Yankees: 5 Best Playoff Games of the ’90s Dynasty

1. Game 6, 2000 ALCS

David Justice punched the Yankees’ ticket to the Subway Series with an emphatic dinger against Arthur Rhodes and the Mariners.

Orlando Hernandez allowed six earned runs and nearly got out-dueled by John Halama in the best game on this list.

All is forgiven, though, as David Justice’s single, thunderous swing all but sent the Yankees to the World Series against the crosstown rivals. Quite likely, it was the biggest cut of the dynasty era.

Down 4-3 in the seventh inning of the ALCS, Jose Vizcaino and Derek Jeter stood at the corners ahead of Justice, who greeted Arthur Rhodes’ entrance with a lefty-on-lefty baseball murder. This thing…was corked. And listen to that explosion of sound at 161st and River Ave.

Chills, two decades later.

New York scored three more times in the inning (Paul O’Neill two-run single and a Vizcaino sac fly), and they needed every run, as the M’s cut the lead to 9-7 against Hernandez and Mariano Rivera in the eighth. An A-Rod homer and a Mark McLemore two-run double proved this was no longer the same love.

In the ninth, Edgar Martinez stepped to the plate as the tying run against Rivera with two outs. Five years prior, he walked off the ’95 ALDS with a left-field corner ball. Before David Ortiz existed in the AL East, Martinez was the original Mo tormentor. With every seat in the house firmly clenched, the best DH in MLB history gripped, ripped, and grounded to second.

Welcome to New York. This one was as good as it gets.