One will be the champion of baseball.

That's what's happening in the America's Cup, the sailing world's equivalent of the fall classic. Playing the part of Joe Torre is New Zealand's Sir Peter Blake. Auditioning for the Bobby Cox role are Paul Cayard and Francesco de Angelis.

Blake heads the New Zealand syndicate that won the last Cup 5-0 in 1995 off San Diego. It has been practicing with its own boats while challengers have fought for real for the right to face the Kiwis in the best-of-9 finals starting Feb. 19.

The challenger trials began Oct. 18, five days before the Yankees began their own sweep, in four games over the Braves.

Now there are just two visiting boats left -- AmericaOne from San Francisco's St. Francis Yacht Club with Cayard at the helm vs. Prada from Italy with de Angelis behind the wheel.

On Wednesday, Prada won the opener of the best-of-9 challenger finals with a 24-second victory. Race 2 is Thursday. The first boat with five wins meets New Zealand for the Cup.

The Americans and Italians are very familiar with each other's boats and crews, though their read on New Zealand isn't as clear. Blake figures he doesn't have an edge because he doesn't know as much about the opposition as he would had he raced against them.

"We would have liked to but we knew right from day one we weren't going to be able to," he said.

In the past, defending countries have held trials of their own which allowed their boats to tune up in a competitive racing environment. Blake chose not to do that, putting his team directly in the finals as the Kiwi defender.

"People have criticized us for not having defender trials," he said, "but New Zealand's too small for that. It just would not have worked."

Blake's crew did practice once against Nippon, prompting other challengers to accuse the Japanese team of aiding the enemy.

"That race didn't prove anything to us, but it got the others in a real lather," Blake said. "It did its job."

With that exception, New Zealand's practices with its own boats gave challengers fewer chances to gauge the speed and tactics of Blake's team.

"It is impossible to know how good they are," said Peter Isler, the navigator aboard Stars & Stripes, Dennis Conner's boat that was eliminated in the challenger semifinals. "You've got to assume they've got good boat speed, but there's absolutely no way to know how fast they are, whether their strength is upwind or downwind."

Doug Peterson thinks he has a better idea. He helped design Black Magic, the New Zealand boat that won in 1995, and now is a key figure in Prada's design team.

"The New Zealand boats are sort of powerful boats. I think they might have some problems in light wind," he said. And five months ago, he felt the boat he helped design five years ago was faster than the two new Kiwi boats.

Not so, Blake says.

"We know we're going faster than last time," he said. "We're not talking about a little bit but a lot. But we've still got to think we've got a reasonable handle on the opposition, but until you actually come up next to them, you don't know."

In the five races of the 1995 finals, New Zealand blasted away from Young America, the boat Conner borrowed from a rival American syndicate after he had used Stars & Stripes in the trials.

Will this year's event be closer?