2000 American League Championship Series

Game summaries

The first game at Yankee Stadium was a chilly, low-scoring affair. Freddy García and Denny Neagle traded zeroes for four innings. Mark McLemore broke the deadlock in the fifth with a two-out ground-rule double, then came home on a Rickey Henderson single.

Alex Rodriguez added a solo homer off the left-field foul pole screen in the sixth. New York managed one more hit than Seattle but couldn't score against García, José Paniagua, Arthur Rhodes, and Kazuhiro Sasaki, losing 2–0. Game 2 began just after 4 pm, with the sun bothering outfielders early.

The Yankees loaded the bases in the first inning without a hit and with no outs, but a double play and a groundout ended the threat. Seattle put two on in the second with a walk and a single, but Orlando Hernández caught John Olerud off second for a double play. John Halama threw six innings, and Paniagua handled the seventh.

Television coverage

On September 26, 2000, NBC declined to renew its broadcast agreement with Major League Baseball. Game 6 was the last MLB game NBC would televise for the next 22 years. In Houston, KPRC-TV carried NBC News' coverage of the 2000 Presidential Debate, while KNWS-TV carried NBC's final baseball game.

Aftermath

Alex Rodriguez left the Mariners for the Texas Rangers after this series for a ten-year, $252 million deal; three seasons later he was traded to the Yankees. The Yankees beat the New York Mets in five games in the first Subway Series since 1956. The Mariners signed Yankees' set-up man Jeff Nelson in the off-season and returned to the ALCS the following season after winning 116 games, but were dispatched in five games by the Yankees.