NEW YORK -- For five years, this is what we've come to think of as baseball in October:

Sinatra spreading the news. Joe Torre sitting in his dugout corner, implacable as a scarecrow. And all those same familiar faces -- Jeter and O'Neill, Tino and Bernie, Rivera and Pettitte -- finding those same familiar ways to win games they had no business winning.

For five Octobers, playoff time has been Yankees time. But even the Ming Dynasty didn't last forever. And now, it turns out, in an even bigger shocker, neither will the Steinbrenner Dynasty.

	Tim Hudson baffled the Yankee hitters for eight innings in Game 2.

Oh, that Yankee Dynasty isn't quite over yet. But to stay alive now, after their 2-0 loss to Tim Hudson and the Oakland A's on Thursday in Game 2 of the AL Division Series, these Yankees have two choices: A) pull a quasi-miracle, or B) jump into a time machine back to October, 1998.

To keep playing now -- after falling behind, 2-0, in this best-of-five staredown -- the Yankees' only option is to win three straight games. And they are going to have to win those three straight games against an Oakland team that hasn't even lost two in a row since August -- 35 games ago.

So the odds of that happening might be better than the odds of Prairie View winning the Rose Bowl. But possibly not by much.

"We have to think anything can happen," said Bernie Williams, in a locker room that felt as somber as any Yankees locker room since the end of the Horace Clark-Celerino Sanchez era. "Obviously, the odds are against us. But that's what makes this game so good. You've still got to play the games. The series is not over."

He's right. The series isn't over. If it is, it's going to come as quite a shock to the Fox television network Saturday night. But if this series is going to last much past Saturday's potentially epic Mike Mussina-Barry Zito matchup, here are just some of the hurdles the Yankees are going to need to overcome -- or at least ignore:

First off, no baseball team has ever lost the first two games of a best-of-five series at home and then come back to win the series. That's not good news for any Bronx residents right there.

"Yeah, but sooner or later someone will," said reliever Mike Stanton. "It might as well be us."

Sure. But hold on. This Yankees fix gets worse -- because the next two games will be played Saturday and Sunday in the Oakland Coliseum, where the A's have won an insane 17 games in a row.

Know the last time the A's lost a game at home? Would you believe Aug. 24? That's six weeks ago. Or, on another kind of calendar, it would be 18 Barry Bonds homers ago.

But that was, of course, during the regular season. And Derek Jeter announced Thursday that no regular-season developments will be permitted to apply to this situation.

"I keep saying it makes no difference what you did during the regular season," Jeter said. "That's in the past. We beat them three times in three games here (during the regular season). But who cares? They beat us six times out there? Who cares? None of that matters now."

	“	We have to think anything can happen. Obviously, the odds are against us. But that's what makes this game so good. You've still got to play the games. The series is not over. ”
		— Bernie Williams

So if none of that matters, then the good news for the Yankees is that none of this matters, either:

That team the Yankees now have to sweep three straight from is a team that has beaten them eight games in a row this year -- six straight in the no-longer-applicable regular season, two straight in this series.

And the last time a Yankees team lost eight straight to any team in the same season was way back in 1990, when Mel Hall, Steve Balboni and a very different Yankees outfit went 0-12 against a previous Oakland generation.

However, commissioner Jeter has ruled that fact equally irrelevant in this case. So the jury will be instructed to ignore that last hunk of trivia.

The jury does know this, though: This is the first time in 11 postseason series -- since the Yankees lost the first two games of the 1996 World Series -- that the men in pinstripes have trailed by more than one game in any series.

That World Series, we're forced to recall, was best-of-seven, not best-of-five. But the Yankees did win four straight in that one after losing the first two. So all of a sudden, it was looking like quite the nostalgic, inspirational Experience To Draw Upon in some quarters of that Yankees clubhouse.

"We got down 0-2 in that World Series," said Tino Martinez. "What we learned from that is that we've got to take it one inning at a time and win one game at a time. We just have to remind ourselves we have won three in a row before."

True again. But never in a situation like this one. The last time any Yankees team was down by two games in a best-of-five series was 1980, against the Royals -- and that Yankees team got swept.

In their current five-year run of glory, only twice since the '96 World Series have the Yankees even played a game that could have ended their season with no parade in the on-deck circle.

One of those games was Game 5 of the 1997 Division Series against Cleveland. And Andy Pettitte lost to Jaret Wright in that one.

But the other win-or-go-fishing game was just last October, when these very same A's forced a Game 5 in this very same round of the playoffs -- in that very same Oakland Coliseum. The Yankees won that one -- and on no sleep yet, after an all-night flight from New York. So how much worse could this year's trip have been than that one?

"I don't think it is any worse," Stanton decided. "At least this time, we don't have to play tomorrow. We'll just have to use that to our advantage. They're definitely a younger team than we are. Sometimes, old guys like us, you just need your rest."

The A's may not require the same eight hours of REM time. But what really ought to scare the Yankees is that, while the A's haven't forgotten what happened last year in Oakland, they have used it as a year-long source of inspiration. Which wouldn't seem like a good thing for the Yankees.

And as the A's have showed in the first two games of this series, they're better than they were last year.

Zito has matured into a dominator. Mark Mulder wasn't even on the postseason roster last year. And Hudson won 18 more games this year, raised his lifetime record to an unprecedented 49-17 and pitched a game Thursday night that Stanton could use only two words to describe -- "absolutely dominating."

"I think they showed that they've been through a tough series with us last year, and I think what you're seeing right now is them as a team growing up," said Pettitte, who pitched 6 1/3 brilliant innings Thursday but saw his team lose a postseason game he pitched for the first time since Oct. 9, 1998 (after nine straight October wins). "The way you grow up is to go out there and get in some pressure-packed situations like they did tonight ... and get out of jams. And that's bringing your game to a different level. The more situations you're in, the more times you have to do it, the easier it becomes."

And those Yankees sure ought to know. In fact, what seems to have shocked them the most so far is not necessarily losing two games -- but the fact that it's the A's that have gotten the breaks, gotten the calls and gotten out of all the big jams. That's supposed to be the Yankees' role in these pageants. Isn't it?

Oakland may be 0 for 19 in the series with runners in scoring position. But when the A's have needed a big home run or a sacrifice fly, they've gotten one. And when the Yankees have needed one, they've gotten something like the David Justice line drive Thursday that deflected off Hudson's glove -- and right to Frank Menechino at second base.

"It just seems," said Jorge Posada, "like we haven't had a break."

Bet you thought you'd never hear those words from a Yankee in October, huh?

But before we read too much into that talk, let's remember that there's a certain championship air with which these Yankees carry themselves. And even down, two games to none, that's not going to change.

The bigger question, though, is: Now that they're up against a team this good, will it help?

"Experience? It's overrated, man," Jeter philosophized. "People love to use experience (as the reason) if you win. And if you lose, they say it's their youth. Who cares? Every team up here knows how to play, and they're no exception. If we come back and win the series, they'll say it was our experience. But what's that mean?"

It means we have this need in our world to explain things. So sit right back and see how this next A's-Yankees extravaganza unfolds. We'll fill in all the explanations later.

Jayson Stark is a senior writer for ESPN.com