This year marks the 20th anniversary of the first and only Subway Series in MLB history, so commemorations and remembrances have already been numerous despite the delayed start to the actual Major League Baseball season.
One was recently held by the YES Network, as Derek Jeter joined their “YES We’re Here” series to discuss the 2000 Fall Classic (among other topics) – and that brought forth a shocking admission from The Captain about the pressure he at least put on himself to make sure the Yankees won the battle for the Big Apple and completed their three-peat.
“I’ve joked about it before, but I really mean it – I moved to Manhattan when I was 21 years old, but if we didn’t win that World Series against the Mets, I think I would’ve moved out of the city,” Jeter told Jack Curry. “In my mind, it was a battle for New York, and we were playing for something pretty special, winning three championships in a row.”
Jeter was the MVP of that World Series after hitting .409 over the five games, and perhaps his crowning achievement was a leadoff home run in Game 4, one that quickly silenced the raucous Shea Stadium crowd and put the Yankees back in the driver’s seat less than 24 hours after the Mets had rallied back for a late-innings win in Game 3.
“The Mets had a great team, and all eyes were on New York. We had to win,” Jeter said. “I felt as though we had everything to lose. I hate it when a team says, ‘well, we have nothing to lose,’ because you have a World Series to lose. But, I think for us it was a little bit more than that, so thank God we were able to win that series.”
At the time, Jeter called that 2000 World Series, the fourth he had won in his five full big-league seasons, the most special of the bunch, and he still echoes that sentiment today.