Everyone probably already knows everything that happened by now. But, as always, for the recored. What a great game.
Dynastic voyage
Yankees win third straight World Series title
Oct 27, 2000 9:47 a.m. ET
BY STEPHEN THOMAS
FOXSports.com
Baseball tradition holds that dynasties be characterized by a catchy nickname: Murderers’ Row (The New York Yankees of the 1920s and early 1930s), The Go-Go Sox (the Chicago White Sox of the 1950s and '60s), The Whiz Kids (the Philadelphia Phillies of the '60s) and The Big Red Machine (the Cincinnati Reds of the mid-'70s).
But what of the latter-day New York Yankees ... they’ve enjoyed as much success as any of their nicknamed predecessors, but for some reason, this group remains nickname-less. Yes, well, you have to take the bitter with the sweet. Anyone who contributed in any way, shape or form to the Yankees’ latest run will simply have to be content in the knowledge that they played on one the game’s greatest teams, nickname be damned.
By all measure, these New York Yankees are a dynasty: They have won four of the last five World Series titles; they are the first team to three-peat since the Oakland A’s achieved the trifecta between 1972 and 1974; they have achieved their success while maintaining a rock-solid nucleus of excellent, intelligent players: 10 players, among them, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Paul O’Neill, and Tino Martinez, have been with New York for each championship. And lastly, though these Yankees don’t yet approach the New York teams of the late 1940s and early '50s that won eight titles in 10 seasons, the 1998 Yankees won more regular-season games (114) than any other team in baseball history.
"I think we can hold up to any one of those great teams because of what we have accomplished," Joe Torre said an hour before directing his team in Thursday’s Game 5. "I think our run of five postseasons is pretty damn good. With free agency and players changing teams so often, to be able to find ourselves here again is a pretty good run. I think our ballclub should be right up there with any of the clubs that have put something together."
It is, as the players and members of the Yankees organization will generally tell you, the public’s duty to debate and determine which team is the best. "That’s not for us to say," Jorge Posada said as he wiped champagne from his eyes in an ecstatic clubhouse. But then neither is there a shortage of opinion on the matter.
"I will say this," the normally voluble George Steinbrenner said after winning the sixth title of his tenure. "I don’t know if any other team in New York has ever done any better."
"They may say it’s the greatest team ever," said a prideful Reggie Jackson, himself a member of five World Series-winning teams, including two with New York (1977 and '78). "But you’ll get arguments from the great Yankee teams — the ‘27 Yankees, the Yankee teams that won five World Series in a row. (But) absolutely, I think you have an argument for this being the greatest team."
The fact that this year’s team was able to win despite myriad obstacles — New York lost 15 of its final 18 regular-season games and only two World Series winners have won fewer regular-season games (87) — is not an indictment, but rather just another facet of its greatness.
"Here they don’t play well this year and still they win, because they know how," Jackson continues, on a roll in an effort to quantify his former team’s success. "They play championship, professional caliber baseball and that’s very, very special. The leaders this team has: Bernie, Jeter, O’Neill, Tino, the nucleus that’s here. I hate to mention names because then I’ll leave someone out. But the character and professionalism of this group ... everybody understands their role, they trust each other."
"Trust" is one of those nebulous ingredients that defies classification, after all, how is it proved? The Yankees seemed to prove it in every game of this World Series — in Game 1, when Torre chose not to pinch hit for O’Neill, who struggled through much of the late season and the first two rounds of the playoffs; O’Neill scratched and clawed his way to a bottom-of-the-ninth walk that ignited the winning rally. In Game 4, when Torre summoned David Cone, who had pitched one inning in the last month, to face the always-dangerous Mike Piazza; Cone got Piazza to fly out weakly. In Game 5, when Posada heeded Martinez’ ninth-inning advice to be patient and make a tired Al Leiter work; just as O’Neill had in Game 1, Posada coaxed the walk that started the rally that won the Series.
There’s an inexorable quality to this New York Yankees team; they flat-out know how to win and some how, some way, no matter how dire the circumstances, they will find a way to beat you, as they demonstrated in each of their four Series wins.
"We may not have the best players," an unnecessarily modest Torre said not long after winning his fourth World Series, "but we certainly have had the best team."
Some would even say one of the best ever.