For one October week in 2000, New York was two cities. The Subway Series gave the Yankees their third straight championship, the Mets their only real shot at the dynasty, and baseball the best kind of street fight.
DID YOU KNOW?
The 2000 Series was the first all-New York World Series since 1956, when the Yankees beat the Brooklyn Dodgers. The Yankees' four wins in 2000 came by a total of five runs.
The dynastic Yankees had never faced a real crosstown test. The 1996, 1998 and 1999 titles came against the Braves and Padres - National League royalty, but strangers. The 2000 Mets were no strangers: Bobby Valentine's club had won 94 games, and Queens spent all summer saying the Yankees had gotten lucky avoiding them. Then the Mets beat the Cardinals in the NLCS, and the city had itself a Series.
The Fight
Game 1 at the Stadium went 12 innings - the longest World Series game ever played at the time - before the Yankees scratched out a 4-3 win. Game 2 was the one nobody forgets: Roger Clemens, facing Mike Piazza for the first time since hitting him in the head with a fastball in July, threw the jagged barrel of Piazza's shattered bat back toward him in the first inning. Benches emptied. Clemens stayed in, and won 6-5.
The Mets took Game 3 at Shea 4-2 - ending the Yankees' record 14-game World Series winning streak - and for one night, the whole thing felt up for grabs.
It was not. Derek Jeter led off Game 4 with a home run on Bobby J. Jones' first pitch, the Yankees won 3-2, and the series came back to Shea for Game 5 with the Yankees up 3-1.
The Ending
Game 5 was Al Leiter's masterpiece until it was not. Leiter threw 142 pitches, and the game was tied 2-2 in the ninth when Jorge Posada worked a nine-pitch leadoff walk - the at-bat that won the Series. Scott Brosius singled, and Luis Sojo - a 35-year-old utility infielder - bounced a single up the middle on pitch number 142. Posada scored, and when the throw home skipped off Posada's leg, Brosius came in too. 4-2.
Mariano Rivera took over in the bottom half. With two outs and a man on, Piazza drove one to deep center, and for a heartbeat Shea held its breath. It died on the warning track in Bernie Williams' glove. Jeter, who hit .409 with two homers, was the MVP.
The Last One
Nobody knew it then, but that was the end of something. The three-peat made the Yankees the first team since the 1972-74 Oakland A's to win three straight titles - and no one has done it since. Twenty-six championships, and the last one came against the neighbors.
The city stayed one city again the next morning. But for a week, it was the loudest argument New York ever had with itself - and the Yankees won that too.
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Sources: MLB.com ("Jeter's Yankees top Mets in 2000 World Series") · Baseball-Reference.com (2000 World Series statistics) · Wikipedia (2000 World Series)
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