He leaped out of the dugout and sprinted to the mound in a city where October legends are born.

It was the ninth inning of the first World Series start in the 31-year-old lifetime of Clifton Phifer Lee. And he gave you the impression, with every pitch he threw, and with every mad sprint back out there, that there was no place in the solar system he would rather be. What happened at Yankee Stadium on Wednesday night is not supposed to happen. What Cliff Lee did to the Yankees in Game 1 of the 2009 World Series -- nine innings of six-hit, zero-earned-run shutout World Series baseball -- just isn't done. Not to these Yankees. Not in this park.

"What he did -- that's not easy to do against any team, much less this team," said Phillies reliever Scott Eyre, after Lee's latest October masterpiece -- and a couple of Chase Utley Bronx rockets -- had finished carrying the Phillies to a stunning 6-1 Game 1 win over CC Sabathia and the Yankees. "But especially in this park."

Right. Especially. Nobody had ever done to the Yankees in this park what Cliff Lee did to them in Game 1 of this World Series. You can spell that N-O-B-O-D-Y.

During their entire first regular season at the new Yankee Stadium, the Yankees never once allowed any opposing pitcher to march into the Bronx, go all nine innings and hold them without an earned run.
But then again, you could argue that they'd never met up all year with a pitcher on the kind of roll Lee has been on this October -- a roll as historic as it is downright spectacular.

He now has made four starts in this postseason -- the first four postseason starts of his career. In every one of them, he has gone at least seven innings and given up one earned run or none.

In the history of baseball, only one other starting pitcher ever started his postseason career with four starts like that -- a Hall of Famer named Christy Mathewson, who did it as recently as a century ago (in 1905-11).

Meanwhile, Lee has now pitched 33 1/3 innings in his postseason career -- and given up a total of two earned runs. Two. That computes to a ridiculous 0.54 ERA.

And how many pitchers in history have a lower ERA than that in that many postseason innings? The answer is none. Nada. Your previous all-time record-holder was Mariano Rivera, holder of a 0.77 ERA. He had an excellent view Wednesday of the new record-holder's relentless brilliance.

Before this October, Cliff Lee had been to the old pitcher's mound 194 times in his big-league career. He'd won a Cy Young Award. He'd had a 20-win season. But he'd never thrown a postseason pitch.

So you never know how any pitcher, even pitchers as good as this one, are going to handle the demands and the pressures of October. But if there was any doubt about how Cliff Lee was going to handle all that, uh, let's just say he's now officially obliterated it.

"It's surreal," he said Wednesday night, after becoming the first pitcher in history to rip off back-to-back 10-strikeout, no-walk postseason games. "I mean

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