At some point we knew.

Knew the Yankees were going to go all the way.  Knew that 2009 was our year.

I can’t remember the date, but I remember walking to the subway to go to a Yankee game, getting stopped by an older man who asked if I was a Yankee fan and how far the team was going.

“They’re going all the way,” I had said, but that was more happenstance, trying to say the right thing at the right time.

When did I know the Yankees had a special team this season, beyond just being a good, playoff-bound team and into a season I would be telling my kids (someday in the very distant future) about?  When did you know?

For me, ask much as I loved the walk-offs, as much fun as the walk-off wins made this season, as much as it was just like watching a group of kids having fun playing a game, the moment for me came in August, when the Yankees swept the Red Sox in four games.

Four games on otherwise ordinary August nights that, without question, felt like the middle of October.

For the first time, really, the Stadium got loud, and all four games the Yankees found various ways to win–slugfests, pitcher’s duels, the long ball–four games where everything went right for the Yankees and everything else went wrong for the Red Sox.

It’s not all that hard to be a good baseball team if you have good baseball players and good fundamentals, but among the x-factors that seperate good from great, among the things such as health and as clubhouse chemistry that may or may not be a factor, there’s also luck.

To have the luck the Yankees have had this season, though–and the luck they had in that sweep–that can’t be blind fate.  That’s luck created by the Yankees and for the Yankees.

That four game sweep?

That’s when I knew that the Yankees in 2009 were a team so good that they could create their own luck.

When you create your own luck, it’s hard to fail.

***

So what about you?  When did you know that this would be a special year?  Was it when the Yankees beat the Red Sox to clinch the AL East?  When Teixeira and the Yanks walked off against the Twins?  When David Robertson got out of that bases loaded, no one out jam?  When the final out was tossed from Canó to Teixeira?

At some point, you knew.

You had to.

This team was simply too good.