NEW YORK -- Want to send 55,000 screaming New Yorkers into happy hysteria?

	Anyone who was at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night won't soon forget Derek Jeter's historic blast.

Want to see a smile taller than the Empire State Building as a hero rounds the bases and flies into the arms of his mobbing teammates as he reaches home plate?

Want to hear an entire stadium sing to Frank Sinatra in arm-hugging unison?

Want to end this gut-churning, heart-pounding, fiction-filled drama of a baseball game?

Sure thing. Send Derek Jeter to the plate. Have him hit a two-out, bottom-of-the-10th, full-count home run to right field that clears the fence by a pinstripe or three.

And then have the poets and muses write about it, so we can store it in our memory banks and know this game actually happened.

It did. Derek Jeter did lift that baseball just over the wall. It landed right about where he hit his first postseason home run, back in 1996, back when this whole story began. Sure, he needed a little help with that one. But that’s part of good storytelling, isn’t it?

Byung-Hyun Kim, the sidewheeling Korean right-handed relief pitcher for the Arizona Diamondbacks, had retired the first two batters of the 10th inning. Both outs were flyballs. He had already served up a game-tying homer in the ninth. He was getting his pitches up. The stage was set.

Who cares if our hero was 1-for-15 so far in the World Series. That he was 3 for his last 32 in this postseason. That he fouled off the first pitch and then swung and missed the second.

Jeter then took a pitch low for ball one. He fouled one back into the net behind home plate. He popped one foul down the first-base line. He took a ball up in the zone. He watched a changeup drift outside.

Big endings

World Series games that ended with a home run: Tommy Henrich, Yankees, Game 1, 1949 Dusty Rhodes, Giants, Game 1, 1954 Eddie Mathews, Braves, Game 4, 1957 Bill Mazeroski, Pirates, Game 7, 1960 Mickey Mantle, Yankees, Game 3, 1964 Carlton Fisk, Red Sox, Game 6, 1975 Kirk Gibson, Dodgers, Game 1, 1988 Mark McGwire, A's, Game 3, 1988 Kirby Puckett, Twins, Game 6, 1991 Joe Carter, Blue Jays, Game 6, 1993 Chad Curtis, Yankees, Game 3, 1999 Derek Jeter`, Yankees, Game 4, 2001

The count was full. The Halloween clock crossed midnight. It was November.

He lined the next pitch hard down the right-field line. See what was happening? Jeter was starting to time Kim’s pitches.

“Anytime you have someone throwing sidearm it’s going to take few pitches to see his release point,” said Jeter, who had led off the ninth against Kim, but tried to reach with a bunt on the first pitch.

The next offering was a fastball low and away. But maybe it caught too much of the plate. Maybe it didn’t. It probably doesn’t matter. Jeter lofted the ball to right field -- half line drive, half flyball. It wasn’t really anything special. In most ballparks, Reggie Sanders makes the catch. But not in Yankee Stadium, with its shallow 314 feet to the corner.

“I had no idea it was going to go out,” Jeter said. “I’ve never hit a walk-off homer before, so it was a first-time experience for me.”

An experience that won’t be forgotten by anyone who was here on this night.

On the top step of the Yankee dugout, Shane Spencer and Clay Bellinger eyed the ball as it flew through the night. When it landed safely, they vaulted the padded bar in front of the dugout. Bellinger danced with wild hops to greet his teammate.

The Yankees are used to this sort of story.

“The thing about our team, who cares what your stats are or what the scoreboard says, you come through when needed,” Jeter said.

He’s right. They do. Maybe Jeter’s chapter is just part of a much larger book that’s not even about him.

David Schoenfield is the baseball editor for ESPN.com