the bat straight in the air, powering baseball’s glamour franchise to its 27th world championship, winning, 7-3, against the Phillies in game six of the World Series here at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday.

The team with so much of America’s best talent — Alex Rodriguez, Derek Jeter and Mark Teixeira among them — won on the back of a legend from Japan.

“We’re going to enjoy it,” Rodriguez said, “and we’re going to party.”

The celebration had everything, including the high-definition close-up of Derek Jeter, arms pumping in the air, gliding in for another championship mosh pit. Rodriguez hugged Jorge Posada. Teixeira jumped into Nick Swisher.

The crowd sang along with Queen and Sinatra, picking confetti off their jackets as Robinson Cano and Joba Chamberlain waved separate championship flags out on the field.

“We have the greatest fans in the world,” Jeter said, “and we’re looking forward to this parade.”

Through it all, Matsui smiled and bashed knuckles and hugged and lifted his trophy for being named World Series MVP after tying a 49-year-old Series record with six RBI on Wednesday, done in perfect symmetry with a single, double and home run that each scored two runs.

Overall, he went eight for 13 with three homers and eight RBI — quite a feat considering he’s a DH who didn’t start any of the games in Philadelphia.

“It’s awesome,” he said through an interpreter. “It’s just unbelievable. I mean, I’m surprised myself.”

Matsui is something of a forgotten star on the sport’s only team that can afford such a thing, and is most likely headed to another team in free agency. He is 35 years old, and the Yankees don’t like having their DH slot locked up with so many other aging stars. In New York, even guys who hit 28 homers and slug .509 and are named Series MVP become replaceable.

If this indeed is the last game Matsui plays for the Yankees, he leaves in the good graces of a fan base that puts a premium on postseason performance.

There are more reporters here from Japan assigned specifically to Matsui than the entire following for some big-league teams, and they’ve written about everything from his socks (they have little slots for each toe, like gloves for his feet) to his wife (instead of a photo, Matsui and his brother hand-sketched a portrait to show the media).

For the moment, though, they’re all writing about one of the best individual performances in World Series history in a clinching game filled with pregame intrigue as Martinez made one more start in New York.

Pedro is 38 years old now, pitching his 18th season, and his outings include everything but smoke, mirrors, and a long-legged assistant to cut in half. The trouble came in the second inning, when Matsui came up with one on.

Matsui pounded line drives foul throughout an eight-pitch at-bat that ended on an 89 mph fastball — Pedro’s fastest of the night to that point — slugged into the second deck of seats behind the right-field wall.

“He was on,” said Phillies manager Charlie Manuel. “He hit mostly fastballs, but he was on most everything we threw up there.”

Matsui’s homer set off the “Who’s Your Daddy” chants at Pedro, and it’s funny that the new Yankee Stadium is big enough for three different groups of fans to chant the same thing, none of them able to hear that they’re out of synch with the others.

The Yankees scored two more in the third inning with the help of a misplay by Phillies center fielder Shane Victorino. That helped set up Matsui with the bases loaded, an at-bat that had the feel of inevitability. Matsui lined a fastball to left that scored two more runs.

In the fifth inning, Matsui added a two-run double to the gap in right field that put the Yankees up 7-1 and made the rest of the game feel like a countdown to a giant celebration — unleashed after Mariano Rivera got the last five outs for his 40th career postseason save.

“I never got to stand up here as a player,” manager Joe Girardi said from the on-field podium. “But as a manager, this one’s for the boss and his family, the job they did.”

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(c) 2009, The Kansas City Star.

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Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.

FRONT PAGE PHOTO: The New York Yankees celebrate beating the Philadelphia Phillies 7-3 to win the 2009 World Series at Yankee Stadium in New York, Wednesday, November 4, 2009. (Ed Betz/Newsday/MCT)