David Justice

The New York Yankees gave up two future big-league pitchers and a promising young outfielder to rent a 34-year-old bat for four months. Brian Cashman made that trade on June 29, 2000, and by October, David Justice had a three-run homer that turned a pennant race and an ALCS MVP trophy to show for it. Not a bad rental.

The Trade That Looked Expensive

The 2000 Yankees needed a left-handed power bat in the middle of that lineup, and they needed it in a hurry. The offense was aging, Paul O'Neill was playing hurt (again), and the front office decided the price of doing nothing was higher than the price of a trade. So on June 29, Cashman sent outfielder Ricky Ledee to Cleveland, along with two players to be named later who turned out to be pitchers Jake Westbrook and Zach Day. In return, the Yankees got Justice, a three-time All-Star who'd started the season hot -- .265 with 21 homers and 58 RBI in 68 games for the Indians.

Yankees fans weren't sorry to see Westbrook and Day go (Westbrook in particular turned into a durable big-league starter, just not in pinstripes). They didn't care. This was a team that had won back-to-back titles and had zero interest in watching a pennant slip away for lack of a bat.

Justice didn't ease into it. He hit .369/.465/.655 with six home runs in his first month wearing the interlocking NY -- the kind of hot streak that makes a front office look like geniuses immediately, before anybody's had time to second-guess the trade. He cooled off some after that, but the final line still did the job: .305 with 20 homers and 60 RBI in 78 games as a Yankee that summer. Combined with his time in Cleveland, Justice finished 2000 with a career-high 41 home runs and 118 RBI. (Try explaining to a 34-year-old that his best power season ever came split across two uniforms.)

Game 6, and the Swing That Won Him MVP

Justice had already won a Rookie of the Year award and a World Series ring with Atlanta back in 1990 and 1995, so a big October moment wasn't new territory for him. But nothing in his career hit quite like October 17, 2000.

The Yankees were down 4-3 to Seattle in the seventh inning of Game 6 of the 2000 ALCS, one loss away from a Game 7 they didn't particularly want to play. Justice stepped in against Arthur Rhodes with two on, worked the count to 3-1, and turned on a fastball that landed in the third deck in right field. Three-run homer, 6-4 Yankees. Yankee Stadium came unglued. The Yankees tacked on three more runs off Rhodes in the same inning and hung on for a 9-7 win to clinch their third straight American League pennant.

Justice hit .231 with 2 home runs and 8 RBI across the series and walked away with ALCS MVP honors. He didn't carry the same magic into the World Series against the Mets -- he hit just .158 with 3 RBI and no homers as the Yankees closed out the Subway Series in five games -- but nobody in the Bronx was doing the math on his World Series batting average. He'd already delivered the swing that got them there.

The Decline, and the Trade-Away

2001 was rougher. A groin injury put Justice on the disabled list twice, and he managed just 18 home runs and a .241 average across 111 games. He still made the postseason roster as the Yankees chased a fourth straight title, but the version of Justice who'd terrorized American League pitching that June and July in 2000 didn't show back up. New York lost the 2001 World Series to Arizona in seven games, and that winter, the front office moved on.

The Yankees traded Justice to the Mets that December for third baseman Robin Ventura. Seven days later, before he'd played a single game in orange and blue, the Mets flipped him to Oakland for pitchers Mark Guthrie and Tyler Yates. Justice spent his final season as Oakland's DH in the Moneyball year, playing exactly the kind of high-OBP, grind-out-at-bats role Billy Beane's front office valued most. The A's lost in the ALDS, and Justice retired at 36, closing out a 14-year career with a .279 average, 305 home runs, and 1,017 RBI across stops in Atlanta, Cleveland, New York, and Oakland.

He was never a Yankee long enough to get his own plaque or a number retired -- eighteen months, one trade in, one trade out. But ask anybody who was in the Stadium on October 17, 2000, and they'll tell you: that swing off Rhodes bought him a permanent seat at the reunion, Halle Berry marriage headlines and all.