NEW YORK -- Cancel those misty-eyed End of the Era stories. Keep the No. 4 subway train running. Spruce up those monuments.

	David Justice crushed Oakland's hopes with a pinch-hit home run in the sixth inning Monday.

Some day, some year, some century, some millennium, there will come a time to wave goodbye to the New York Yankees and thank them for all the magical October memories.

But this ain't it.

Monday night, in turbocharged Yankee Stadium, they completed their latest in a never-ending string of Feats No Team Has Ever Matched, with a 5-3 victory over a great Oakland team that just couldn't figure out a way to end the dynasty. But if it's any consolation to the A's, at least they lead the world in SCARING the dynasty.

To most teams, losing the first two games of a best-of-five series -- AT HOME -- would seem like a bad idea. Never been done in the whole history of five-game series -- not by a team that WON the series, anyway. That's what the Yankees were told, a thousand times a day, this weekend.

But in retrospect, we now know that to these Yankees, who are clearly bored of their standard postseason domination by now, it was apparently just a scheme to make the division series more dramatic. And we're sure the Fox television network appreciates it from the bottom of its programming heart, too.

"Now see," David Justice lectured his favorite media inquisitors afterward, "YOU all are surprised by what we do. We're not surprised. All we had to do was win three games in a row. We know we've won three games in a row before. So we figured it was possible we'd win three games in a row again. And we did."

Well, yeah, they did. But this time they had to win three games in a row against a team that hadn't even lost TWO games in a row since August.

This time they had to win the first two games in a row in the yard of a team that hadn't lost a home game since Aug. 24.

This time they had to beat the official Best Young Starting Rotation in Baseball -- Barry Zito in Game 3, then (as it turned out) the Mark Mulder-Tim Hudson tag team in Game 5.

And this time, they had to do something that the lessons of history were suggesting was darned near impossible. But for this team, there's no such word.

"The fact that no team has ever done this," said manager Joe Torre, "doesn't mean that it can't be done."

Well, sure, HE'D think that. He knows it can be done if you have somebody who looks a lot like Derek Jeter hanging around your infield, willing to work a new October miracle pretty much whenever you need one.

	“	Derek from 1996, when I first met the young man, just has that look in his eye. It's a look you don't teach. It's a look that you have, that fire in your belly, and that love for the competition. ”
		— Yankees manager Joe Torre on his shortstop, Derek Jeter

For his first trick -- Saturday, in Game 3 -- The Amazing Jeter came moseying across the field practically from the popcorn stand to make that already-legendary Magic Johnson-esque backhand, no-look shovel pass to nail the tying run at the plate. And if that didn't turn this series around, then how come 56,000 people were still giving standing ovations to the REPLAY of it Monday night?

"If he's not there," said Oakland's Jason Giambi on Monday, "if he's just standing around like every other shortstop in the world, who knows what would have happened?"

Yeah, who knows, all right? The A's don't know. But they'll be asking themselves who knows all winter. They do know that.

But since Monday was the night an entire season's work was being decided, it was about time for Jeter to manufacture some whole new signature game-saving moment. So this time, with his team hanging onto a 5-3 lead and Terrence Long representing the tying run at home plate, Jeter did it again.

This time, Long made the mistake of lofting a foul pop-up into the stands beyond third base -- but only one row into the stands. So Yankees third baseman Scott Brosius chased it, then began to peel off as he realized he wasn't going to get there.

But Brosius didn't know his shortstop apparently had watched a few too many Evil Knievel videos growing up. From somewhere beyond the picture on your TV screen, here came Jeter, flying toward those stands at a clip that could have won him the Olympic 100-meter final.

He crashed into the railing, reached out, snatched the baseball out of the sky and then tumbled head over cleats into the portion of this stadium normally reserved for his adoring public.

"I was scared when I saw that, man," Justice said. "When I saw him disappear, that's the only thing I could think: I hope he gets up. I hope he didn't hurt himself."

But of course, he got up. Of course, he didn't hurt himself. Just all in a day's work for this man. Leap tall buildings. Get a couple of hits. Drive in what turned out to be the winning run. And refuse to let his team go home, even if it meant hurtling himself into a tray of nachos.

"Derek," said Torre, "from 1996, when I first met the young man, just has that look in his eye. It's a look you don't teach. It's a look that you have, that fire in your belly, and that love for the competition. This kid, with that (relay) play he made the other night, thinks cool in very hot situations. And making that play (Monday), he never has any regard for putting his body in peril. . . He's a true leader at a very early age."

But while it's Jeter who most embodies that modern Yankees aura, the aura itself can prove ridiculously relentless at times like this. Stuff just seems to happen to the Yankees on these nights when they absolutely, positively have to win -- stuff that never seems to happen any other night in any other year.

Take the third inning, for instance. The A's had watched an early 2-0 lead vanish on a two-run single in the second by Alfonso Soriano. Then the craziness began.

A's catcher Ramon Hernandez decided his chronically sprained elbow was too painful to continue. So veteran backup Greg Myers sprinted in from the bullpen, immediately dropped a strike-three pitch to Bernie Williams and cooperatively threw the ball into right field so Williams could reach base and start the game-turning rally. Myers, naturally, committed NO errors all season.

Then a hit batter and a walk loaded the bases with three Yankees who hadn't even bothered to put a ball in play. But Brosius then hit a routine dribbler to third that should have ended the inning -- except that the ball arrived at third baseman Eric Chavez's neighborhood about the same time that the baserunner, Tino Martinez, did.

Yankees aura dictated that Chavez be distracted just enough for the ball to squib out of his glove for an error, as the go-ahead run scored. And you don't even need to be told that Chavez was the same guy who led the league in fielding percentage, do you?

But it was that kind of night -- for both teams. Roger Clemens didn't make it through the fifth inning. Torre had Andy Pettitte warming up by the SECOND inning -- and later had both Pettitte AND Mike Mussina warming up together in the seventh.

Yankees foul balls seemed to fall exactly in the spots where no Athletic could catch them. Giambi threw a ball into center field after Mulder picked Chuck Knoblauch off first. Miguel Tejada cost the A's a game-tying run by failing to go from first to third on a Giambi single. Justice hit a pinch home run to lengthen the lead to 5-3 in the sixth -- after a season in which he got exactly zero pinch hits of any shape or size.

And on and on and on. For three months, the A's had been a model of how to play the game right. By Monday, they, too, had been swept up in this latest Yankees tidal wave.

"When we came here for the first two games," said Oakland general manager Billy Beane, "there were no expectations on us. We had that devil-may-care approach to the game. We didn't know if we'd come out of here 0-2, 1-1 or 2-0. But we sort of took things as they came. But then, after we went up 2-0, I think the expectations changed when we went into Oakland. We created expectations (that they were going to win this series). And in turn, I think that affected our play."

But what affected their play, mostly, was the Yankees. They headed off for Oakland looking old and vulnerable. They returned looking like The Champs again.

"You can't give them an inch," said Oakland's Frank Menechino. "They'll take four."

And once they're finished taking, they bring in Mariano Rivera to sit on you for however many outs until it's time to shake hands. It was six outs Monday -- for Rivera's 20th consecutive postseason save -- 17 of them for more than one inning.

And after he'd struck out pinch-hitter Eric Byrnes for the final out of a landmark series, it was impossible not to notice that when these Yankees gave each other those congratulatory hugs they've gotten so good at, they were hugging and congratulating a little more emotionally than usual.

"Considering where we came from, down 0-2, there was probably more emotion shown out there than any time other than winning the World Series," said Mike Stanton. "I'm not going to say we counted ourselves out. But we knew it was a long shot, anyway."

And it was -- for any team except them.

"That's the Yankees," Giambi said. "They just know how to win. It doesn't matter how they played all season. They hibernate, man. They hibernate 'til the postseason."

"We know everything comes to an end," Justice said. "The Celtics did. The Lakers did. And some day, we'll come to an end, too."

Yeah, sure they will. Any century now.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com