Bronx, N.Y., September 21, 2002 — Not a bad game in Detroit, as clinchers go. It’s been a strange string of events since this team became a serious contender in ’94, the last game of which, though not a clincher really, was probably the strangest game of all. On August 11, 1994, all we managed to do was clinch that we would play baseball’s longest game on that last day of the season. We went to extra innings, fell behind, came back to tie, then fell, as Toronto Blue Jay third baseman Ed Sprague took Yank reliever Joe Ausanio out in the top of the 12th at the Stadium.
In light of our first place status the year before, 1995 seemed a disappointing season to many, but we finally made it back to the playoffs after a 13-year absence. Waking up from the doldrums in the season’s second half, we stormed back into contention, resulting in a three-way flat-footed tie with the Mariners and the Angels the last week of the first season featuring the Wild Card. The only thing clear was that one of our competitors would win the West. Fighting the two-headed beast from the West most of September, we ended the season in Toronto where we swept the Blue Jays, clinching the playoff berth Saturday night (September 30) behind a dramatic, late-inning home run by light-hitting second baseman Pat Kelly.
In what may always be “my favorite year,” to coin a phrase, in 1996 we progressed to the championship of the American League East. We captured first place in a two-game series in Baltimore April 30 and May 1, and never relinquished it. The Orioles threatened in early September, but we prevailed, and on Wednesday, September 25, the Yankees clinched the American League East title by pounding out 20 hits in a 19-2 win over the Brewers in the opening game of a twi-night (old-fashioned, single-entry, two-for-the price-of-one!) doubleheader. The game was never in doubt, as the Yanks scored 10 runs in the second inning after plating four in the opening frame. Tino Martinez led with five RBIs and David Cone (7-2) was the easy winner. The Yanks took the nitecap too, 6-2.
In 1997, we were relegated to Wild Card status again, as we played poorly for much of the season and recovered in time to win the extra spot, but not the East. The clincher was a Saturday game with a 4:05 start in the Stadium, with balky-shouldered David Cone facing Chris Carpenter of the Blue Jays. Things started poorly, as the Jays scored two in the second on back-to-back-to-back singles by Delgado, Benito Santiago and Shawn Green. The Yanks came back on a Hayes walk and Girardi double for one in the bottom half, but Shannon Stewart made it 3-1 after tripling to dead center leading off the third. We would come back to win, but it was hardly a stirring victory. We knotted the score, first on a sixth-inning Charlie Hayes double and then Scott Pose scored on a seventh-inning Bernie Williams fielder’s choice grounder. Andy Fox scored the game-winner in the 11th when Tim Raines walked with the bases loaded on four straight pitches from ex-Yank prospect Marty Janzen, who almost came to blows with home plate ump Ken Kaiser as Frank intoned “New York, New York.”
It will come as no surprise that there wasn’t a lot of drama to the game that clinched the AL East title in 1998. We put our closest pursuers out of their misery in Fenway on September 9. The only team to win a division title earlier was Cincinnati in 1975 (September 7). The score was 4-2, with Ramiro Mendoza getting the win over Tim Wakefield, as Mo recorded save no. 35. Interestingly, the night before David Cone beat Pedro 3-2. And on September 10, the conquering heroes were greeted back to the Bronx one day after clinching when Andy beat the Blue Jays 8-5, surviving a five-run second on four consecutive Blue Jays singles and a Jose Canseco three-run home run.
Although it was a lot tougher, Joe Torre was thrilled that the Yanks managed to win their way into the Division title in 1999, prevailing 12-5 in the second half of a day/night doubleheader on September 30 in Camden Yards only minutes before the Red Sox loss to the White Sox would have given us the clincher in “back door” fashion. El duque got the win, behind two homers from Scott Brosius and one from Shane Spencer. Bernie Williams got two hits to reach 200 for the first time in his career, joining Jeter as the first Yankee teammates to reach that number the same year since Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio did it in 1937. Mike Mussina delayed the Yanks’ celebration by shutting them out 5-0 in the opening game.
Neither Torre nor any Yankee fans in attendance had any qualms about backing in on September 29, 2000 in Baltimore, the third consecutive year the Yanks prevailed while away from home. Sitting in a lower level seat in Camden Yards for the first time after several visits, we watched the Orioles pummel Andy Pettitte in a 10-run second inning (the 10th run accruing to Gooden’s record as he gave up the Chris Richard three-run home run to cap the inning). Although Bernie did knock Chuck in in the third, we spent the remainder of the game staring at the dynamic (as in “ever-changing”) Camden Yards out-of-town scoreboard, rooting the Devil Rays on over the Red Sox. In the top of the fifth the Red Sox came from behind to tie 4-4, and the loudspeaker taunted the Yankee fans in attendance by playing “Staying Alive.” We barely paid any notice as Jay Tessmer surrendered three more runs in the eighth on Ripken and Richard homers and stared at their scoreboard until, at 10:06 pm, the 8-6 Tampa Bay win went final, and the AL East reverted to the Yanks, now that all pretenders had been found wanting.
Clinching was a footnote on September 25, 2001. It was the first game back in Yankee Stadium after baseball was interrupted by the 9/11 attacks, and most were glad (certainly not “happy”) to be there, even though we were victorious in the East because the Red Sox lost elsewhere (12-7 to the Orioles in Fenway). Tampa Bay’s Tanyon Sturtze shut us out 4-0, as Roger lost for the first time since May (at Seattle), ending a 16-game winning streak. He did strike out nine batters to move into third place on the career strikeout list. But the night was hardly about baseball. The most emotional cheers came in the 25-minute pregame ceremony that included taps by Branford Marsalis, We Shall Overcome by the Harlem Boys Choir, God Bless America by Irish tenor Ronan Tynan and the national anthem by Max Von Essen, who was escorted by his dad, Thomas, New York’s fire commissioner. Fans did cheer, however, when the Boston final was shown on the scoreboard with Tampa batting in the eighth inning.
So I think today’s win can proudly take its place in that gallery of games. Andy was terrific once again, and taunting the opposition as minor leaguers or the “Toledo Mud Hen” reference McCarver couldn’t resist making is silly. Unless you are playing the team that is directly contesting you, clinching games by their very nature are most often played against teams that are looking at what they have on the farm and evaluating talent for next year. Fenway Park in 1978 only comes along once in several decades, thank goodness. The only time during this run we clinched while actually playing our top opposition was a yawner in Boston in 1998, and even when we had to win right up to the final day in 1995, we were playing a team that had been out of it for some time in Toronto.
Pettitte notched six strike outs while only walking one, and Carlos Pena’s first-inning, run-scoring triple was the only one of five hits Andy gave up that was truly scorched. His excellent first-pitch-strike ratio of 21-7 was an eye-popping 16-3 once he got through the Tiger order the first time. On a day when Soriano and Bernie got no hits and only one walk between them and Jason sat, Jorge went three for three with a walk and two doubles, Ventura lined out to right before singling in the first run, and Nick not only doubled in two to break it open, he did it off a lefty, he just missed a grand slam, and he added a single in the eighth. The ease with which Karsay closed it out (and Andy pitched through seven) belied the fact that it was actually a one-run squeaker. It was a clincher the whole baseball world knew was coming, so what stands out is not just what happened today, but how it affects the near future.
And how much better could a Yankee fan feel about baseball in the coming weeks after seeing what happened in the bottom of the eighth inning? Most of us, I suspect, have adopted the Joe Torre approach to Mo’s recent troubles, and his chances for recovering from them. Of course we all wanted the best closer ever back, but we’ve been using the Doubting Thomas strategy: “Unless I actually see him pick up and throw a ball…” But seeing how Mo looked, how he had little problem recovering with the unfamiliar (for him) 3-0 to the leadoff batter, how his cutter jammed lefty Fick and whiffed lefty Pena, a pain-free followup is about all we need.
On September 21, 1897, the New York Sun made a very famous reply in an editorial that featured the words, “Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.”
I saw the eighth inning. You don’t have to tell me.
BTW,TYW
YANKEE BASEBALL!!!