PHOENIX -- Now that turned up the volume at the old ballpark.

		Sun., Oct. 28 A quirky factor in Game 3 was the infield. Because of the sun problems, the turf digs up. When a ball is hit hard into the ground, it digs up a divot -- like it was hit with a golf club. There were about five balls hit to Matt Williams Sunday night that did little spins and took weird turns, and Williams made great plays on all of them -- he makes them look easy.

Bank One Ballpark had been humming all evening long, especially when Randy Johnson worked the count to two strikes on another Yankee hitter.

But by the bottom of the seventh inning, the stadium had quieted into nervous apprehension. Arizona held a slim 1-0 lead, and Andy Pettitte had been nearly as dominating as the Big Unit.

And then Matt Williams stepped to the plate with two runners on and one out. Danny Bautista had just singled off Pettitte's thigh. After a quick medical check, Pettitte returned to work.

Williams had been struggling all postseason, entering the at-bat with a .205 mark and just three RBI in the playoffs. In his two previous plate appearances against Pettitte he had seen just three pitches, grounding out to third base on the first pitch and then singling sharply to left field on an 0-1 pitch.

This time, Pettitte started him off with an inside cut fastball that Williams took for a strike. Pettitte had relied on his superb control all night -- he would throw 64 of his 80 pitches for strikes -- and relied mostly on his cut fastball that eats up right-handers and a high fastball that the D-Backs had been chasing.

But he tried to sneak another another one by Williams.

"I believe it was a cut fastball, like the previous pitch. But he left it out over the middle of the plate," Williams said.

	Matt Williams, rear right, heads for home after hitting a three-run homer off Andy Pettitte in the seventh inning.

It did hang, looking more like a lollipup curveball than Pettitte's usual sharp scutter. Williams destroyed it, rocketing the white sphere deep into the lower deck in left field, a line shot measured at 412 feet.

The crowd erupted and wildly waved their white Diamondbacks towels as Williams rounded the bases. Williams has had up-and-down times during his four years with Arizona, battling two different occasions where he broke his foot on fouls balls, and had been booed two weeks ago during a miserable Division Series against St. Louis. But for this moment, he returned to his fan favorite status. Damian Miller and Curt Schilling led the charge out of the dugout to high-five Williams and the two runners who scored ahead of him, Reggie Sanders and Bautista.

It was Williams' third career World Series home run and he became the first player to hit World Series homers for three different teams. He had previously homered with San Francisco in 1989 and Cleveland in 1997.

The rally had started innocently enough, when Pettitte nicked Luis Gonzalez on the bottom of the hand with a 2-2 fastball. After Sanders reached on a 5-4 fielder's choice -- a play the Yankees failed to execute with smooth precision, perhaps costing them a chance to get Sanders at first -- Bautista reached on an infield single.

Upon reaching the dugout, Williams was mobbed by his teammates and then stepped out for a curtain call. A loud one. A loud one that issued a statement that this game was definitely over.