Toronto

THIS IS just like a pennant race. Just listen to the crescendo in Don Mattingly's voice. Just see Paul O'Neill smack his fist in his hand as he sees his drive carry over the centerfield fence. It isn't the same as a pennant race, but it's what we've got now and it plays pretty well once the graybeards catch on to it.

Maybe they don't pour champagne all over their heads the way they used to. The official word around the Yankees is that they don't even have champagne on hand for a celebration here, so the people involved will have to make their own celebration.

Ask Mattingly if there's champagne for winning the wild-card race and his emotion is as clear as the glare grease underlining his eyes. "I'll tell you what," he blurted. "If you don't think the wild-card race is baseball, then you don't know [diddley squat] about baseball."

And he meant it, heart and soul. "No one in the world can argue this with me," he said. "There's absolutely no difference." He does have this factor of having played his long and distinguished career and this may be his last chance to get into the postseason showcase. It means something he doesn't need to justify or even explain.

There may be some intellectual difference and some strategic nuance that's a half-twist difference from a pennant race like the Giants and the Dodgers going down to the playoff in 1951 or the Yankees and the Red Sox going down to the playoff in 1978, but that's for outsiders and purists who don't always understand computers, either. In the insides of the insiders this is a race to win.

"The whole key is to get in," Mattingly said, words coming rapidly. "That's what a pennant race is. You're not done when you win a pennant. You're not done when you win a division. This is the last month, day to day every day to get in. This is as pure baseball as could possibly be."

And so it is. The Yankees clinched at least a tie for the wild-card position in the American League yesterday, beating the Blue Jays, 6-1, riding O'Neill's first-inning home run, Scott Kamieniecki's complete game and the crest of emotion of that stunning comeback in the ninth inning Friday night. Beyond that, this team that was up the creek without a pitcher in July has come on with some marvelous things in September. They won 21 and lost six in September, matching their most wins in September since 1980. The great 1978 comeback climaxed with a 22-8 September. Well, not actually climaxed; that came in the one-game Bucky Dent playoff.

This tie was only a tie, which left them resting uneasily as they waited for the result of the Angels' game in the far left time zone. Some of the Yankees have been trying to watch TV while waiting for a late score and have found themselves unable to pay attention. Their minds wander to the other game.

They say they came here thinking they had to win all three games and they left SkyDome yesterday thinking they still had to come back today to win one more. They felt all the pressure that Bobby Thomson and Ralph Branca, Goose Gossage and Carl Yastrzemski felt. "Exactly," Wade Boggs said, and he remembers how it was from '86, '88 and '90. "The same electricity in the clubhouse, the same electricity in the dugout," Boggs said. "Everything is hanging from pitch to pitch. There's a lot of oohing and aahing you don't hear in May."

The difference is that when the Yankees and Red Sox played off in 1978, the loser went home. With this format, the game would have been of value only on paper because both teams would have gone to the playoffs - one as the East winner and the other as the wild card. Maybe that's splitting hairs in the new look.

"What they've done," Boggs said, "is create a real fourth division; there's East, Central, West and Wild Card divisions."

The distinction, however, is that the reward for being there isn't as large as winning a pennant or even a division. So Buck Showalter decided to switch from David Cone to Sterling Hitchcock to pitch today regardless of what California did out of their sight last night. By winning yesterday the Yankees assured themselves that even if the Angels caught them, the separating game would be in Yankee Stadium tomorrow and Cone would pitch on four days' rest.

It's the manager's calculated risk to have his pitching rested and in order to begin the division championship series Tuesday. Cone is all for it. "There's an easy trap to fall into," he said. "This is the first time the Yankees have been in postseason since 1981, and then you can be out of it in the first round."

If Cone is rested and Jack McDowell responds to rest, the Yankees are a formidable team. "We can go all the way," Cone said. He figures he could have six or seven more starts before October is over.

He's a union man. He points out the newest ripple of the wild-card race: The Royals picked up Juan Samuel when they thought they might have a chance. There's a new place for experienced middle-ground players on teams that had been deciding fiscal responsibility meant superstars and rookies.

Showalter said he'd been mulling over his thinking for a month. He said he went to pitching coach Nardi Contreras and "played what-if-you-were-the-manager." And came up with confidence that Hitchcock in turn was the move. The significance of clinching the tie, he said, was that Mattingly is going to play another game at Yankee Stadium, regardless. The coaching staff and unsigned players are going to play another game at Yankee Stadium. He included the manager, himself unsigned for another year. "That's pretty significant," he said.

The players feel it all. O'Neill's home run, Cone said, was an electric jolt in the dugout "and all the way up to the clubhouse. Huge." Friday night's comeback from down 3-0 in the ninth inning was "unbelievable," he said. "The coaching staff and Buck went out of their minds. Buck tries to hide it; for the first time since I've been here they showed their emotions."

Through it all is the undertone of Mattingly finishing his time with this team. "We all have this awareness of getting him to the postseason," Cone said. "But for him, thinking it might be his last chance to go, it escalates."

So they had their tie clinched and set out to wait anxiously to see if they had more. It would be no booby prize. They knew they were in a race. Steve Jacobson

Copyright 1995, Newsday Inc.