Only in baseball does money actually walk. It also hits home runs and pitches shutouts.

We'll see this week whether the New York Yankees' money will do all the talking against the relatively broke-ass Minnesota Twins.

Last night, the Twins earned a miraculous come-from-behind berth in the baseball playoffs when Alexi Casilla ($450,000 annual salary) drove in Carlos Gomez ($400,000 annual salary) with the winning run.

The Yanks' Alex Rodriguez makes more money in four days ($458,332) than either of them makes in a year.

Unlike real life, though, baseball's just a game, and Main Street does have a chance of overcoming Wall Street. It won't pay their mortgages, but fans can dream.

A-Rod's annual salary of $33 million is even more than soon-to-be-banished Bank of America CEO Ken Lewis's $24 million.

Overall, the Yanks' annual payroll this year was way over $200 million, compared with the Twins' $65 million. (Over the long term, the Yankees have $243.5 million invested just in pitchers. That includes the sport's supreme bailout czar, relief pitcher Mariano Rivera.)

And to add injury to insult, the playoffs also pit New York's finest scamster, Bernie Madoff, against Minnesota's Jews. Madoff played the state's Jewish golfers like a pro, infiltrating the Twin Cities' wealthy Jewish country clubs to rake in their members' dough. It must have made his putter stand up to scam an estimated $600 million from them. In the process, Madoff wiped out foundations that spread a lot of money around the state.