ATLANTA -- Major league rules require that somebody play the American League in the World Series.

So gather up your cactus juice, your chimichanga recipes and your 6-foot-10 left-handers. The Arizona Diamondbacks are in the World Series.

They got there with a 3-2 win in Atlanta on Sunday night -- a win that terminated the National League Championship Series in five games.

	October heroes Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling celebrate their NLCS win.

They got there with the left-handed co-CEO of Aces Inc., Mr. Randy Johnson, twirling seven mostly overpowering innings, to run his newfound postseason winning streak to two in a row. ("How," Johnson chortled, "about that?")

They got there with their three runs being driven in by two guys who had previously been 0 for the playoffs -- Danny Bautista (RBI single) and Erubiel Durazo (two-run pinch homer in the fifth off Tom Glavine).

They got there with an NLCS MVP named Craig Counsell who was such a surefire Mr. October that the Dodgers actually released him 19 months ago.

They got there with a second straight two-inning save by the most unorthodox closer ever, the Korean frisbee machine, Byung-Hyun Kim.

They got there with a manager (Bob Brenly) who was heading for the World Series last year, too -- as a broadcaster.

They got there with a postseason roster old enough to star in the next sequel to "Grumpy Old Men" -- a roster featuring 17 guys in their 30s, one (Mike Morgan) in his 40s and 11 players born before the start of the Nixon administration.

They got there with a pitching staff that is often considered, by much of the non-desert-dwelling population of our fine land, to consist of exactly two men -- Johnson and Curt Schilling.

But however they did it, the record will always show the Diamondbacks got there, in only their fourth season of existence. And we can direct you to several people stuck in an ivy vine at Wrigley Field for the last 56 years who can assure you it isn't supposed to be that easy.

"This," said this outfit's most famous ex-Cub, Mark Grace, "is what I signed here for. I knew this team had a chance to do something special."

How special it will be should that World Series road lead them to always-hospitable Yankee Stadium -- for a chance to have their eardrums obliterated by a combination of bleacher chants, screeching subways and a sound system capable of blasting the YMCA song all the way to North Dakota -- is another matter. But they'll just have to consider all that part of the unique World Series pageantry.

"I'm actually pulling for the Mariners," said the tallest ex-Mariner alive, the Big Unit. "I really don't care who we play. But if we go to New York, some of these guys had better buckle up -- because they're going to see what the World Series is all about."

	Quite a 1-2 punch
	Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson's stats during the 2001 postseason:
		Schilling	Johnson
	W-L	3-0	2-1
	IP	27	24
	H	13	16
	R	2	5
	ER	2	5
	BB	4	5
	SO	30	28
	ERA	0.67	1.88

In Arizona, of course, they have no idea what the World Series is all about. How would they? In this particular portion of paved desert, the World Series has been another annual TV show, not much different from the Oscars, the Miss America pageant and the Jerry Lewis telethon.

But they're about to find out what the World Series is all about. What no one can gauge is whether planting the World Series in the middle of a thousand cactus plants will finally turn Phoenix into a real, live baseball town, with real, live people who consider themselves Diamondbacks fans.

"When you talk about Arizona," Johnson said, "you're talking about a population of transplants. People come there for the winter time. They come from the north, to get out of the snow. So we've got a lot of Cubs fans. We've got tons of fans for all different teams. But they're not primarily Diamondbacks fans.

"We lived in Arizona before I played there. So I got a chance to go to some Suns games. The first game I went to, I can still remember seeing orange and purple everywhere. It was incredible. And I'm hoping that now, with us in the World Series, people can catch onto this the same way."

In many ways, it had better catch on the same way, or this team could wind up in Chapter 11 before it winds up in another World Series. Attendance has dropped in every season of the franchise's existence. Baseball people everywhere continue to whisper about ownership's mounting debts. And for many months, there have been big questions about the future.

Now, though, all that can change -- if this World Series somehow turns into the event that flicks Arizona's baseball switch into the "on" position.

"In time," Johnson said, "we're going to have some history there. It's hard to say we have a history now, because we don't. I was telling people last week, 'Just wait until we get to St. Louis.' I told my wife, 'Wait until you see those fans in St. Louis. They're incredible.' Those are baseball fans.

"But the thing is, they have a history. We don't have a history yet. We're making it as we go. It will come in time, I suppose."

The question is: Is that time now?

Whether it is or it isn't, even to get to this point, this team had to earn it. First, it had to survive a five-game series against the scorching-hot Cardinals that was so intense, "you couldn't breathe for five games," Grace said, only about half-joking.

Then the D-Backs had to take on the Braves, a juggernaut making its 10th straight visit to the postseason, and coming off a sweep of what once seemed to be a very dangerous Astros team.

"To be the best," said Luis Gonzalez, "you've got to beat the best. Atlanta has been there for 10 straight seasons. So we knew that if we were going to get to the World Series, the road was going to have to go through Atlanta."

They arrived at Turner Field this weekend, tied at one win apiece. Then the Braves spent two days bumbling and stumbling themselves into a 3-games-to-1 hole. And that set the scene for Sunday night, when Johnson took the baseball with a chance to pitch his team into a World Series.

He'd already beaten one four-time Cy Young, Greg Maddux, in Game 1. With Tom Glavine lining up against him in Game 5 all the Unit had to do was become the first pitcher in postseason history to beat two pitchers with multiple Cy Young trophies in the same series.

It was a 1-1 game heading into the fifth, when Durazo headed for the plate to face Glavine with two outs and Gonzalez on first. Durazo had batted once all series. His last hit was 15 days ago, in the regular-season finale. He was only in the game because Grace had popped a hamstring scoring the first run of the night an inning earlier.

But Erubiel Durazo can hit. He crunched five pinch homers this year. He's hit 31 career home runs in 526 at-bats. And when Glavine hung a 2-2 slider, Durazo pounded it the other way, hooked it around the left-field foul pole for a two-run October homer and rounded the bases knowing he had done a great thing.

"That was a moment I can carry with me the rest of my life," Durazo said. "I know a lot of guys here have played 20-something years and not get into the World Series. So when I got a chance to hit that ball and I hit that home run, I thought about those guys. And that's the reason that moment will be in my mind the rest of my life."

"Hey, I was the MVP," Grace chuckled. "I yanked that hamstring. He came in and hit that home run. I've gotta be the MVP."

Uh, not yet he wasn't. There were still 15 more outs to get. And suddenly, in the seventh, Johnson's tank abruptly dipped toward empty.

He got two outs. But then he served up an RBI single to Mexican League escapee Julio Franco, who had also mugged him for a homer three innings earlier. He staggered through an eight-pitch walk to Chipper Jones that loaded the bases. And that brought official Braves miracle maker Brian Jordan to the same batter's box from which he launched storybook home runs that essentially ended the Mets' and Phillies' seasons.

"I knew Chipper had had success (.429 lifetime) against me," Johnson said. "So I wasn't going to let him beat me. I was going to make quality pitches, and if I walked him, I'd take my chances on Brian Jordan. That's no disrespect for Brian Jordan. I know he's gotten some huge hits for them. I'd just had more success against him."

Then again, not a lot more success. Jordan was a .348 career hitter against the Unit. And Johnson was clearly zapped, reeling through a 34-pitch inning that seemed, he said, "like it lasted a half-hour."

"I knew," he said, "that if I don't get Brian Jordan out, if he gets a base hit, they go ahead. The momentum shifts. Then they bring John Smoltz out there to close the door. And everything's different."

But Johnson set Jordan up with four straight fastballs that ran the count to 2 and 2. Then, having "speeded up his bat with fastballs ... I had him set up for the slider. But I realized it had to be a real good slider."

He reached back and snapped off his biggest breaking ball of the night. Jordan lurched out in front of it. And Johnson walked off the mound, knowing he'd just racked up the biggest whiff of his career.

"Let me tell you," he said. "There was a lot of relief I felt right there, getting out of that seventh inning."

And his little pump of the fist told you there was also jubilation. Randy Johnson had just pitched himself and his 30-something buddies to within six outs of the World Series.

"And I knew," Johnson said, as Schilling poured a Heineken over his head, "that was someplace I've never been before."

They won't be favored in this World Series, no matter whom they play. Schilling and Johnson can't start all seven games. They aren't even sure if they'll attempt to pitch every fourth day -- giving them a shot to pitch five out of seven.

But that's a problem for another time. The Arizona Diamondbacks, in their fourth season on earth, were heading for the World Series. No expansion franchise ever got there faster. For all these men who waited all these years, it couldn't get there soon enough.

"We wanted to win it right here in Atlanta," Grace said. "Now we get to wake up in Phoenix tomorrow -- with a hangover."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.