The New York Yankees win the World Series. That is not, in itself, a very remarkable sentence to write. Last night's victory over the Philadelphia Phillies means that the richest, biggest and most successful club in baseball have won the grand prize 27 times.

They have the largest payroll in Major League Baseball for the ninth successive year: $201million. That's about $50million more than the next costliest team, the New York Mets. It's more than the cheapest four sides combined.

So, the Yankees, the champions? It's no surprise. And yet it's extraordinary. This was their first appearance in the World Series since 2003; their first win since 2000. That is an arid drought indeed for a club that could not offer the excuse of off-field turmoil, repeated managerial changes or financial trouble for their repeated failures. Each disappointment was simply met with the opening of the chequebook again.

Since they lost in the 2001 World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Yankees have spent some $1.7billion on players as they strove to recapture their crown. Conditioned as we are, especially in British sport, to associate money with success, it's remarkable that the Yankees haven't done better in recent years.

What's the difference between the Yankees of 2009 and previous vintages? You'd assume it would be a terrific crop of new signings, or the emergence of talented youngsters, but you'd only be half right. Last winter, the Yankees committed to pay a combined $423.5million into the bank accounts of Mark Teixeira, CC Sabathia and AJ Burnett, three of the finest free agents available, all signed on long-term contracts. Their ability certainly helped.

But this is a victory that owed most to the savvy of four veterans who link the old Yankees winning dynasty with the new. Mariano Rivera, 39. Derek Jeter, 35. Andy Pettitte, 37. Jorge Posada, 38. The quartet have played in six World Series together for the Yankees and they continue to perform brilliantly at ages when their bodies should be betraying them.

They are the only Yankees remaining from the mid-Nineties, when the team went on a run of four titles in five years, but it is remarkable that there are any left given the length of time that has since passed, the turnover of players and the Yankees' ability to buy in fresh blood.

"The funny thing about those four guys is the team in the Nineties couldn't have won without them, and the team now couldn't have won without them," Paul O'Neill, a former Yankees star who did finally retire, said. "I don't think you'll ever see that again, four constants like that."

Hideki Matsui, signed for the 2003 season, certainly helped as well. The 35-year-old became the first Japanese-born player to be named Most Valuable Player for the World Series, despite not starting the three games in Philadelphia. Matsui's extraordinary .615 average for the Series, with eight runs batted in and two solo home runs in earlier games, stands in stark contrast to the numbers for Phillies hitters such as Ryan Howard.

The defending champions' star slugger, with 45 home runs in the regular season, was one of several players to go missing when it mattered most. Howard's two-run home-run last night was too little, too late, as the Yankees cruised to a 7-3 victory.

It gave the men from the Bronx a 4-2 win in the best-of-seven series. While the Yankees were patently the better team over the six matches, some credibility and appeal was at least restored to baseball's showpiece event after years of one-sided match-ups. Not since the Florida Marlins beat the Yankees 4-2 in 2003 has the Series even required a sixth game.