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If Hideki Matsui had a game like this in the old days when George Steinbrenner was around the Bronx, the ink would already be dry on a new contract. He’d be called “a warrior,” by Steinbrenner and, like Paul O’Neill and Tino Martinez, probably be on the payroll for life.

To do what Matsui did Tuesday night – have a game for the ages, with six runs driven in to almost single-handedly cement the Yankees first World Series title since 2000? The Boss never forgot the contributions of those players on a team built around the likes of Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. They were important complementary pieces and helped give his championship teams texture.

Matsui was named Most Valuable Player of the World Series after the Yankees' 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies and somebody asked him about the pride he takes in representing Japanese baseball.

“I’m certainly aware that I represent Japan in that sense as a baseball player, but moreso in my mind I feel that I am a member of the Yankees. I’m a Yankees baseball player.”

You get the sense there will be many more memorable nights at the new Yankee Stadium. But there will always only be one first World Series and it was Matsui who wrote his name large on this one. And when it was all done – when Mariano Rivera had induced a game-ending grounder for the final out and the Yankees raced out of the dugout and bullpen mostly, it seemed, to surround Alex Rodriguez – the loudest cheer of the night was for Matsui.

Rodriguez also received an ovation as he lifted the World Series Trophy over his head, standing with the rest of his teammates atop a podium that was erected on the field. Referring to his ham-handed steroid admission earlier this spring and the pall it cast over his career and life, he said: “There were people who ran the other way. But these guys … my teammates … were behind me.

“It was heavy. Heavy,” Rodriguez said later, laughing when he was asked what it was like to win a World Series. “I’m speechless. There’s nothing you do individually that compares one tenth to a championship or a team goal.”

Matsui, who is eligible for free agency this off-season, drove in six of the Yankees runs on a two-run home run, a two-run single and a two-run double.

The six runs batted in tie a World Series record set by Bobby Richardson in Game 3 of the 1960 World Series against the Pittsburgh Pirates. Matsui’s eight RBIs in the Series were the most by a Yankees hitter since Reggie Jackson had eight RBIs in both 1977 and 1978.

Matsui is the first player to win a World Series MVP after having a majority of his at-bats as a designated hitter. Paul Molitor had 12 at bats as a first baseman and 12 as a DH when he was named MVP of the 1993 Series.

“I want to tell you something,” Phillies manager Charlie Manuel said, “Matsui, not only did he hit fastballs mostly, but he was also on everything up in the zone. He hit a slider off (J.A.) Happ. The two hits he got off Pedro (Martinez) were fastballs. He hit everything we threw up there.”

Pitching on three days rest for the first time since Game 2 of the 2003 World Series, Yankees left-hander Andy Pettitte was a master of damage control, inducing a pair of inning-ending double plays out of Chase Utley and Jimmy Rollins and surviving a rare contretemps with an umpire – in this case, home plate umpire Joe West.

Pettitte was knocked out of the game in the sixth inning after a two-run homer by Ryan Howard and two-out double by Raul Ibanez. Pettitte kicked the back of the mound angrily as manager Joe Girardi came out to make the change, but he tipped his cap to the raucous crowd as he sprinted off the field. Pettitte’s performance vindicated Girardi’s decision to go to a three-man rotation, as the Yankees became the first team to win a World Series with just three starters since the 1991 Minnesota Twins, who used Jack Morris, Kevin Tapani and Scott Erickson to beat the Atlanta Braves.

Pedro Martinez was given the usual treatment by the Yankee Stadium crowd and we now know the answer to the chant ‘Who’s your daddy?’ In the playoffs, at least, it’s Matsui, who drove in the Yankees' first four runs on a two-run home run and a bases-loaded single against Martinez – who owns him during the regular season, where he’s 4-for-28 (.143.)

Matsui went 4-for-4 with two homers and a walk against Martinez in the Series, and Phillies manager Charlie Manuel had Happ, a left-hander, warmed up in the bullpen when Matsui came up to the plate in the third. But Manuel stuck with Martinez, who was ahead of Matsui 0-2 when Matsui singled off him. It might not have mattered: Happ finally came into the game in the fifth inning and Matsui greeted him with a double.

“Pedro knows how to pitch,” said Manuel. “I had to let him face that guy. I had to let him. It wasn’t time for me to take him out.”

Martinez was flying by the seat of his pants all night, hitting Mark Teixeira to load the bases and getting a gift from West when he rang up Alex Rodriguez on a pitch that was well outside.

It was Rodriguez who was on first when Matsui homered in the second, after drawing a lead-off walk. One of the two runs to score on Matsui’s single, Derek Jeter, reached base when Phillies centre-fielder Shane Victorino misread a routine fly ball to centre.

Martinez was replaced by Chad Durbin in the bottom of the fifth, having allowed three hits and two walks and striking out five. Durbin gave up a run-scoring single to Mark Teixeira.

Teixeira, CC Sabathia and A.J. Burnett were part of a $400-million-plus (U.S.) free-agent airlift this winter. This new Yankee Stadium – which was surprisingly sedate after the win, as the Yankees players raced around the field high-fiving fans who reached out from the stands – ensures that the Yankees will have the kind of revenue stream to maintain a position of economic pre-eminence. There is a more professional feel to the way they spend money but make no mistake: at the core of this World Series is the win-at-all-costs approach from The Boss.

George Steinbrenner was home in Tampa watching the game. But everybody said it was for him. His son Hal, who accepted the trophy on his behalf. Commissioner Bud Selig, who handed it to him and said he was thinking of “my good friend George.”

“To the richest go the spoils,” Teixeira, wearing goggles to protect his eyes from the sting of champagne, said when he was asked about the Yankees' spending. “George Steinbrenner built an empire here, he really did. He deserves to build a great stadium and deserves to have the best money can buy … and this is it look. Look at this stadium. Look at this team.”