As Alex Rodríguez and his New York Yankees team-mates revel in a ticker-tape parade along Broadway today, he might reflect that it is only nine months since he was a national hate figure admonished by the President of the United States.

It is easy to go from hero to villain in sport but much harder to take the opposite route. Rodríguez has travelled both in the space of a season. Redemption has been rapid for the drugs cheat turned World Series champion after a 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday night.

Rodríguez is Major League Baseball’s best-paid player and arguably most talented hitter, but his reputation was in ruins in February when the news broke that he had tested positive for steroids when with the Texas Rangers in 2003, a year before the sport started to punish players for taking banned substances.

His voice quaking, the third baseman admitted his guilt in a television interview and Barack Obama, in his first prime-time news conference as President, called it “depressing news” that “tarnishes an entire era” for fans. Rodríguez’s clean-cut image was smashed to pieces. “A-Rod” was now “A-Fraud”. He was humiliated and America horrified at the latest tawdry drugs revelation from a sport that cannot trust its stars.

Injured at the start of the season, taunted by crowds at away games as “A-Roid”, the negative headlines returned when the Yankees reached the play-offs. The 34-year-old may one day break Barry Bonds’s all-time home run record, but he has struggled mightily in the postseason since joining the Yankees in 2004, gaining the reputation as a “choker”.

This time, though, he was excellent, coming good at crucial moments and hitting six home runs to fill a gaping void in his CV as the Yankees knocked off the Minnesota Twins, the Los Angeles Angels and, in the early hours of yesterday, the Phillies, the defending champions.

“He has exorcised a lot of demons,” Brian Cashman, the Yankees general manager, said. “There’s no reason to take any, ‘He can’t do this. He can’t do that.’ He has done it all now.”

Rodríguez said: “It has been a special year. I know it started rocky. A lot of people ran the other way, but my team-mates and coaches and organisation stood right next to me. And now we stand together as world champions.”

The World Series had some credibility restored after years of one-sided contests. The Yankees’ 4-2 series win over the Phillies represented the first time since 2003 that the “Fall Classic” had gone as far as a sixth game.

For New York, it was the 27th World Series title in the club’s history and ended an improbable drought for the biggest and richest team in the sport. This was their first World Series appearance in six years and their first championship since 2000. Last year they did not even make the play-offs.

This season the Yankees had the largest wage bill in the sport for the ninth successive year: $201 million (about £121 million), almost $66 million more than the next costliest team, the New York Mets, and more than the cheapest four sides combined. Since they lost in the 2001 World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks, the Yankees have committed about $1.7 billion in player wages. Their new stadium, which opened this year in the Bronx next door to the old Yankee Stadium, cost $1.5 billion.

Rodríguez signed a ten-year, $275 million contract in 2007. Last winter, the Yankees agreed to pay a combined $423.5 million to Mark Teixeira, the hard-hitting first baseman, and C. C. Sabathia and A. J. Burnett, both high-profile starting pitchers, all signed on long-term contracts out of free agency.

Yet this victory owed much to the savvy and brilliance of four veterans who link the old Yankees winning dynasty with the new: Mariano Rivera, 39; Derek Jeter, 35; Andy Pettitte, 37; and Jorge Posada, 38. They are remnants from the mid-Nineties, when New York won four titles in five years.

“The funny thing about those four guys is the team in the 1990s couldn’t have won without them, and the team now couldn’t have won without them,” Paul O’Neill, a former Yankees right-fielder, said. “I don’t think you’ll see four constants like that again.”

The Yankees’ triumph was a victory for remarkable continuity; and, thankfully for Rodríguez, for incredible change.

Matsui rises to conquer

• It was fitting that a monstrous performance from “Godzilla” should lead the Yankees to victory. Hideki Matsui, the 6ft2in slugger so nicknamed because of his power, became the first Japanese player to win the World Series’ Most Valuable Player award.

• A superstar in his home country, the 35-year-old started only three of the six games but matched a single-game Series record of six runs batted in during the 7-3 win over the Philadelphia Phillies in the early hours of yesterday.

• Overall, he hit three home runs with a batting average of .615, the third highest in Series history, and eight runs batted in. “This is the best moment of my life,” he said.

• In the final year of a $52 million, four-year contract, it is unclear whether he will return to New York next season.