After dropping the first game against the Detroit Tigers, the Yankees won their next two, snapping a six-game losing streak so decisively that it was fair to wonder if the team had put its bad baseball
behind them and gotten themselves back on track for October. Unfortunately, as Dwight Gooden made his first start since the beginning of August, with the Yankees sending embattled starter David Cone to the bullpen, September 25th reminded the Yankees that they were not out of the woods just yet.
September 25: Yankees 4, Tigers 15 (box score)
Record: 87-68 (1st in AL East, 5.5 games ahead)
Despite such a lopsided final score, it was the Yankees who actually struck first against Detroit. After Gooden tossed a scoreless opening frame, Chuck Knoblauch and Derek Jeter led off the bottom of the first with a pair of singles. They would advance a base when Paul O’Neill grounded out to first base, putting Knoblauch in a position to score when Bernie Williams grounded out to second to give the Yankees an early 1-0 lead.
Unfortunately, that would be the team’s only lead of the evening. Billy McMillon led off the top of the second with a double. Two batters later, he scored on a Damion Easley home run to put the Tigers ahead 2-1.
After Detroit starter Steve Sparks shut down the Yankees in the bottom of the second, the Tigers lineup picked up where they left off against the Doc in the third. Rich Becker led off the inning with a walk, and then Juan Encarnación lifted a fly ball into center field that looked like a hit off the bat, but which found itself in the glove of a diving Bernie. Unfortunately, the next batter, Bobby Higginson, deposited the second pitch he saw into an empty upper deck, extending the Tigers lead to 4-1. A Dean Palmer walk, a McMillon single to left, and a Hal Morris single to right tacked on another run and chased Gooden from the game after only 2.2 innings — not the kind of start the Yankees were hoping for when they slotted him into the rotation in place of Cone.
It would be Cone, in fact, who would come out for the fourth inning, making his first relief appearance since 1992. Unfortunately for him, a shift to the bullpen did not help him get back on track. Robert Fick led off the inning with a walk, Encarnación hit a one-out double to put runners on second and third, and the team opted to walk Higginson intentionally to load the bases and set up the potential double play. A sacrifice fly off the bat of Palmer, however, scored Fick. A McMillon single and a Deivi Cruz single then scored Encarnación and Higginson, respectively, before he got Morris to line out to short for the final out of the inning.
The Yankees clawed back two runs in the bottom of the fourth, courtesy of a David Justice two-run homer, but Cone handed one of those right back in the fifth. Fick reached on a one-out single. He then advanced to second on a wild pitch, putting him in position to score on a Becker double down the left field line. After Encarnación walked, Joe Torre had seen enough, and came out to get Cone. When he handed the ball to Randy Choate, Cone had seen the game devolve from a 5-1 ballgame into a 9-3 ballgame — and while six runs was certainly not insurmountable, with the way the Yankees had been playing, it seemed like a mountain to climb.
For their part, Choate and Jason Grimsley combined to keep the game from getting further out of hand in the sixth and seventh, as the Yankees scratched back a run with a trio of hits in the bottom of the seventh to bring the score to 9-4. Everything then fell apart, however, in Grimsley’s second inning of work. Encarnación led off the inning with a double, and a Higginson single put runners on the corners with nobody out. A wild pitch with Palmer at the plate allowed Encarnación to score and Higginson to advance to second. Higginson then advanced to third on a Palmer fly out to center, allowing him to score on a McMillon sacrifice fly. After Cruz singled, the Yankees called on Ted Lilly, who surrendered a double to Morris and a two-run single to José Macias before getting Fick to ground out for the third out of the inning.
Down 13-4, the Yankees basically waved the white flag, sending up Ryan Thompson, Luis Polonia, and Chris Turner to hit for David Justice, Tino Martinez, and Jorge Posada. Not surprisingly, they went down rather quietly. In the top of the ninth, they took advantage of the 40-man roster to make even more substitutions, giving Bernie, Jeter, Knoblauch, and O’Neill the final inning off. Jay Tessmer, on in relief, gave up a two-run homer to Wendell Magee, who was pinch hitting for Higginson, but at that point, it didn’t really matter. 15-4 hurts just as much as 13-4, and on the two-year anniversary of the 1998 Yankees winning their record-setting 112th game, the 2000 squad looked a shadow of its former self.
Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.
