October 21, 1998, 25 years ago: The New York Yankees complete the greatest season in the history of baseball.
They started the season 0-3, and 1-4, and fans began to fear that this would be a bad season. Instead, they roared through the regular season, going 114-48. The 114 wins broke the 1954 Cleveland Indians' record for most wins in a season by an American League team. That record would be broken by the 2001 Seattle Mariners, who won 116 games, tying the major league record set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs. Ah, but the 1906 Cubs and the 1954 Indians both lost the World Series, and the 2001 Mariners didn't even get there.
The regular-season highlights including a perfect game by David Wells, against the Minnesota Twins on May 17. They clinched the AL Eastern Division on September 9, against the Auld Enemy, the Boston Red Sox, 7-5 at Fenway Park in Boston.
Center fielder Bernie Williams won the AL batting title with a .339 average. Shortstop Derek Jeter batted .324, right fielder Paul O'Neill batting .317, and 3rd baseman Scott Brosius -- told by manager Joe Torre that he didn't care if he batted .200, he was acquired that season for his glove -- batted an even .300.
Unlike so many past and future "Bronx Bombers" teams, the '98 Yankees didn't bomb teams out of the yard. 1st baseman Tino Martinez led the team with 28 home runs. Williams hit 26, O'Neill and designated hitter Darryl Strawberry 24, Jeter and Brosius 19, and catcher and 2nd baseman Chuck Knoblauch 17. Williams had 123 RBIs, O'Neill 116, Brosius 98, Williams 97, Jeter 84, Knoblauch 64 and Posada 63.
Left field was unsettled, but everybody who was tried contributed, including Strawberry, Tim Raines and Chili Davis, who had been stars on previous teams; journeyman Chad Curtis, rookies Ricky Ledee and Shane Spencer, the last of these hitting 10 home runs in a September call-up.
The pitching was the best in baseball. David Cone went 20-7, Wells led the league in winning percentage at 18-4, Andy Pettitte went 16-11, and, after being signed in June, Cuban defector Orlando Hernández, known as "El Duque" (The Duke), went 12-4. Between starting and relieving, Ramiro Mendoza went 10-2, with 1 save. Mariano Rivera was 3-0 with 36 saves and a 1.91 ERA, leading a bullpen that also included Mike Stanton, Graeme Lloyd and Jeff Nelson.
The Yankees swept the AL Division Series in 3 straight, completing it over the Texas Rangers in the Dallas suburb of Arlington, Texas on October 2. The AL Championship Series would be tougher. The Yankees won Game 1 over the Cleveland Indians.
In Game 2, on October 7, in the top of the 12th inning, Travis Fryman bunted. Tino fielded it, and threws to Knoblauch covering 1st. Except the ball hit Fryman in the back, and he reached base safely. That would have been bad enough. Except Knoblauch argued that Fryman ran out of the baseline -- which he had. But the ball was still loose and in play, and Enrique Wilson (later a Yankee) noticed this, and, even though he stumbled approaching the plate, scored the go-ahead run. The Indians scored 2 more runs in the inning, and won 4-1.
I was watching this game on NBC, as a Yankee Fan. I had gotten up to get a drink, and missed what became known as "the Blauch-head Play." Had I seen it as it happened, I would have gone straight to Newark Airport, where the Yankees would have been heading to fly to Cleveland for the next 3 games, and beaten Knoblauch to a pulp with my bare hands. (Most likely, somebody would have stopped me.)
Knoblauch had put the Yankees' magnificent season in jeopardy. The Indians won Game 3. So, for Game 4, it was El Duque to the rescue. Having pitched for the 2 most demanding bosses in the Western Hemisphere, George Steinbrenner and Fidel Castro, no way was a little bit of Cleveland cold going to stop him. He pitched a 4-hit shutout (with 1 inning of help each from Stanton and Rivera). Knoblauch started a key 4-6-3 double play in the 8th to eliminate the last Indian threat. The Yankees won, 4-0, and tied up the series at 2 games apiece.
In Game 5, the Yankees once again took the early lead, with a 3-run 1st inning, but the Indians responded. A leadoff homer by Kenny Lofton and a sacrifice fly by Manny Ramírez (not yet using steroids, as far as we know) made it a 1-run game. Paul O'Neill singled home a run in the 2nd to make it 4–2 Yankees. Chili Davis homerd in the 4th to put the Yankees ahead by 3, but Jim Thome, who always hit the Yankees well, hit his 3rd homer of the series in the bottom of the 6th to make it a 2-run game.
Knoblauch, still fighting for redemption, started another key 4-6-3 8th inning double play. David Wells, who claimed to have heard Indian fans insulting his dead mother all through the game, and the Yankee bullpen held off any further Indians scoring, and the Yankees won 5-3. The series went back to The Bronx, with the Bombers 1 win away from the Pennant.
For his 1st at-bat in Game 6, on October 13, the Yankee Fans gave Knoblauch a standing ovation, and NBC announcer Bob Costas said, "Apparently, all is forgiven." The Yankees overcame a 5-run Cleveland 5th, including another home run by Thome, and won, 9-5, clinching their 35th Pennant.
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October 17, 1998: Game 1 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium, the way God intended it. The Yankees went into the top of the 7th trailing the San Diego Padres, 5-2. Knoblauch completed his redemption with a 3-run homer in the inning to tie it‚ off Padre starter Kevin Brown, who had a reputation as a "Yankee Killer" while pitching for the Texas Rangers. (Yankee Killer? Kevin Brown? We hadn't seen nothin' yet.)
Then, after reliever Mark Langston (himself rather successful against the Yankees while pitching for the Mariners and Angels) loaded the bases, Tino, who'd also been struggling lately, came up. With a 2-2 count, Langston threw a pitch that was just low. To this day, Padre fans say that it was strike 3, and Tino should have been called out, and that this "fixed" the Series for the Yankees.
Now, we Yankee Fans don't have much reason to get upset with Padres fans, but if you blow a 3-run lead in the 7th inning of a World Series game, you don't deserve to win the Series. Tino swung at the full-count pitch, and cranked it into the upper deck in right field for a grand slam. San Diego native Wells notched the win against his hometown team, and the Yankees triumphed, 9-6.
October 18, 1998: The Yankees struck early in Game 2‚ scoring 3 runs in each of the 1st 2 innings. They went on to cruise to a 9-3 win behind El Duque. Bernie and Jorge connected for homers.
October 20, 1998: Game 3, in front of 64,667 at Jack Murphy – excuse me, Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego. Having hosted Super Bowl XXXII in January, this becomes the 1st time the Super Bowl and the World Series have been played in the same stadium -- or even in the same metropolitan area -- in the same calendar year.
The Metrodome in Minneapolis hosted the World Series in October 1991, Super Bowl XXVI in January 1992, and the NCAA Final Four in April 1992. But no stadium has hosted a Super Bowl and a World Series in the same calendar year since. Detroit in 2006, Dallas in 2011 and Houston in 2017 have hosted both in the same metro area in the same calendar year (and, for the moment, Phoenix has a chance to do it this year), but not in the same stadium. In the pre-Super Bowl era, World Series and NFL Championship Games had been played in the same city in the same calendar year as follows: New York in 1936, 1938, 1956 and 1962; Detroit in 1935; and Cleveland in 1954.
The Padres tooke a 3-0 lead on the Yankees, but Brosius, having the season of his life, hit a home run to make it 3-2. In the top of the 8th, with the Yankees threatening with 2 men on, the Padres brought in their closer, Trevor Hoffman.
The Padre fans, believing him to be the world's greatest relief pitcher, wave their white towels and cheer wildly. The words, "IT'S TREVOR TIME" appear on the scoreboard. The public-address system blasts the song "Hell's Bells" by AC/DC.
George Steinbrenner, not familiar with the hard rock music of the Seventies and Eighties -- and also not familiar with the legally-forced change of name to the WWE -- tells the New York beat writers, "When they played that death march, it sounded like the WWF, when The Undertaker comes in. That's who I thought they were bringing in!"
Certainly, for National League batters that season, Hoffman might as well have been an undertaker. The whole production had become one of the most intimidating scenes in baseball.
But these were not NL batters, these were the New York Yankees, and they feared nobody. Brosius took Hoffman over the center field wall for a 5-3 Yankee lead, soon to be a 5-4 Yankee victory. The actual best closer in the game, Mariano Rivera, finished it off, and the Yankees can wrap up the Series with a sweep.
October 21, 1998, 25 years ago: The Padres had maybe their best team ever. Arguably, so did the Cleveland Indians that the Yankees beat in the ALCS. Maybe, so did the Texas Rangers that the Yankees beat in the ALDS. All of them had the bad luck to run into what may have been anybody's best team ever.
The setup seemed good: Just as it was San Diego native Terrell Davis who was the MVP of the Super Bowl that the Denver Broncos won on the same field, 9 months earlier, it seemed fitting that San Diego native Wells would win the clinching Game 5 of the World Series. But it wouldn't get that far. Pettitte and Brown traded goose eggs for 5 innings in Game 4, before Bernie got a run home on a groundout in the 6th. A Brosius single and a Ledee sacrifice fly got 2 more runs home in the 8th.
Brosius, already named the Series' MVP, took a grounder from Mark Sweeney for the final out, and the Yankees won, 3-0, for their 24th World Championship. Counting the postseason, they had won 125 games, losing just 50. It was the greatest season any team has ever had.
There is a weird postscript. After the 2003 season, Pettitte's contract had run out. He went to his hometown team, the Houston Astros. The Yankees signed Kevin Brown to replace him, and it was a disaster, culminating in one of the worst starts any Yankee pitcher has ever had, Game 7 of the 2004 ALCS against the Red Sox.