Olerud paying big dividends

? The New York Yankees found quite a bargain in John Olerud.

Salvaged from the baseball scrap heap, the sweet-swinging first baseman has filled in admirably for ailing slugger Jason Giambi the last two months.

Olerud still packs some power, too. His two-run homer off Pedro Martinez helped New York beat the Boston Red Sox, 3-1, Wednesday night for a 2-0 lead in the AL championship series.

“I would say it ranks right up there,” said Olerud when asked if it was the biggest hit of his 16-year career. “It’s definitely the freshest in my mind, that’s for sure.”

After slumping at the plate most of the season, Olerud was released on July 27 by the last-place Seattle Mariners, his hometown team.

“It’s not anything that you want to have happen to you,” he said. “I was hoping that I would get another opportunity to play.”

Experts and scouts said he had lost the quick hands and bat speed that made him a .297 career hitter coming into the season.

The Yankees didn’t buy it. He was only 35, and good players just don’t lose their skills all of a sudden, manager Joe Torre said.

The timing was perfect.

New York's Jorge Posada, left, congratulates John Olerud after Olerud hit a two-run home run. The Yankees defeated the Red Sox, 3-1, in Game 2 of the AL championship series Wednesday night in New York.

New York needed a steady, everyday replacement for Giambi, sidelined by a benign tumor. So the big-budget Yankees grabbed Olerud on the cheap — for about $100,000 after he was making $7.7 million in the last year of his contract with Seattle. He said four teams expressed interest — and all were in the playoff hunt.

“There’s a lot of things that go into making a decision when you have some options,” the soft-spoken Olerud said. “New York was definitely the best fit for me.”

He’s been worth every penny and much more since he signed on Aug. 3. His soft hands almost single-handedly improved the infield defense, and he’s come around at the plate.

“You get a guy that hits a lot of line drives, that plays really good defense. He’s been a really big help for us,” second baseman Miguel Cairo said. “That was a big thing, that they signed him.”

Olerud batted .280 in 49 games for the Yankees, and his sharp eye helped produce a solid .367 on-base percentage. He hit four homers and drove in 26 runs, mostly from low in the lineup.

Those numbers are a far cry from 1993, when Olerud won the AL batting title with a .363 average and helped Toronto win its second consecutive championship. Now he’s closing in on another trip.

“I got to the World Series pretty early in my career, and I think having not made it back to the World Series just lets you know how difficult it is and how special it is. So I think that’s the thing that hits home,” he said.

The two-time All-Star and three-time Gold Glove winner went 3-for-14 with two doubles in the division series against Minnesota. Then he came up big in Game 2 of the ALCS against New York’s biggest rivals.