Yankees reflect on winning their last World Series title in 2009 — the same year Barack Obama was inaugurated

It had been, Hal Steinbrenner said back then, “a while.”

“It’s been,” the Yankees owner added, “nine years.”

Steinbrenner spoke those words in far better times for his franchise, saying them on the field at Yankee Stadium on Nov. 4, 2009, after the most recent of the Yankees' 27 World Series titles, accomplished with a 7-3 victory in a clinching Game 6 over the 2008 champion Phillies.

That nine-year drought had seemed interminable for the organization, whose previous title had come in 2000, a five-game Subway Series victory over the Mets.

There had been much frustration in the stretch between championships – from Luis Gonzalez’s flared bottom-of-the-ninth walk-off single in Phoenix off Mariano Rivera in Game 7 of the 2001 World Series to a series of first-round exits that ultimately cost manager Joe Torre his job to a playoff-less first season in 2008, the last year at old Yankee Stadium, for Torre’s replacement, Joe Girardi.

Those nine years now seem like a minor blip.

Next Wednesday marks 17 years to the day from that last championship, accomplished on a cool 47-degree night at new Yankee Stadium when, with Rivera on the mound, second baseman Robinson Cano flipped a Shane Victorino grounder to first baseman Mark Teixeira to end it.

The verbiage in the hours and days afterward simultaneously paid collective tribute to the 2009 champions and, unknowingly, provided a prologue of what would be missing, to varying degrees, from each successive Yankees team failing to reach those heights.

“They persevered and they were determined,” general manager Brian Cashman said shortly after the final out in 2009. “They had the attitude that nothing was going to stop them.”

'Never a doubt'

Teixeira, speaking to Newsday earlier this season from his home office in Austin, Texas — where the Republican on Tuesday is an overwhelming favorite to capture Texas’ 21st Congressional district seat — said the 2009 Yankees’ season-long “quiet confidence” stood out the most from a club that went 103-59 and won the AL East by eight games over the Red Sox.

“There was almost never a doubt that we were going to win the World Series,” Teixeira said.

Teixeira was one of three new — and pricey — offseason additions.

After the Yankees went 89-73 to finish third in the AL East in 2008, Steinbrenner, a new stadium opening in 2009, approved an outlay of $423.5 million in contracts to a trio of, he and the organization hoped, difference-makers. Teixeira signed for eight years and $180 million, CC Sabathia for seven years and $161 million and A.J. Burnett signed for five years and $82.5 million.

Sabathia was seen as the most significant.

And it was more than his status as one of the sport’s top pitchers. Cashman saw the former AL Cy Young Award winner — firmly established as one of the game’s great teammates and coming off two standout months with the Brewers in which he, after the trade deadline and as an impending free agent, routinely pitched on three days’ rest in a successful push to get Milwaukee into the playoffs — as someone who could fix what the GM considered a “broken” clubhouse.

“I remember watching him in Milwaukee [in ’08] and thinking to myself, ‘This dude is a stud. Get this guy,’ ” Andy Pettitte, currently a club adviser and formerly a stalwart member of the 2009 rotation, recalled with a smile earlier this year while talking about that season’s Yankees.

Sabathia, Teixeira and Burnett — as well as the perpetually ebullient Nick Swisher via trade — were added to a clubhouse that, while perhaps having grown somewhat stale, was rich with talent. There was the aging Core Four — Derek Jeter, Jorge Posada, Pettitte and Rivera — as well as the underrated Melky Cabrera, an in-his-prime Robinson Cano, a toward-the-end Johnny Damon, the unflappable Hideki Matsui, the emerging Brett Gardner and, of course, Alex Rodriguez. The latter soon would shed himself of the can’t-produce-in-October reputation that dogged him to that point of his career.

A workhorse rotation was fronted by Sabathia (34 starts), Burnett (33), Pettitte (32) and Joba Chamberlain, who made the most starts in 2009 (31) of what ultimately would be a failed transition from bullpen weapon to starting pitcher.

Rivera anchored a bullpen that included, among others, Phil Hughes, Phil Coke, David Robertson, Brian Bruney and Alfredo Aceves.

Closing strong

Though the 2009 team is remembered for all but coasting to the championship, neither the regular season, nor October, was easy.

A 4-0 loss in Atlanta on June 23 dropped the Yankees to 38-32, five games behind the Red Sox.

Cashman has minimized through the years the impact of his much-discussed pregame talk to the team before the June 24 game, and players don’t necessarily directly credit it for the turnaround that followed, either. It wasn’t the GM peeling paint from the wall, players said. But Cashman’s blunt words, the messaging amounting to you’re-too-talented-to-play-like-this, served as a splash of cold water of sorts, a reminder of what players already knew.

“It was just a reiteration of, like, ‘We’re [expletive] good,’ ” Swisher said. “Look around this room. Look at the things we’re capable of doing … from that day forward, it was a completely different squad.”

The Yankees closed the regular season on a 65-27 tear to pull away from the Red Sox, then went 11-4 in the postseason.

Impressive as the 11-4 was, it was not a seamless continuation of the dominance of the closing stretch. The Yankees swept the Twins in the AL Division Series, but they trailed in all three games, needing a game-tying, two-run homer from Rodriguez in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 2 off Twins closer Joe Nathan to force extra innings, with Teixeira’s walk-off homer in the 11th winning it.

They took the first two games of the ALCS against the Angels — who looked straight miserable in the bitter cold and wind of Games 1 and 2 at the Stadium — en route to a six-game victory. Sabathia won series MVP honors. Maybe slightly forgotten is the terror many Yankees fans took into the ALCS because of bitter ALDS losses to Mike Scioscia’s Angels in 2002 and 2005.

The World Series, in which Matsui captured the MVP, saw its share of series-swinging moments – Burnett outdueling Pedro Martinez in Game 2, which came on the heels of Sabathia getting outpitched by Cliff Lee in Game 1, and rallying from an early 3-0 deficit in Game 3 against 2008 World Series MVP Cole Hamels. Rodriguez sparked the rally with a fourth-inning two-run homer that was initially ruled in play before the first use of replay in World Series history overturned the drive down the rightfield line into a home run.

With two outs, the bases empty and Game 4 tied 4-4 in the ninth, Johnny Damon stealing two bases on the same play (taking third upon seeing it unoccupied), after singling off Brad Lidge to cap a nine-pitch at-bat, jumpstarted a three-run inning. Rodriguez drove in the go-ahead run in the 7-4 victory.

A team that led the majors during the regular season with 51 come-from-behind wins, had six such victories in the postseason, two in the World Series.

“Relentless,” said Girardi, asked earlier this season how he, as its manager, would summarize the Yankees' last championship team. “They were relentless.”