Yankees win their 27th World Series

Reporting from New York – The grand opening year for the new Yankee Stadium concluded in grand fashion, in the only way the New York Yankees know how.

In 1923, the inaugural season for the old Yankee Stadium, the Yankees won the World Series in six games, with three home runs from Babe Ruth.

In 2009, the Yankees won the World Series in six games, with three home runs from Hideki Matsui.

In what could have been the final game of his career with the Yankees, Matsui homered and drove in six runs, lifting New York to a 7-3 victory over the Philadelphia Phillies Wednesday at Yankee Stadium.

Ruth never drove in six runs in a World Series game. Matsui tied the World Series record, set by Yankees second baseman Bobby Richardson in 1960.

Alex Rodriguez hit .365 in the Yankees’ postseason run, as the team with baseball’s highest-paid player won the World Series for the first time since 1986. The Yankees missed the playoffs last year, for the first time since 1993, then spent $423.5 million on CC Sabathia, Mark Teixeira and A.J. Burnett to make sure that did not happen again.

Matsui hit a two-run home run in the second inning, a two-run single in the third inning and a two-run double in the fifth inning, single-handedly transforming the Yankees’ clincher from a nailbiter into a countdown to victory.

Mariano Rivera, the Yankees’ closer, threw the final pitch of the season. Rivera joined Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada and Andy Pettitte as five-time World Series champions in New York.

Pettitte earned his 18th postseason victory, an ongoing major league record. Pettitte started and won the clinching game in the division series against the Minnesota Twins, the American League championship series against the Angels and the World Series.

Neither Pettitte nor Pedro Martinez, the Phillies’ starter, showed dominating stuff. Pettitte did not throw a pitch harder than 91 mph all night, did not throw a 1-2-3 inning, walked five and threw a wild pitch.

But he got Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins each to hit into a critical double play, and he survived into the sixth inning, when Ryan Howard hit his first home run of the World Series. He gave up three runs in 5 2/3 innings, working on short rest.

When Yankees Manager Joe Girardi removed him, Pettitte practically charged off the mound, jogging toward the dugout and wearing a wide smile. The sellout crowd rewarded him with a very loud standing ovation, and he rewarded them by taking off his cap and waving it toward the fans.

Martinez, unwanted by any team four months ago, staged a comeback with the Phillies, starting with three appearances in the minor leagues and ending with two appearances in the World Series.

He turned 38 last month, and perhaps his two strong playoff starts–against the Dodgers in the National League championship series and against the Yankees in Game 2–will persuade a team to give him a job next spring.

If not, the career of the future Hall of Famer and three-time Cy Young Award winner ended on a sour note.

Martinez had next to nothing. He did not throw a pitch above 86 mph in the first inning, did not throw a pitch above 90 mph all night and retired four of 10 batters in a decisive stretch of the second and third innings. He gave up four runs in four innings, although he did strike out five.

Matsui joined the Yankees in 2003, after a stellar career as a slugger in Japan. While Japanese pitchers and singles hitters had jumped to the major leagues and done well, power hitters had not.

Matsui shouldered the hopes of an entire country, and a small army of Japanese reporters trailed him wherever he went. He handled the reporters with grace and handled American League pitchers with relative ease, hitting at least 23 home runs in all but one of his injury-free seasons.

He is eligible for free agency this fall, and he is 35, so he might not return. However, after seven seasons in New York, he’ll have the one accessory common to all true Yankees–a World Series championship ring.

bill.shaikin@latimes.com