NEW YORK -- A four-game sweep is to a great World Series about what masturbation is to great sex. That's no knock on auto-gratification, of course. But anyone wanting the best for baseball this October has to feel kind of cranky and disappointed at how the New York Yankees seemed mostly to be playing with themselves during their four-game -- excuse me while I yawwwwn -- sweep of the Atlanta Braves, capped off by Wednesday night's 4-1 win at Yankee Stadium. These Yankees of Jeter and Brosius and Hernandez and Rivera and Williams and O'Neill have swept two Series in a row, and might have to be included on any good short list of the best ever to play the game.

Blank-faced closer Mariano Rivera finished off the Braves, just as he finished off the San Diego Padres in Game 4 a year ago, though using him was a little like driving the Lamborghini down the block to the video rental shop: unnecessary, but very, very cool. Rivera proceeded to mesmerize and overpower the Braves and make a statement that he's the No. 1 closer in baseball, and any team that would try to pry the World Series out of the Yankees' grip will have to shoot him or something. He was named Series Most Valuable Player.

"The ball comes out of his hand like a chain saw, busting wood everywhere," said Braves slugger Chipper Jones.

A lot of people rooted for the Yankees a year ago because of manager Joe Torre, the man everyone would want to manage their own sons, and such a likable, close-knit group of players. Some of that appeal evaporated when the Yankees added Roger Clemens to the team during the offseason, almost just because they could. Clemens has won the Cy Young Award enough times to almost lose count (five, more than anyone), and he even made it onto that all-century team honored over the weekend in Atlanta. But he had never won a World Series ring, and as he took to the mound in Game 4 he was coming off a humiliating loss to the Boston Red Sox, his old team, during the American League Championship Series. He was not the ace of the staff, not even close, but he was lucky enough to get a chance to close out the Braves, and his step and fastball both had more noticeable hop to them.

"You could probably see the foam coming out of his mouth," said Braves starter John Smoltz. "Everyone wants to be in that spot."

"I heard people talk about how I could be rattled and things like that," Clemens said. "I don't get rattled. Maybe earlier in my career. I pitched a big game tonight and put pressure on myself to rise to the occasion."

The Braves were here without Andres Galarraga, who missed the entire season with a cancerous tumor in his back, and Javier Lopez, who's injured, and there was no question of them being on par with this Yankees team. Filip Bondy of the New York Daily News wondered in print earlier this week, "What is the sound of one team playing baseball?" and again Wednesday night it felt most of the time as if the Braves weren't even here, so easy was it for the Yankees to be the Yankees.

"You can't say we should have won this Series," Smoltz said. "You can't feel like you were the better team."

Chuck Knoblauch opened the bottom of the third with a grounder to short that sure-handed Walt Weiss somehow let get under his glove. An error, of course, though it wasn't scored that way. Derek Jeter came up next, practically flaring his nostrils at the strong smell in the air of imminent Yankee feasting, and dropped his wrists on an outside pitch for an opposite-field single that was so textbook, they're going to have to put out a new textbook.

Later in the inning, Tino Martinez hit a sharp grounder to the right side with the bases loaded. First baseman Ryan Klesko got eaten up and the ball rolled into the outfield, giving the Yanks a 2-0 lead. Another error, of course, but not in the official scorer's world. Soon Jorge Posada was ripping a single to right to make it a three-run inning, the celebration was on and the Braves felt about as relevant to the proceedings on the field as Spike Lee. The Braves did score a run later, helped by a bad call at first and a seeing-eye single, but that just encouraged the ever-tasteful Yankees to turn up the heat.

"I'm just glad it's over," said Braves closer John Rocker, the man with the rare knack for firing up the New York fans, adding with a cocky grin: "If I played here, they'd love me."

Before the game, he taunted some fans during batting practice. "I'm a 25-year-old millionaire and you're a bunch of degenerates."

The Yankees fans' reaction? A chant of "Where's your ring? Where's your ring? Where's your ring?"

But Rocker still had his admirers. Actor Danny Aiello, the star of "Moonstruck" and "Do the Right Thing" and a lifelong Yankees fan, went over to the Braves clubhouse afterward. He leaned over Rocker, who was poking at his plate of Spanish rice and strip steak, rather than doing much eating, and said: "Hi, I'm Danny Aiello and I'm a big fan" as Rocker nodded and smiled and then got back to poking at his food.

"How can you not be a fan?" said Aiello.

There are a lot of reasons why America has trouble taking pleasure in still more dominance from the Yankees, but Saul Steinberg probably explained it best. His famous New Yorker's-view-of-the-U.S. map had fun with the idea that people in New York think of anything and everything they do as much more important than what goes on elsewhere. Success in sports just gives them another reason to think this way, which is why you have to root against them. There is something sublime, for example, about the sound of a Yankee Stadium crowd packed tight for a World Series game and making no sound at all, the way it did through much of Tuesday night's pivotal Game 3.

But one thing you notice when you travel from city to city covering baseball for a living, visiting places like Kansas City and Anaheim, is that sports would be a lot more fun if people in the rest of the country were more like New Yorkers in their approach to games. The New York fans are quick to turn on players, which can be ugly, and they often cross the line, like when they throw something as dangerous as a battery at a visiting player. But they care. And they pay attention.

They were chanting, "Tino, Tino" Wednesday night before the Braves had gotten halfway through an intentional walk to Bernie Williams, bringing up Martinez, whereas fans at just about any other major league park would probably have been gearing up for dot-racing or something.

Once you strip away all the bluster and boast, New York sports fans are basically innocent. They hurt when their teams hurt and thrill when their teams thrill. Roger Angell, that greatest of baseball writers, described the crazy excess of Mets fans in this week's New Yorker in much the same terms.

"This is pitiful, but one really should be sorry for everyone else, all the rest of us, who can't think of anything to care about on anything like this scale, and might not have the nerve to hang in there, against such odds, even if we did," he wrote. "Thanks, Mets. Let's go, Yankees."

It might not be enough to turn anyone into a Yankees fan, but it does offer a good reminder that all of sports is just a question of perspective. It's always easy to roll downhill toward the dismissive. Disgruntlement comes easy. But sometimes it's worth putting in the effort to harvest a deeper appreciation, if possible. This for a time threatened to be remembered as the Jim Gray World Series, like the Earthquake Series a decade ago in the San Francisco Bay Area. Gray and his tête-à-tête with Pete Rose were the story of Game 2, and Gray and his on-air snub by Chad Curtis were part of the story of Game 3, won by Curtis with two homers. But all of that stuff has a way of dropping out of the picture, and there in front of the victorious Yankees clubhouse was Game 1 winner Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, who doesn't speak much English, telling Gray, "I'm sorry."

It was quite a moment, since Hernandez was the highlight of the Series, if not the MVP. (If there had been a Game 5, and he'd had another start, he would have been.) His effort striking out the side in the bottom of the first inning Saturday night in Game 1 was jaw-droppingly beautiful. There is poetry in what Hernandez does out there, and once again the people behind the "Only in New York" TV commercials nailed it. They have a spot this year showing a hip night spot where everyone is doing the hot new dance, something that involves making as if to scratch your chin with your uplifted left knee.

Hernandez was so in control, varying his arm angles and release points and speeds and breaks, you started to wonder just how many World Series this basic group of Yankees might win, and now that it's all over, it's time to wonder some more.