After an uneven 1999 campaign, a 28-year-old Andy Pettitte responded with a 2000 season that was pretty strong throughout. And on this day 25 years ago, he took the ball once more and looked in control again, carving through a dangerous Mariners lineup for most of the afternoon.
But you’re only cruising until you’re not. In a game the Yankees nearly led wire-to-wire, what seemed like a comfortable win morphed into a disaster in a matter of moments.
August 29: Yankees 3, Mariners 5 (box score)
Record:
73-56 (4 GA in AL East)
The game featured a matchup of lefties, Pettitte squaring off with a 37-year-old Jamie Moyer, in the midst of a tough season. The Yankees wasted no time getting to Moyer, putting together a blistering two-out rally in the top of the first. With none on, Bernie Williams singled and José Canseco walked to put Moyer in a jam. David Justice came through with a line-drive RBI single to right, and Glenallen Hill a line-drive RBI single to left, and the Yankees quickly led 2-0.
Moyer looked even shakier in the second as New York extended their advantage. With one out, Moyer issued back-to-back walks, before a groundout advanced both runners to put two in scoring position with two down. Moyer then uncorked a wild pitch to let a run in, then issued another walk to put two on once more. Though he bounced back to strike out Canseco and strand a pair, the Yankees led 3-0, with Moyer seemingly on the ropes.
And Pettitte came out in complete command. He induced three quick groundouts in the first. In the second, a couple of fly outs and a strikeout. In the third, another 1-2-3 inning with a strikeout to go nine up, nine down. Though he walked Rickey Henderson to lead off the fourth and give Seattle its first baserunner, he promptly erased Henderson on a double play. Alex Rodriguez grounded out to end the fourth, and it seemed something special could be happening at Safeco Field.
After Pettitte worked a perfect fifth, the question no longer seemed whether the Yankees would win, but whether Pettitte would make history. He carried a no-hitter into the sixth, where he retired the first two batters, having faced the minimum 17 batters. But it wasn’t meant to be, No. nine hitter Carlos Guillén singling to break up the no-no. Although Rickey followed up with a double, Pettitte struck out Stan Javier to escape the jam with at least the shutout still intact.
Pettitte worked around a two-out single in the seventh, and with his pitch count still in fine shape by 2000 standards at 95 pitches, he came out for the eighth. After retiring the leadoff hitter, Pettitte allowed three consecutive singles, to David Bell, Guillén, and Rickey. With the benefit of hindsight, it seems remarkable that Joe Torre let Pettitte hang in with the bases loaded, but that’s just what he did, and Javier singled off Pettitte to drive in Seattle’s first run.
By then, Torre had little choice but to remove Pettitte, whose work on the whole for the afternoon was still superb. The Yankees led 3-1 and despite the bases-loaded jam, they were five outs from victory with a celebrated bullpen at their disposal. Torre went to the reliable Jeff Nelson to face the heart of the Seattle order, and at first Nelson responded, getting mighty A-Rod to go down swinging on four pitches. But he fell behind former-and-future teammate Edgar Martinez 2-0, and in the critical moment of the game, he threw a fastball over the plate to the great Martinez.
The Hall of Fame DH muscled it out to the opposite field for a game-breaking grand slam:
The speed with which the Yankees went from tracking a potential Pettitte shutout to imminent defeat was startling. Martinez’s slam put Seattle up 5-3 on a day where they had seemed destined to ease into a quiet loss. There was to be no spirited comeback; Kazuhiro Sasaki worked an easy ninth inning for his 30th save.
In reading through the postgame quotes from back in 2000, it’s useful to note the parallels to today. In his gamer in the New York Times, Buster Olney described a quiet, stunned Yankee clubhouse, one that included a calm manager in Joe Torre. ”There’s not much you can do about it,” said Torre, lamenting the fact that the Yankees didn’t make any “grievous mistakes,” but that the Mariners just ran up and stole the game from them.
While the 2025 Yankees have certainly made plenty of mistakes, the scene of a shocked clubhouse, with an oddly serene manager refusing to get too worked up about the latest mystifying loss, is a familiar one. They may not have shot themselves in the foot as consistently as the modern Yankees, but the 2000 team certainly suffered its fair share of tough losses and was still able to weather the storm and make a run in October — with this very Seattle team serving as one of the postseason obstacles along the way.
It’s a good thing to remember 25 years on.
Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.
