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  Greg Schain When Schain grows up, he wants to be equipment manager for the Celtics, or at least learn to write his own taglines. E-mail him at gschain@media.ucla.edu.

Who do the voodoo?

The Yankees do.

It’s true.

And that voodoo has turned a blue New York City into the happy, red-faced Big Apple that it once was.

After Black Tuesday, the outlook for our nation’s largest city looked bleak. The area had lost 5,000 of its citizens, its tallest structure and, worst of all, its infallibility.

But the Yankees are once again giving Gotham something to cheer about.

This October, the Yankee magic has arguably performed its greatest swindle, coming back from a seemingly insurmountable 2-0 deficit against the Oakland A’s to capture the Divisional Series 3-2.

And in the ALCS, they clobbered the Mariners, proving them to be a giant fluke. The Yankees threw their 116 wins out the window and showed them exactly who’s the boss in the American League.

That ALCS victory has brought them to being just two wins away from bringing a much-needed celebratory parade to a devastated city.

A ticker-tape parade down the Canyon of Heroes will be great for the spirit of the city of New York. It will help return the feeling of normalcy to New Yorkers. After all, the Yanks have won four of the last five championships, so New Yorkers are used to downtown closing down on parade day.

Every year, the mayor tells children to skip school and go watch the parade.

And every year, the school’s chancellor tells the public not to listen to the mayor.

Every year, on parade day, business people from all across the city take an extended lunch hour to go watch the best baseball team in the world exalt in the glory that comes along with winning a championship. And every year, once a year, disgruntled Mets fans finally shut up for a day.

New Yorkers need that special day now more than ever. With every sunrise comes the dreary reality that their city still could be under fire, with anthrax or sarin or whatever else these extremists can get their hands on.

We’ve heard it before: an escape. It may sound redundant, but it’s true. A parade would be a much-welcomed escape from everyday life, and would bring back thoughts of happier days for New Yorkers.

Sports is cocaine for a lot of people across the country, especially Yankee fans. New Yorker’s spirits rise and fall with every victory from teams like the Yankees and the Knicks.

They get pissy when their team loses.

I don’t want New Yorkers to get pissy. They have enough to get pissy about. Let them have this victory. Let them have their parade.

They deserve it. Even Yankee haters have to admit that.

But don’t be naive enough to think that the spirit of the city is the only thing that is being lifted by the Yankees playing in the World Series. One other really important aspect of life is being given a much-needed boost by the Yankees.

Guess what it is.

Give up?

It’s the economy, stupid.

Next to the U.S. Open and the Super Bowl, the World Series generates more money for the host city than any other championship.

And New York could use the injection. 29 million square feet of office space was lost, the size of all of downtown L.A., along with myriad jobs. Every influx of new capital and every single job that replaces the ones lost goes a long way.

We can’t revive the New York economy overnight. But we have to start somewhere. The money brought in from the World Series is a great place to start.

In turn, I really hope the Yankees win. Who ever thought the Yankees would be the emotional favorite? It took a dramatic, shameful circumstance.

But it happened.

So, as the Bleacher Creatures would say: Let’s Go Yankees!

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