PHOENIX -- This is the story of a baseball game that made hearts pound.

	Curt Schilling takes a well-deserved champagne shower after his third straight outstanding World Series start.

That made a 42-year-old baseball player pray.

That turned a 6-foot-10 starting pitcher into the world's tallest closer.

That somehow ended with the team that always wins trudging off the field while somebody else celebrated.

This is the story of a World Series that reminded the planet why there is no better sport on earth.

That made the impossible seem possible.

That left the poets and historians searching for ways to digest where it fit into the fabric of the great sporting events we have witnessed in a lifetime.

This was a game, this was a World Series that explained why they play and why we watch.

"This was a World Series that had it all," said Mark Grace, after his team with the purple pinstripes, the Arizona Diamondbacks, had knocked off the New York Yankees 3-2 in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. "So I don't think it surprised anybody that the seventh game of this World Series ended crazy. It didn't end normal because it couldn't end normal. I don't think anybody expected it to."

Well, anybody who did sure wasn't paying attention. For the last week, the normal has turned abnormal, and the impossible has turned routine. So why wouldn't we expect this one to end with one more astonishing plot twist in the bottom of the ninth inning?

With the ultimate closer, Mariano Rivera, finally meeting a postseason lead he couldn't hold?

With a broken-bat blooper flying over a drawn-in infield?

With the dynasty of a great champion toppling in a brief, stunning instant, with the vision of history's third-ever four-peat dangling just over the horizon?

"Hey, somebody told me we just beat the New York Yankees and Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning," Grace said, looking as if he'd just taken a raft ride down a river of champagne. "I still don't believe it. But here I am, wearing this shirt that says, 'World Series champions.' So it must be true."

Oh, it's true, all right. You can look it up. Forever.

There will be a line in every World Series record book and every encyclopedia that says the New York Yankees finally did lose a World Series. But that line won't tell the whole story, because it is a story even George Lucas would have trouble dreaming up.

Three of the last four games in this World Series ended with the final swing of the bat. Four of the last five games were decided by one run. And the grand finale is a game that is already locked inside the DVD player in our heads and will play on as long as we sit around and debate the epic games we have ever seen.

It was a game in three parts. Part one was Roger Clemens versus Curt Schilling. Two 20-game winners with their gas tanks running low, huffing and puffing, throwing 97-mph smoke and splitters that hurtled out of the sky, refusing to leave, refusing to lose.

"I kept thinking it was the Thrilla in Manila," said Arizona GM Joe Garagiola Jr. "It was Frazier and Ali in the ring. Somebody was going to have to win on points, because you knew they couldn't knock each other out."

They arrived in the sixth inning, tied at 0-0. It was only the third Game 7 ever in which the two starting pitchers got through five innings without allowing a crooked number on the scoreboard. You've heard of the others: Morris-Smoltz in 1991, Gibson-Lolich in 1968.

"No surprise there," Schilling would say later. "I knew he was going to bring his A game. I just had to make sure I brought mine."

Finally, in the sixth, it was Clemens who cracked first, allowing an RBI double to Danny Bautista that shook every cactus bush in the desert.

Schilling, meanwhile, was scary-great, pitching on three days' rest for the second time in a week. After six innings, he'd allowed one hit and faced the minimum 18 baserunners -- becoming just the fourth pitcher since Don Larsen in 1956 to do that through six innings of any World Series game, let alone the last one.

But these are the Yankees. You pound them in the kisser. You lock them in a room with no escape hatch. You blindfold them, tie them up and send them off to sea on a raft. And a second later, they're right back on top of you, with that gleam in their eyes, singing Sinatra.

So they pieced together a game-tying rally off Schilling in the seventh, punctuated by a Tino Martinez single. And you knew they were going to find a way to win a World Series in which they easily could have lost all seven games. Didn't you?

"They played exactly how I expected a four-time world champion to play," Schilling said. "That's an unbelievable baseball team over there."

As soon as Bob Brenly let Schilling hit for himself in the bottom of the seventh, you could smell the next Yankees ambush coming. And it arrived five pitches into the top of the eighth, when Alfonso Soriano nominated himself for the part of Bill Mazeroski in the now-scrapped George Steinbrenner blockbuster production, "Revenge of the 1960 Yankees."

Schilling worked the count to 0 and 2 as Soriano led off the inning. Schilling came back with a killer splitter. Soriano fouled it off. Then came a 94-mph flameball. Soriano got a piece of that one, too.

Schilling thought to himself he had this guy right where he wanted him. He shook off a fastball. He reared back and snapped off one more diving splitter that was heading for the dirt when Soriano golfed it out of orbit and lofted it 10 rows deep into the seats in left-center.

In the Yankees' dugout, Joe Torre pumped a fist and remembered to exhale, for the first time in two hours. On the mound, the pain on Schilling's face could be seen from here to New Mexico.

"I felt great," Schilling said. "I felt fantastic. That ball he hit out, I shook off to get to. I was happy with the whole sequence. But when that ball went out, I knew it meant we had to go through their bullpen. And their bullpen is so great, let's just say there are not many scenarios that would wind up with me feeling as happy as I do right now."

Soriano hadn't even made it around the bases when out there in the Yankees' bullpen, the greatest closer of our time, Senor Rivera, was already heading for the mound, loosening up to finish a deal he had finished 23 times in a row.

For four straight postseasons, it was a sight that meant the baseball game was over, and the parade could begin whenever they were finished shredding all the tickertape. But not on this night.

Grace and Brenly converged on the mound to pat Schilling on the head and thank him for sacrificing every tendon in his shoulder for the only cause worth playing for. Brenly and Schilling had had their tense moments this week. But this time, the manager looked his co-ace in the eye and told him, "You're my hero."

As Schilling walked off the mound, the three Arizona outfielders -- Bautista, Steve Finley and Gonzalez converged in center field to talk over how they were possibly going to escape from this giant well they had just fallen into.

"We saw him warming up out there," Finley said of Rivera. "But when we all met out there in the outfield, the first thing I said was, 'We're gonna get this guy. We're gonna get him. We're gonna find a way.'"

Yeah, well, it sounded good. But you could excuse the rest of the world for thinking that way didn't exist. This man had saved 23 postseason games in a row, 19 of them in outings of more than one inning. He had the lowest postseason ERA (0.70) of any pitcher who ever lived.

So if there was a way to beat him that didn't involve a kidnap plot, no one had uncovered it in four years.

The odds of getting two runs in the ninth inning off Mariano Rivera are right up there with the odds of going to the moon in a used Hyundai. Can't happen. Never happens. ... But it happened. But it happened.

But then this game began spinning in still more crazy ways. Schilling was leaving. Randy Johnson was warming up in the bullpen. Next thing you knew, he was leaving that bullpen to get the last out of the eighth. Next thing you knew after that, he was coming out for the ninth to get three more outs.

And if you'd sworn you'd just seen him starting Game 6 the day before, it wasn't the alcohol. He actually did that. Nobody had pitched seven innings of Game 6 of a World Series and then come back in relief the next day since Vic Raschi in 1952. But this was a World Series gone insane. So the Big Unit got his team to the bottom of the ninth.

Rivera had struck out the side in the eighth, marred only by a soft single by Finley. So there was no reason to think his ninth inning would be any different.

"We were very confident when he went out there in the ninth, obviously," said Rivera's bullpen cohort, Mike Stanton. "We've seen Mo do it so many times, you know he's got ice in his veins. When he goes out there, he gives these guys the sense they're not going to lose."

But with his second pitch of the ninth, Grace fisted a cutter into left-center field, even as his bat was being given last rites.

"I'm just glad I hit that ball," Grace said, "because I think it would have hit me in the chest if I didn't."

Damian Miller then laid down the bunt that changed the World Series. Rivera fielded it and heard catcher Jorge Posada yell "second base." But Rivera threw it before he had control of the baseball, and the throw sailed behind pinch-runner David Dellucci, past Derek Jeter, and into center field. Everyone was safe.

"It was the right place to throw the ball," Rivera said later. "The guy wasn't even halfway to second base. But I didn't have a good grip on the ball, and it just took off."

Rivera then got one out, forcing Dellucci at third base on another bunt attempt, by Jay Bell. So the Yankees were two outs away. Who knew it would be their final out of the season?

Tony Womack somehow fought off a 2-2 cutter and served it into right. Pinch-runner Midre Cummings rumbled home. The great Rivera's streak was over. The baseball game was not.

"We were out in the bullpen," said Brian Anderson, "and the place was shaking, and I was standing next to Mike Morgan. He was going to go into the game next if it stayed tied. I swear, he was like half-crying. He said, 'Lord, I know I don't pray as much as I should. But please get us a run right here, because I don't know if I can pitch.'"

There are some things, though, even prayer hasn't been able to influence. And Rivera is one of them. The odds of getting two runs in the ninth inning off Rivera are right up there with the odds of going to the moon in a used Hyundai. Can't happen. Never happens.

But it happened. Rivera plunked Craig Counsell with a pitch to load the bases. And up marched Luis Gonzalez, trying to figure out how he could unload them.

Just one inning earlier, Rivera had struck Gonzalez out on a man-eating cutter. And on the way back to the bench, Gonzalez looked over his shoulder at the man who had just thrown this pitch. Was he human, or what?

"The guy's amazing, man," Gonzalez said of that look. "Every time you go up there, you know to keep looking (for the cutter) in. And the more you look in, the more you start to swing early, the more the ball moves on you.

"So when I went up there in the ninth, it was the first time all year I choked up. I said to myself, 'Just put the ball in play and make something happened.' And what do you know, man. It happened."

One more heat-seeking cutter went bearing in on his fists. Gonzalez fought it off and punched it into the air, floating, floating, floating through the night. This wasn't happening. Was it?

Jeter and Soriano turned to stagger after it. But the infield was in. They weren't going to get there. This wasn't happening. Was it?

It was. It did. The baseball fell. Bell could have crawled home with the winning run. A mob scene broke out at home plate. Then another broke out at first base, where Gonzalez was shrieking with joy.

And over their shoulders, the greatest champions of their era walked slowly off the field, one by one, afterthoughts in the shadows of someone else's party. It was only that sight, of Jeter and Bernie Williams shuffling painfully off toward a loser's clubhouse, side by side, that convinced you this was real, that the champs hadn't won, that Rivera hadn't triumphed, that someone else was going to ride in this parade.

"It was a tough moment, definitely," Rivera said, facing this loss and the questions with tremendous dignity . "We have a great bunch of guys here, and I feel sorry that I didn't finish this off. But I'm not perfect."

He's as close as anyone has ever come, though. Which explains the feeling in both clubhouses as the reality of what had just happened to him sank in.

The only word Stanton could find to describe his emotions was "disbelief" -- because "you always think Mo's going to get out of it, because he always does. He very rarely gives up any hard-hit balls. And on the rare nights when he doesn't do the job, it's usually jam shots and broken bats that cause it. And it was again tonight."

"They were all broken bats, man," said catcher Jorge Posada. "All of them. Grace, broken bat. Womack, broken bat. Gonzalez, broken bat. What are you gonna do?"

"Nah, I didn't break my bat," Gonzalez said, in full denial. "At least I don't think so. But you know what? If I did, I don't care."

"When Gonzalez got that base hit," Grace said, "the feeling that went through my body is a feeling I never felt in my life. And it's still going through my body. It hasn't sunk in yet that we beat Mariano Rivera, because that doesn't happen. It just doesn't happen."

"It happened, and I knew it was going to happen," Finley claimed, at least slightly seriously. "I saw it rain inside a dome tonight, man. So you knew something freaky was going to happen."

It doesn't get much freakier than Mariano Rivera blowing a save in the ninth inning of the seventh game of the World Series. Except we just saw two Yankees hit two game-tying home runs in Yankee Stadium with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. So who's to say, in this World Series, what was freaky and what was sane?

There's no formula you can draw up, no numbers to crunch through the calculator, to measure what makes one sporting event more indelible, more memorable, more classic than the giant heap of events around it. But when you see it, you know it. And this was it.

"I just hope that was as fun to watch as it was to play in," Schilling said, "because that's got to be one of the greatest World Series ever played."

"I haven't slept in a week," Grace said. "This was unbelievable. I don't know the Yankees do it, man. They do this every year. And this is hard on the old ticker."

"I didn't just come close to having a heart attack," said Joe Garagiola Jr, the Arizona general manager. "I think I had one. If they'd have taken my pulse tonight, it would have looked like the Richter Scale in the '89 World Series."

In the end, though, this game and this Series registered on a lot of Richter scales -- the scale of baseball, the scale of the heart, the scale in the portion of the brain that seals events like this in a special little corner.

In one crazy week, Mystique and Aura went from Schilling's "dancers in a night club," to a magic carpet that carried storybook home runs into the deep recesses of Yankee Stadium, to the missing-persons list on one final nutty weekend in Arizona.

"I know what happened to Mystique and Aura," said Brian Anderson. "They got the night off early tonight -- and headed on down to the BOB."

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com.