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NEW YORK -- Shawn Chacon had waited to escape the shadow of his Rocky Mountain home, the judgments on a promise unfulfilled within Colorado. Twenty-seven years old and the walls were closing. All along, he wanted a graduation day. He wanted to pack, throw that bag over his shoulder and get out of there.

And when it turned out to be the Yankees at the trade deadline, everyone probing Chacon about the pressure of pitching in New York didn't understand. No, he wasn't going there with the pressures that Randy Johnson, Carl Pavano and Jaret Wright had.

Leaving the Rockies for the Yankees sounded crazy, but in Chacon's mind, he was leaving the pressure behind him.

"He had nothing to lose," his mother, Blanca, said by phone Saturday night.

How fitting everything comes down to the unburdened soul of Shawn Chacon, snatched out of the scrap heap of Coors Field and enlisted to save the $204 million Yankees season, again. How fitting that these Yankees are down two games to one to the Angels and on the brink in the American League Division Series, and suddenly, they're asking Chacon to do in October what he had done back in August and September: Save the Yankees' season.

Again.

"There was never a thought that this would happen for me," Chacon said.

He had been booed back home. He had been declared a disappointment, bordering on a bust near the end (losing 18 of his final 20 decisions with the Rockies). Chacon, 27, had embarrassed himself, his family back in his hometown of Greeley, with two positive drug tests early in his Rockies career and charges manager Clint Hurdle made of his professionalism back a few years.

It's seems so strange now, because Chacon has carried himself like nothing but a pro with the Yankees. He wears those pinstripes like he's worn them his whole life.

"Getting out of my home, out of the shadow of friends and family and getting a chance to go somewhere where not only other people could see me pitch, but I could see for myself what I was capable of," Chacon said.

He's discovered so much that would've never been realized in the rarified air of Coors Field. As a Yankee starter, he's been remarkable, going 7-3 with a 2.85 ERA this season. In the wild season of Chacon and Aaron Small, the Yankees have come to have as much confidence with these anonymous New York arms as any. In all the uptightness that comes with playing in New York, there was a different level of peace that accompanied Chacon to the mound. He arrived throwing strikes, challenging hitters and never stopped.

"He's having a ball," Joe Torre said.

	“	He needed to see what else was out there in the world. He's found that in New York, pitching for the Yankees.”
		— Blanca Chacon, Shawn's mother

Funny, but that's what his mother, Blanca, thought watching Shawn on television back in Greeley.

"You look relaxed son," she remembered telling him. "You look like you're enjoying what you're doing."

"I am," he said. "I know what's behind me now. I know the kind of players I'm with now."

The Yankees are still waiting for Chacon to flinch. Once he left behind that thin air of Coors Field, it was like he could breathe again. To come to New York has felt like something of a graduation, like accepting that Arizona State scholarship he passed on to sign with the Rockies out of Greeley Central High School.

"He needed to see what else was out there in the world," Blanca said. "He's found that in New York, pitching for the Yankees."

Maybe he was always too much of a home boy. After all, he had his reasons for clinging close. As a young child in Anchorage, Alaska, he had been given up for adoption. After a year in foster care, he ended up in Greeley, where Tony and Blanca Chacon made Shawn their son.

There would be no storybook ending in that miserable pitching park in Denver, where as Chacon said: "You can ask anybody that's ever pitched there, they don't want to make a living there -- or want to try. Getting out of there and having an opportunity to pitch every day in a decent pitching environment, it helps."

Shawn Chacon

Starting pitcher New York Yankees Profile

CAREER STATISTICS GM W L ERA WHIP BAA 164 8 10 3.44 1.48 .242

Quickly, too, Chacon discovered how different the culture was with the Yankees. When they were still 3½ games back of Boston in the American League East one day in September, Chacon made mention to Derek Jeter that the Yankees were tied for the wild-card lead. "We don't play for wild cards here," Jeter sniffed.

Yes, Colorado had disappeared in the distance of his pitching career. "The biggest thing was knowing that I was being put in a situation to win and knowing that I might not get an opportunity like this [again]," Chacon said.

In the end, Shawn Chacon would break free from home, from the world he knew, and discover the answer to that ultimate question about his abilities. Randy Johnson and the Yankees' bullpen had been reduced to rubble in Game 3 of the ALDS, and now, the whole baseball season in New York comes down to a transplanted and transformed Rockie.

All these big contracts, all these big names, and here comes Shawn Chacon to save the Yankees season.

Again.

Adrian Wojnarowski is a sports columnist for The Record (N.J.) and a regular contributor to ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPNWoj10@aol.com. His New York Times best-selling book, "The Miracle Of St. Anthony: A Season with Coach Bob Hurley And Basketball's Most Improbable Dynasty," can be purchased at Amazon.com.