PHOENIX – I try to forget about it, but it is nearly impossible to do so.
All these years later, I can still think about what took place on that inglorious night.
There is an old saying that the losses hurt more than the wins bring you joy and that is certainly true.
You may think losing four straight in 2004 to the Red Sox was the worst moment in my Yankee fan history and it probably is. However, nothing will ever top the emotions I felt during and after Game 7 of the 2001 World Series.
The Yankees returned to that building in 2004 and I was there. I needed to be there. I needed some closure. I had to turn the page on what happened three years prior.
Bank One Ballpark was the name of the stadium then, the temperature was 108 and inside the ballpark as I walked around, all you could see on the TV’s was a replay of the Diamondbacks batting in the bottom of the ninth inning.
Ugh.
I still remember most of what happened that night to a tee. Some details are a bit blurry, but the bottom of the ninth still comes in crystal clear.
Today, the Chase Field is the name of the park, the weather is still hot (102 degrees) outside, and the Diamondbacks made sure to remind us all of that horrifying night anywhere you walked. If they could put monitors on the bathroom stalls, they likely would have done that too.
Mark Grace and Luis Gonzalez, two of the heroes from that 2001 team, were on hand to throw out the first pitch Monday night. Grace, whose solid single to center off Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning began one of those most improbable comebacks in World Series history. Gonzalez’s bloop single over Derek Jeter’s head won them the championship and derailed hopes of a fourth straight championship.
Now that the Yankees are defending world champions, the memories from that night do not provide as much anger as it used to, but it gave us all a moment to reflect on that fateful night.
I was a student at St. John’s University at the time and all of my newly found friends were together for Game 7. Every one of us was nervous going into this night. The Yankees could have won the championship the previous night, but Andy Pettitte pitched one the worst games of his career (he would find out later he was tipping his pitches) in a 15-2 Game 6 loss. With Curt Schilling on the mound for this final game, things did not look good.
Roger Clemens started for the Yankees and even though the label of “postseason choker” finally was gone the previous year, no one knew what to expect.
After six innings, the Diamondbacks led 1-0 before a single by Tino Martinez tied the game. Clemens pitched his heart out and departed from the game with one out in the seventh, never having to answer questions about his fortitude in big game situations.
In the eighth, Alfonso Soriano was able to golf a 1-1 splitter from Schilling into the left field seats to give the Yankees lead, leaving them six outs away from another title.
Rivera struck out the side in the bottom half and miraculous, there were only three outs to go. There was no way they could lose this, right?
At the time, Rivera had not blown a postseason save in over four years, saving 23 straight. The Yankees clearly were the inferior team over the course of the series, but somehow were in a position to steal a title on pure muscle memory.
You also have to remember the mentality of a Yankees fan during that time. As three-time champions, there was a sense of inevitability to all of this. There no way they would or could lose. No matter how it happened, somehow, someway, they were going to find a way.
The contemplation of losing, seriously losing, did not exist.
Grace singled to center to begin the bottom of the ninth after Randy Johnson, the Game 6 starter, pitched a scoreless top half.
Damian Miller attempted a sacrifice bunt that Rivera fielded and the throw went into center field. On the play, Jeter was slow to get up, limping as his right leg was clearly in pain, but there was no way he was going to come of the game, not with the championship three outs away.
In the dorm room, where about 10-15 gathered for the game, we just stood there in silence. None of us who were rooting for the Yankees said a word.
Jay Bell would lay down a bunt that Rivera fielded and threw to third for the first out. However, Scott Brosius did not throw to first for the double play when replays clearly showed he would have had a play on the aging veteran.
Tony Womack would then double down the line in right to tie the score when the patented Rivera cutter got just enough of the plate for him to get a good swing on it and hooked inside first. Runners were on second and third with only one out.
We sat there in stunned disbelief, unable to come up with words to describe what was going on. None of us could believe the championship was slipping away in this fashion.
Of all the games to blow save, but to have it happen in Game 7 of the World Series in the bottom of the ninth?
Unthinkable.
A pitch then hit Craig Counsell to load the bases and at that point, we all had a sense of what was coming. None of us wanted to say it, but we knew. We wanted to hope for a double play to get the game to the tenth and give us another shot, but the offense was so anemic in that series (they did not score more than four runs in any of the games) that it would have been like dying a slow, tortuous death.
Of course, there was the famous story of the victory celebration that was being set up in the Yankee clubhouse prior to the start of the ninth inning that George Steinbrenner made FOX Sports and Major League Baseball remove from the clubhouse the moment the rally began. It was all happening so slow, and yet, so fast.
Gonzalez stepped in and former manager Joe Torre came to the mound for a meeting. It would be the last meeting he would have with his infield, as he would know them.
Torre chose to play the infield in as opposed to double play depth to nail down the runner from third at the plate. Anything over the infield would lose the World Series.
Rivera threw a cutter in on the fists of Gonzalez. He was able to lift it softly, just over the head of Jeter just beyond the infield grass for the game winning hit as the Yankees slowly walked off the field, to the dugout and into the unknown.
It was the final game in the career of Scott Brosius and Paul O’Neill. Tino Martinez would leave the team to go to the St. Louis Cardinals before returning three years later. Chuck Knoblauch was also among those in the purge. The mainstays that were part of most, if not all, of the winning were on the way out.
That team was the last great modern dynasty in sports. Sure, the Patriots in football may have won three out of four Super Bowls or the Lakers in basketball may have had a three-peat. But no team, in any sport will ever be able to match the run the Yankees had from 1996 until that Sunday night in the first week of November in Phoenix, Arizona.
It was where the dynasty came to an end.
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