The World Series starts tonight featuring the Giants, a National League mainstay, and the Royals, an American League team had not been to the playoffs since they won the World Series in 1985. For years the Yankees were mainstays in the Fall Classic, and Jeter was at the center of many big moments.
Derek Jeter’s lifetime World Series numbers are impressive: .321/.384/.449 with 13 extra base hits, but they don’t tell the whole story. Jeter’s career was defined by the big stage and the big moments. There is no bigger stage in baseball than the World Series and Jeter rose to the occasion time and time again.
2000 was the culmination of back-to-back-to-back (and belly-to-belly-to-belly) championships for the Jeter-led Yankees. The team was on an unprecedented World Series run. Entering the ’00 series they had won their previous 12 WS games. But the 2000 series was different.
It was the first intra-city World Series in New York since the Giants and Dodgers left town. The Subway Series was for bragging rights in New York. The Mets were a feisty team that won 94 games who some believed had the firepower to dethrone the Yankees. The Yankees, despite coming off two championships, had a disappointing end to the 2000 season and stumbled to 87 wins. But from the very beginning of the Subway Series, Jeter took over…
In game 1, Pettitte and Leiter dueled and both teams were held scoreless into the 6th. In the top of the 6th with two outs, Timo Perez was on first when Todd Zeile hit a deep fly to left that looked to be gone off the bat. Perez was admiring the shot along with the rest of the crowd, and when the ball bounced off the very top of the wall he was only rounding second base. Justice fielded the ball but his throw was heading towards the third base dugout. Jeter caught the relay on the run and fired a perfect one-hop strike to Posada to get Perez at home. Because Perez dogged it around second the Yankees had a chance to make the play and keep the Mets off the board, and Jeter capitalized on the moment.
In the bottom of the inning the Yankees finally got to Leiter for two. The game would eventually go into extras when Jose Vizcaino knocked in the winning run in the bottom of the 12th. It would go down as one of the best World Series games ever played, but was just the start of a special series for Jeter.
The Yankees won game 2 but the Mets beat El Duque in game 3, who at the time was 8-0 in his postseason career. The Yankees found themselves in a competitive World Series for the first time since 1996, and Joe Torre shook-up the lineup. Chuck Knablauch was struggling so he moved Jeter to the leadoff spot to try and spark some offense. It worked.
Before the Mets could blink the Yankees had momentum back. Jeter added a triple in the third and would score the Yankees’ third and final run of the night. They held the lead, 3-2, to take a 3-1 series lead.
Game 5 was another Yankees-Mets classic. It was a rematch of Game 1 between Pettitte and Leiter, and neither disappointed. The Yankees scored first on a Bernie Williams home run but the Mets took the lead in the bottom of the inning on two infield hits. It was all Pettitte would give up.
On the other side, Leiter, was equally as great. He held down the Yankees until the 6th when — that man — stepped to the plate.
Jeter’s second HR of the series, and 9th hit, tied the game for the Yankees. The score remained 2-2 until the 9th. Leiter was still in and had thrown a billion pitches (143 to be exact). The Yankees finally got to him and scored the go-ahead runs on a pinch-hit single by Luis Sojo to score Posada and Brosius. Rivera finished the game and the Yankees had a three-peat, the first since the Oakland A’s did it in the mid-70s. You can watch a full game 5 recap here.
Jeter was named series MVP. He hit .409 and scored 6 of the team’s 19 runs. He stepped up in the biggest moments of the series and made a play to get his team a W. Its my opinion that the 2000 World Series was the pinnacle of Jeter’s career — he was coming off three MVP-caliber seasons in which he hit .337 over that span, and he had won the 2000 Mid-Summer Classic MVP. He was the face of the best team in baseball in the biggest city, and he had just crushed the souls of his cross-town rival. Its no wonder why Mets fans of the past 20 years have a massive inferiority complex when it comes to the Yankees and Jeter.
Side note — Lost in Jeter dominating was the Clemens-Piazza fiasco. Wild, wild stuff.
And earlier that summer…
