Do-or-die, winner-take-all playoff baseball games bring a certain kind of stress. You’ve invested in this team over the course of 162 regular season games, and everything can come down to one pitch or batted
ball being inches away from a good outcome or not. You’ve spent hours and days following a team, and their fate can be decided by just a few minutes.
Your team immediately coming out and scoring a bunch of runs can take a lot of that stress out, and that’s what the Yankees did this day 25 years ago, using an early outburst to outlast the Athletics at the Coliseum.
October 8: Yankees 7, Athletics 5 (box score)
Playoffs: Yankees win ALDS 3-2 (90-76 record overall)
Having split the first two games of the 2000 ALDS on the road in Oakland, the Yankees won Game 3 and had a chance to clinch the series at home. However, the A’s jumped on a short-rest Roger Clemens early in Game 4, sending the series back out west for a do-or-die game for both teams the very next day. The Yankees were deeply irritated, and manager Joe Torre later referred to the flight back to Oakland as “the flight from hell” that “nobody wanted to make.”
In order to advance on to the ALCS, the Yankees were going to have to handle a pitcher they had struggled with a few days before in Gil Heredia. Back in Game 1 of the series, Heredia held the Yankees to just three runs in six innings. The Yankees’ offense recorded seven hits off him in the series opener, but outside a two-run second inning, failed to capitalize on their chances. They left six runners on base for the game and ended up losing 5-3. In this one, they ensured that wouldn’t happen again.
Starting at DH, Chuck Knoblauch led off the game with a single on the very first pitch, and Derek Jeter followed that with a five-pitch walk. After a Paul O’Neill infield single loaded the bases, a sharp, low Bernie Williams liner to right was barely snatched up by Adam Piatt, but it was enough to bring home Knoblauch to make it a quick 1-0 lead for New York.
Having gotten his foot in the door with one out, Heredia then completely failed to capitalize and walked David Justice to reload the bases. Tino Martinez took advantage of that, doubling to deep center field on a fly ball that Terrence Long got close to, but couldn’t fully track down. That cleared the bases and put the Yankees up four. Following another infield single, A’s manager Art Howe pulled Heredia at the risk of going down big in an elimination game. That risk came to fruition anyway, as a Luis Sojo fly out led to another sacrifice fly, and Knoblauch singled again to drive home one more.
The Yankees batted around in the first inning, and had opened up a 6-0 lead before Oakland even had a chance to come to the plate.
Andy Pettitte went opposite Heredia in Game 1, but on short rest like Clemens the day before, he didn’t end up that long for the game, either. After working around some runners in the bottom of the first, Pettitte allowed the A’s to get on the board in the second. Having gotten two outs in the inning, Pettitte gave up three two-out base runners, including a single by former teammate Randy Velarde, scoring two runs. In the third, Eric Chavez hit an RBI double, as Oakland picked up another run. The lead was officially cut in half at 6-3.
In the top of the fourth, Justice got one of those runs back for the Yankees with a home run. That ended up being a quite helpful extra run to have.
Pettitte came back out for the fourth inning, but ran into some trouble, allowing two singles and a walk to load the bases with nobody out. He responded with a pair of fly outs, but both were enough for A’s runners to tag up and score. Following a single from Miguel Tejada, Oakland had managed to nearly come all the way back, and were now bringing the go-ahead run to the plate.
At that point, Torre also went the bullpen route. He had a lot of trust in Pettitte, but in this win-or-go-home game, he had to act. In came another southpaw in Mike Stanton, who got Chavez to ground out to end the inning.
At that point, the game became a battle of the bullpens, and both did their jobs admirably.
For the Yankees, Stanton went two innings, before turning it over to Jeff Nelson in the sixth. Nelson came in following a Jason Giambi single and struck out Olmedo Sáenz to again strand the potential tying run.
Nelson also made it through the seventh, and Torre then got aggressive and brought in Game 3 starter Orlando Hernández, just two days after his excellent outing helped the Yankees take a 2-1 lead in the series. El Duque recorded just one out, and after a Matt Stairs’ double, Torre then went to Mariano Rivera for a potential five-out save. The first two went by without issue, as Rivera retired the first two batters he faced.
The offense missed out on a chance at some insurance when a leadoff O’Neill double was wasted. Rivera then returned to the mound, hoping to clinch a spot in the ALCS.
It took Rivera just four pitches to get the first two outs, including retiring future teammate Giambi. However, Tejada kept the game alive with a single, again bringing the tying run to the plate. With all the drama that come from that situation, Rivera just immediately eased it. Chavez was due up next, but he popped up the first pitch he saw into the spacious foul territory in Oakland. Martinez tracked the ball down for the final out, giving the Yankees a 7-5 win and a 3-2 series victory.
Much like a lot of the Yankees’ late season run in 2000, their ALDS victory over the Athletics wasn’t easy, but they were still alive and had a date with the Mariners in the ALCS.
Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.