Bronx Bummer

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ANAHEIM, Calif. - Joe Torre smiled his calm, paternal smile. Said he was proud of his guys. Even managed to crack a joke.

Derek Jeter and Jorge Posada fumed. Bernie Williams vanished. Jason Giambi gave stern, clipped answers. Losing pitcher David Wells shrugged.

Mike Stanton sat at his locker, elbows on knees, staring at a clubhouse that got less and less populated until, finally, he was the only player left in it.

Nothing was going to make this go down easy. Nothing about what happened to the Yankees at Edison Field was going to sit right with anybody. Each one handled it in his own way, but they all shared the same emotions, the overriding one of crushing disappointment.

The Yankees' season is over, thanks to yesterday's 9-5 loss to the Anaheim Angels. They lost the Division Series in four games to this spunky, aggressive team that nobody saw coming, and became the first of baseball's eight playoff teams to exit the 2002 dance.

For the first time since 1997, a team other than the Yankees will represent the American League in the World Series. And that, they all agreed, is hard to accept.

"They just beat us," said Jeter, who hit .500 and scored six runs in four games. "They pitched better. They hit better. They played better defense. They ran the bases better. There's no excuse. We just lost."

They lost to a team that reminds them of themselves - or at least of the team they hoped they would become again once these playoffs started. Before yesterday's game, Torre said the Angels reminded him of his 1996 World Series championship team - a bunch of relative unknowns who played well together, took advantage of the other team's mistakes and scored more than anybody thought they should.

"They looked like they wanted it more than we did," Posada said. "It seemed that way the whole series."

He's right. If not for an inexplicable bullpen meltdown in the first game, the Angels could have won all four of these games. They are relentless and fearless, and yesterday's game showcased that perfectly.

The Yankees got out to a 2-1 lead, which Wells carried into the fifth. But in an inning as euphoric as it was historic, the Angels banged out eight runs on 10 hits, knocking both Wells and reliever Ramiro Mendoza out of the game and burying the Yankees for good.

"They socre eight runs, that pretty much takes you out of the whole game," Posada said.

Which isn't to say the Yankees didn't try to come back. They scored a run in the sixth and actually had the tying run in the on-deck circle in the bottom of the seventh and ninth innings. Four-time defending league champions, they made their last stand, but in the end it was not enough.

"I can't say enough about the team we just beat," said Mike Scioscia, the Angels' classy manager. "It has to give us a lot of confidence to come out on top of them in a series like this."

Which is a gracious thing to say, but the fact is that the Angels were better than the Yankees. They scored 31 runs in four games against the Yankees' vaunted pitching staff, and the way they strung hits together was enough to drive the veterans on the Yankee roster crazy.

"They were hot, and in a short series that can make a big difference," said Giambi, who has now lost in the first round of the playoffs for three years in a row. "If they keep playing the kind of baseball they're playing now, they could go a long way."

Which is a nice compliment, too, but the Yankees thought they would be the team that would go a long way. Giambi signed with the Yankees to win a championship, having been bounced out of the first round by them two years in a row as a member of the Oakland A's. Now, he will watch the Angels play either the A's or the Twins for the right to go to what he believed would be his first World Series.

"We're going home," Jeter said. "We have no more games. We'll turn on the TV and see another team playing, and it won't be us. That's hard."

Torre said he was proud of his team, which won 103 regular-season games and looked unstoppable for much of the season. But he also pointed out that anything short of a World Series appearance is unacceptable when you wear a Yankees uniform. His players shared the opinion.

"You work all year to do one thing, and that's to win," Jeter said. "It's difficult to win. I know we've made it look easy at times, but winning every year is not something that's easy to do. I guess this can make you appreciate that."

And with that, off they went. Off to board a plane back to New York. A plane that would take them home, but to no more baseball games this year.

The off-season has begun for the Yankees, about three weeks before they expected it to. And that just doesn't sit right with them. 1