MIAMI -- Up is now down. Pigs can now, indeed, fly. Forget everything you think you know about baseball.

 

Welcome to the final weekend of the 2003 baseball season, bizarro-style.

 

Suddenly, the Marlins, October's Comeback Kids, are the team in position to put an end to a postseason series.

 

 

Joe Torre will be much happier to be back at Yankee Stadium this weekend.

Just as suddenly, the Yankees, winners of four of the last seven World Series, some seemingly by acclimation, must now fight off elimination not once but twice over the weekend.

 

It may be a fitting end to a wild month of baseball that, on consecutive nights, was five outs away from giving us a Cubs-Red Sox World Series.

 

This, meanwhile, is only slightly less shocking: The Marlins, who over the last five seasons have had as many owners as the Yankees have had championships, are inexplicably in control of the Series while the dynastic Yanks are battered as they return to the Bronx.

 

After the Yankees won Game 3 Tuesday, the Marlins seized control by winning Games 4 and 5 with pages stolen from the Yankee playbook: timely hitting in the former and dominant starting pitching in the latter.

 

Those two victories have positioned the Marlins to grab their second title in the last seven seasons. This time, as last, they had to survive the NL playoff labyrinth as wild-card entrants.

 

In 1997, the Marlins went into Game 6 trailing the Cleveland Indians 3 games to 2 and went into the ninth inning of Game 7 trailing 2-1 before rallying for an 11th-inning win.

 

This postseason, the Marlins have specialized in late-inning comebacks. While winning three straight against the San Francisco Giants in the Division Series, the Marlins did so after trailing in the fifth, 10th, and eight innings of their victories.

 

But the Marlins were just warming up. After staging an extra-inning win in Game 1, they won three elimination games in succession, highlighted by Game 6, which saw them less than two innings away from defeat.

 

Now, the Marlins find themselves in the unaccustomed position of trying to finish a team off. A 10-year-old franchise with two winning seasons to its credit must finish off a team whose very name is associated with baseball supremacy.

 

Smartly, the Marlins are taking nothing for granted. Nor are they looking at the weekend as two chances to win a championship. They'd like to do so on their first try, thank you.

 

One out of two?

 

"I think what we're looking at it as one out of one," third baseman Mike Lowell said. "I don't think we're all wrapped up in 'All we have to do is go 1-1.' We're focused. We know it's going to be a tough battle. When we went into Game 7 (of the NLCS), we said, 'We're one win away from getting into the World Series.' We're going to take that same approach. If we do win, we'll celebrate for a long time."

 

Marlins manager Jack McKeon, whose post-game press conferences have morphed into some strange performance art, is considering starting two pitchers on three days' rest this weekend: Josh Beckett in Game 6 and, if necessary, Carl Pavano in Game 7.

 

"They got all winter to rest," declared McKeon when asked about the general availability of his starters.

 

There will be no rest at all for the Yankees should they lose their second World Series in the last three years, especially since this defeat would come at home. The prospect of losing to a nearly-contracted, twice-sold expansion franchise seemed to bring a chill to the Yanks, even in the tropical warmth of south Florida.

 

"We've got our backs to the wall," acknowledged GM Brian Cashman. "We're going to have to get the job done or watch someone else celebrate on our field."

 

Wednesday night in Game 5, the Yankees lost a World Series game by a walkoff homer for the first time since the end of the Eisenhower adminstration (1960). This weekend, they face the prospect of losing a Series at home for the first time since the early days of the first Reagan adminstration (1981).

 

Always the hunted, the Yankees are, against type, now the hunters.

 

 

? I'd rather be up 3-2 than down 3-2. But I feel good about who we have pitching. ?

? Yankees manager Joe Torre, about Game 6 starter Andy Pettitte

 

"It's not going to be easy," allowed catcher Jorge Posada. "We've got to keep grinding them out and look forward to going back home."

 

"Obviously, we've got the harder mountain to climb," said Cashman. "But this team all year long has taken the tougher road."

 

Indeed, the Yankees lost Game 1 in the ALDS (to Minnesota) and the ALCS (to Boston) and came back to win both series. Then, for good measure, they also dropped Game 1 of the Series, so comebacks aren't new.

 

Now, however, their margin for error has been eliminated. It's win two -- or else.

 

The Yankees can take comfort in knowing their Game 6 starter will be Andy Pettitte, the same pitcher who evened each of their three postseason series at 1-1.

 

"I'd rather be up 3-2 than down 3-2," said Yankees manager Joe Torre. "But I feel good about who we have pitching."

 

At this stage, Torre and the Yankees have no choice.

 

Sean McAdam of the Providence (R.I.) Journal covers baseball for ESPN.com.

 

In 1997, the Marlins went into Game 6 trailing the Cleveland Indians 3 games to 2 and went into the ninth inning of Game 7 trailing 2-1 before rallying for an 11th-inning win.

 

 

Really?

What a dumbass!

LOL what a loser!!