NEW YORK -- The annual ritual of crowning the New York Yankees as the American League champions was going on just as it always does in the middle of October.

Championship T-shirts were handed out in hopes of being televised in the postgame celebration. Billy Crystal, draped in a 1961 Yankees jacket, compared the New York teams from his youth to those of his adulthood. Mayor Rudy Giuliani offered his yearly prediction for the World Series. And Reggie Jackson trudged through the clubhouse with a giant stogie hanging from his mouth.

Who to root for?

Perhaps the biggest Yankee fan of all, the man who made movies about the Yankees, hangs out with the Yankees and celebrates with the Yankees, is sure to have mixed emotions when the World Series gets under way Saturday. That's because actor Billy Crystal is a minority owner of the Arizona Diamondbacks, New York's World Series opponent. "It's just a small, small percentage," Crystal said while celebrating with the Yankees after their Game 5 victory. "A tiny percentage. I got involved before they even built the building out there. "Jerry (Colangelo) saw me at a Clippers game once and he said, 'If you can root for them, you can root for us.' " Crystal, who recently directed the movie "*61," chronicling Roger Maris' and Mickey Mantle's 1961 chase of Babe Ruth's home run record, wore a '61 Yankee jacket during the postgame celebration. And as for whom he'll cheer for in the World Series, Crystal says that's an easy one, though it might draw the ire of his business partners. "One of them is an investment and one of them is in your heart," Crystal said. "Though I think (Arizona) is going to be upset with me." --Wayne Drehs

But this postgame party was anything but normal.

Gone were the streams of champagne used to soak teammates. Gone was the screaming, yelling and high-fives common with a series-clinching win. Gone was the blaring music and ear-to-ear smiles that you would normally find in the Yankee clubhouse.

Sure, there was laughter and smiles. But it wasn't the same. It wasn't normal. Part of the reason was that commissioner Bud Selig asked teams not to carry on during postgame celebrations. Part of the reason was that celebrating American League titles just seems sort of silly to the back-to-back-to-back World Series champions. And part of the reason was that jumping up and down and devouring liquor just didn't feel right after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

"Honestly, you want to enjoy this, you want to soak it in, you want to have fun," said Scott Brosius. "But you certainly don't want to go nuts and do some of the crazy things that go on normally. It's just not right."

On this night, the cases of champagne were nowhere to be found in the clubhouse. Instead, they were stacked on a pallet and wrapped in cellophane in a quiet hallway adjacent to the Yankee clubhouse.

Replacing them were a pair of banquet tables, both of which were covered in tiny, plastic, champagne-filled glasses. The majority of the glasses went untouched.

"Not having the bottles in here certainly has something to do with things being so calm, so laid back," Mike Stanton said. "But I think with that, there isn't that much to celebrate. This is only step three of a four-step process. I know it sounds clichéd, but there is still work to do."

That there is, though one might start to wonder where. After all, this was supposed to be the year the Yankees were going to get beat. The young, cocky A's were a year older, a year wiser, and had added Johnny Damon and Jermaine Dye. The Mariners, even though they didn't have Alex Rodriguez, did have a 28-year-old phenom named Ichiro. They also had baseball's best bullpen. And they had tied the all-time record with 116 wins.

But the A's couldn't get that one last victory. Ichiro was held to a .222 average in the ALCS. And the Yankees feasted on the well-publicized Mariner bullpen. So when all was said and done, guess which team was donning American League champion T-shirts?

The Yankees.

The win marked the team's fifth World Series in six years. They became the first team -- in either league -- to win four straight LCS. They have won 40 of their last 51 postseason games, including 11 straight series since dropping the 1997 Division Series to Cleveland.

But the typical laughter and celebration wasn't there. In fact, the loudest roars came when the majority of the team retreated to a tiny room off the side of the clubhouse to watch postgame highlights on ESPN's Baseball Tonight.

Emanating from the room were plenty of "Oooos," "Ahhhs" and "Wows!" At one point, ALCS MVP Andy Pettitte entered the room to a chorus of applause and playful bows from Derek Jeter and Bernie Williams.

Later, David Justice poked fun at the endless questions Jeter had to answer.

"And you didn't even get a hit, man," Justice prodded. "Like what are you saying over there? 'Well, I'd like to thank my teammates for picking me up and watching my back.' "

"We joke, we laugh, we get on each other all the time," Justice said. "It's about enjoying the process. Everybody says that we're a business-like team, but you know what? When we go in the back room or when y'all reporters get out of here, we've got to be one of the funniest teams out there."

Besides questions about Pettitte's strong performance, Williams' third-inning home run and how this victory will help New Yorkers deal with the terrorist tragedy, much of the postgame talk centered on the raucous Yankee fans.

	“	We haven't won anything yet. We haven't done anything. So there's really no need to celebrate. In my eyes, a season without a World Series championship is a failure. And you don't celebrate failure. So we have to wait and take care of business. ”
		— Derek Jeter

Most Yankees agreed that Monday night's crowd was the loudest since at least 1996. In the game's final innings, the Yankee faithful seemed more like a frenzied student section at a college football game than a baseball crowd.

They razzed Mariners manager Lou Piniella for his now famous guarantee that this series would head back to Seattle by chanting, "Louuuuuuuuuu." They teased "Sayonara" when Ichiro stepped in the batter's box in the ninth inning. And added cheers of "Overrated" and the popular, "Nah-Nah, Hey-Hey, Goodbye" song to close out the night.

"It was rowdy out there," Stanton said. "Crazier and rowdier than I've ever heard it before. That place was rocking tonight."

And in a strange way, Piniella didn't seem to mind.

"About the eighth inning when the fans were really reveling in the stands, the one thought that did come to my mind strangely enough is, 'Boy, this city suffered a lot and tonight they let out a lot of emotions,'" Piniella said. "And I felt good for them in a way. And that's a strange thought to come from a manager who's getting his ass kicked."

But it was understandable on this different clinching night. After the game in the Yankee locker room, even Giuliani was subdued. Giuliani, surrounded by four security personnel and a host of reporters, was wearing a pair of leather boots and an oversized belt buckle from Yankee victories past.

"The boots are from the mayor in Texas when we beat the Rangers a couple of years ago," Giuliani said. "The belt buckle is from another Texas victory. But I don't know why I never went for a horse. Maybe with Arizona, I should go for a horse."

Giuliani, who predicted the Yankees would beat the Mariners in five games before the series began, says the same will happen in the World Series.

"Because I want to win it here," he said. "I want this city to experience all this right in front of their eyes once again."

Crystal offered a similar prediction. "Yankees in five. Or Yankees in six," he said. "This group has already proven they are some of the greatest Yankees of all time. And this year will only affirm that."

Then -- and only then -- a real celebration can begin.

"We haven't won anything yet. We haven't done anything," Jeter said. "So there's really no need to celebrate. In my eyes, a season without a World Series championship is a failure. And you don't celebrate failure. So we have to wait and take care of business."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer for ESPN.com.