“This is an omen.”
That’s what Bob Brenly remembered thinking in the top of the seventh inning during Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, as a dust storm with swirling wind and rain developed over then-Bank One Ballpark, descending through the open roof and blowing throughout the stadium.
“Oh yeah. I did,” Brenly, who was then the manager of the Diamondbacks, recalled during an interview with The Arizona Republic earlier this year. “I mean, I don’t know, I’m a little goofy when it comes to stuff like that. We’re playing in a domed stadium and the wind’s blowing and it’s raining. It blew through pretty quickly, and it was no big deal and didn’t affect play or anything.
“But I took it as an omen. You know, hopefully an omen for us and not the Yankees
— and it worked out that way.”
Right when the rain appeared, though, the Yankees tied the score at 1 on Tino Martinez’s RBI single to right field, where food wrappers and napkins had started to fly around and rotate like some sort of strange dance. As the rain got heavier, some fans who had been covered with dust became caked in mud.
It was a surreal moment.
Oh, sure. Some rainwater leaked through a closed roof at what is now Chase Field and fell onto the pitcher’s mound during the Diamondbacks’ game against the visiting Florida Marlins on Wednesday, Sept. 16. But that weather-related incident was modest and mostly mechanical (they need to fix the roof) compared to the fascination and intrigue as the Great Mini Monsoon that blew through 25 years ago during perhaps the greatest World Series in history.
With the Yankees in town for a three-game series that began on Friday, Sept. 18, it was a perfect opportunity to revisit the weirdness that briefly took almost everyone’s mind off the importance of what was playing out on the field that unforgettable Nov. 4, 2001.
Besides, 30 or so players and coaches from the Diamondbacks’ 2001 World Series championship team were back in the Valley to celebrate the 25th anniversary of that historic triumph. They are scheduled to be honored during an official pregame ceremony on Saturday, Sept. 19, with the first 25,000 fans receiving 2001 Throwback jerseys as a souvenir.
Too bad they couldn’t replicate a little dust devil and some mirth, wind and rain. Now that I think about it, though, the promotions team should have come up some monsoon-like snow globes as freebies to mark the occasion. Not that anyone could really duplicate that wild experience.
“Oh yeah, out in the outfield,” Game 7 hero Luis Gonzalez said of the Great Mini Monsoon. “In the seventh, eighth or ninth inning. I forgot exactly when it happened, but yeah, there were a lot of strange things that happened. It all worked out for us, though.”
The Yankees had won three consecutive World Series titles and were eyeing their 27th championship. They also had become the sentimental favorites following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks that toppled the Twin Towers killing nearly 3,000 civilians in lower Manhattan, including those aboard the two hijacked jets that slammed into the buildings. An additional 189 perished at the Pentagon and 44 more at a field in Shanksville, Pennsylvania, that day.
“Everybody thought the Yankees were going to steamroll us,” said Brenly, who was in just his first season as a manager at the time. “I think everybody thought, ‘Ah, this expansion team with all these old goats on it and they’ve got a manager who’s never done it before, the Yankees are going to kill the Diamondbacks.’
“I think that kind of fired our guys up, too, because we could play with anybody. Our guys didn’t care they won three World Series in a row. Our guys were like, ‘We’re going to show up every day, we’re going to give the best we have and let’s see where we are at the end.’ ”
The 2001 Diamondbacks always believed, even if they couldn’t believe what they saw when the Great Mini Monsoon rolled into the stadium late in Game 7.
“That’s the first and only time I’ve seen something like that,” recalled former first baseman Mark Grace, who was one of multiple teammates from ’01 in attendance during Friday’s opener against the Yankees. “I never saw it prior. I’ve never seen it since.”
As great as the ending was, when Gonzalez looped a base hit into shallow left-center field off super closer Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the 9th to lift Arizona to a 3-2 victory and the state’s first major sports championship, the 2001 World Series was full of memorable moments.
“There were just a lot of those that went through that entire Series, for Game 7 specifically,” said former infielder Jay Bell, a pinch hitter that night who scored the game-winning run and was also at Chase Field on Friday. “Of course, the monsoon and the rain coming down, that was certainly something that everybody remembers.
“For me, I was just sitting there enjoying the game. Whenever they called my name for that last second, it was just so fast and furious. … Just to be able to finally get to third base and stand there and wait for Gonzo to get the hit, man.”
The images and clips of Bell racing home with his hands raised high above his head remain so vivid, it “felt like it happened yesterday,” according to Grace. Representing the winning run was extra special, Bell said, because of who was waiting for him at home plate.
It was third baseman Matt Williams.
“To be able to go and jump into Matt’s arms and to hug him as the first two Diamondbacks that got to celebrate at home plate together, wow,” Bell said. “To be the first ones to celebrate like that was pretty exciting.”
As Brenly noted, the abrupt weather change earlier didn’t really play a factor in the game or the eventual outcome. But there were some concerns at the time that it might.
“You're wondering, ‘Were they going to close the roof?’ Because in the World Series, the home team doesn’t control the movement of the roof,” then-Diamondbacks general manager Joe Garagiola Jr. told The Republic. “That’s controlled by the commissioner’s office. At one point, the umbrellas are out and you look down and there’s (MLB executives) Sandy Alderson and John McHale and (commissioner) Bud Selig and everyone’s putting their heads together like, ‘What should we do? What should we do?’ Oh yeah. That was a surreal moment.”
Turns out, baseball simply let the mysterious weather play out and the only thing that rained down again after that was the wild applause from the home crowd following Gonzalez’ legendary base hit.
“There was a lot of anxiety and anticipation because you get into a Game 7 of a World Series,” Gonzalez said, “but we knew what was at hand and we knew we had a chance to make history of being the first team to ever win a major championship in the state of Arizona.
“We take a lot of pride in that. We were excited about that and to this day we still have a group chat with all of us on it. It’s a strong brotherhood we have and it’s something nobody can ever take away from us.”
Reach McManaman at bob.mcmanaman@arizonarepublic .Follow him on X, formerly Twitter: @azbobbymac and listen to him live every Tuesday at 3:30 p.m. on Roc and Manuch with Jimmy B on ESPN 620 (KTAR-AM) and every Thursday on the Doug Franz Unplugged podcast via Apple or Spotify.
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This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Mini monsoon marked Game 7 of Yankees-Diamondbacks World Series
