Luis Gonzalez hit a walk-off bases-loaded bloop single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 of the 2001 World Series, giving the Arizona Diamondbacks a 3-2 win and their first championship. The New York Yankees' dynasty -- four consecutive pennants, three straight World Series titles -- died on a dying-quail single that barely cleared the drawn-in infield. November 4, 2001. The worst night of my baseball life, and I don't think it's particularly close.
The Series Nobody Expected
The Diamondbacks had been a franchise for four years. FOUR. They had Randy Johnson and Curt Schilling -- two of the most dominant starters in baseball -- but they were a team most people assumed the Yankees would handle. The 1998, 1999, and 2000 championship squads had run through everyone. Why would Arizona be different?
Arizona was different because Johnson and Schilling were that good. The D-backs blew the Yankees out in Games 1 and 2 at Bank One Ballpark -- 9-1 and 4-0. It wasn't competitive. Schilling dominated Game 1, Johnson dominated Game 2, and the Yankees looked like they'd wandered into a buzzsaw.
Then the series came to the Bronx, 49 days after September 11, and everything changed.
The Miracle at the Stadium
Game 3 was a tight 2-1 Yankees win -- the kind of game you grind out when you've got Andy Pettitte on the mound and the whole city behind you. But Games 4 and 5 were something else entirely.
Game 4. Bottom of the ninth. Two outs. Yankees trailing 3-1. Tino Martinez at the plate against Arizona closer Byung-Hyun Kim. First pitch -- Martinez launched a two-run homer to tie it. The Stadium exploded. (I'm talking full-body, leave-your-seat, grab-a-stranger explosion. I've never heard anything like it.) Then, after midnight -- technically November 1 -- Derek Jeter walked it off with a homer on a 3-2 count. Mr. November was born. Yankees 4, Arizona 3.
Game 5. Same closer. Same script. Bottom of the ninth, down 2-0, two outs. Scott Brosius hit a game-tying homer off Kim -- a hanging curveball that Brosius sent into the left-field seats. The Yankees won in 12 innings. Back-to-back games with two-out, game-tying homers in the ninth off the same reliever. I still don't fully believe those two nights happened. (Kim's career never recovered. You almost felt bad for the guy. Almost.)
Arizona smashed the Yankees 15-2 in Game 6 to force a seventh game. The home team had won every single game of the series. Every one.
Game 7 -- November 4, 2001
Roger Clemens started for the Yankees. Schilling started for Arizona. The Yankees scratched out a 2-1 lead through seven innings, and when Rivera jogged in from the bullpen for the ninth, the championship felt inevitable. Mo in the ninth with a lead -- that was the most bankable closer situation in baseball history. He'd done this a hundred times.
Mark Grace led off with a single to center. Not great, but Mo had escaped jams before. Damian Miller bunted, and Rivera fielded it cleanly but threw wild to second -- runners on first and second, nobody out. Now the building was buzzing.
Jay Bell bunted. Rivera fielded it and got the force at third. One out. Runners on first and second. Then Midre Cummings came in to run for Miller, and Tony Womack -- the number eight hitter -- lashed a double down the right-field line. Cummings scored. Tie game. Bell went to third.
Rivera hit Craig Counsell with a pitch. Bases loaded. And here came Luis Gonzalez -- a guy who'd hit 57 homers during the regular season, a left-handed hitter who could turn on anything inside.
But the Yankees' infield was drawn in. Jeter was playing on the grass at shortstop, positioned to cut off the run at the plate. Rivera threw an inside cutter -- his signature pitch, the one that broke bats and broke spirits. Gonzalez swung. The bat shattered. And the ball -- a freakin' bloop, a nothing ball, a piece of garbage contact that had no business deciding a World Series -- floated over Jeter's head and landed on the outfield grass.
Bell scored. Diamondbacks 3, Yankees 2. World Series over. Dynasty over.
What Died That Night
Paul O'Neill played his last game in pinstripes. Bernie Williams, Posada, Jeter, Rivera, Pettitte -- the dynasty core -- would never win another title together. The team that had won four pennants in four years and three rings in three years was done. Not because they got old or got bad, but because a bloop single fell six inches past a drawn-in shortstop.
That's what makes this one so hard. It wasn't like the dynasty ran out of gas. They came back from 0-2 in the ALDS with Jeter's flip play. They dismantled the 116-win Mariners. They pulled off two of the most miraculous comeback wins in World Series history. And then, with everything on the line, Mo gave up a broken-bat blooper that decided a championship.
Rivera never made excuses. He never has. But I think about what Tim McCarver said on the FOX broadcast right before the Gonzalez at-bat -- that Rivera throws inside to left-handers, and left-handers get a lot of broken-bat hits into the shallow outfield. McCarver called it before it happened. (That detail makes it worse, honestly. It was right there in front of us.)
The Last Walk-Off World Series
Here's a fact that still shocks me: no World Series has ended on a walk-off since 2001. Not one. Gonzalez's bloop was the last time a Fall Classic ended on a game-winning hit in the final at-bat. Twenty-five years and counting. The Yankees hold that distinction, and it's the one distinction nobody wants.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who won the 2001 World Series?
The Arizona Diamondbacks defeated the New York Yankees 4 games to 3. Luis Gonzalez hit a walk-off bases-loaded bloop single off Mariano Rivera in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7 on November 4, 2001, at Bank One Ballpark in Phoenix.
Did Mariano Rivera blow the 2001 World Series?
Rivera surrendered the game-winning hit to Luis Gonzalez in the bottom of the ninth inning of Game 7. The Diamondbacks loaded the bases against him with a single, an error on a bunt play, a double, and a hit batter before Gonzalez's bloop single ended it. It was the most painful moment of Rivera's postseason career.
Was the 2001 World Series the last walk-off World Series?
Yes. As of 2026, the 2001 World Series remains the last Fall Classic to end on a walk-off play of any kind. Gonzalez's bases-loaded single was also only the third time a World Series ended on a bases-loaded walk-off hit.
When did the Yankees dynasty end?
The 2001 World Series Game 7 loss to Arizona is widely considered the end of the Yankees' dynasty era. The core group that won four pennants and three championships from 1998 to 2001 never won another title together. Paul O'Neill retired after the series, and the roster gradually turned over in the years that followed.
I watched the replay of Gonzalez's hit recently. Mo's cutter comes in, the bat breaks, and the ball just... floats. It hangs in the air for what feels like an hour, drifting over Jeter's outstretched glove, settling onto the grass like it had nowhere else to go. The dynasty ended on a broken bat and a dying quail. And I'm still not ready to talk about it.