Yankees and the AL East: 25 years as baseball’s best division

Two with One Page

The ’99 series was a supposed to be a competition with the Braves for Team of the Decade. But the Yankees had replaced Wells with Rocket Clemens before the season, and the offensive engine continued to hum.

They beat the Red Sox in the ALCS, and then swept the1999 World Series.

In the end, the series became a coronation for the Yankees as the Team of the Year, Decade, and Century. More importantly, it ensured their placement in this article. So, there’s that.

Continuing their run in 2000, the team played worse, but the results stayed the same. They went on out to meet the Mets in the first New York Subway Series since the Dodgers played in Brooklyn. The outcome was never in doubt, and the Yankees won in five.

Derek Jeter was not yet Captain, but he was already the leader of the team. He proved it in 2000 when he became the first and still the only player to win both the All-Star and World Series MVP awards in the same season.

His home run to lead off game four, after the Mets had won the previous game, was as big as any hit that season.

A Bridge Too Far

When the 2000 series was over, so was the Yankees run of championships, at least until 2009. They would go on to appear in two of the next three Fall Classics but would lose them both.

The team would rise again in 2009 for one last hurrah. But before that, the Red Sox would take the mantle as the best team in the division and ensure the Beast would remain the best in baseball: The Boys from Beantown would win three World Series titles from 2004 to 2013.

However, before they could do any of that, they had to take down the Yankees. The two teams faced off in three memorable ALCS in six years, the Yankees winning two. Those meetings not only showed the passing of the torch and what it means to win the AL East, but also are a microcosm of the real import of this division.

That story began in 1999.