Arizona Diamondbacks tickets

The teams trekked back to the desert and the Arizona Diamondbacks Baseball - perhaps wary of losing close games-bludgeoned New York 15-2 to set the stage for Game 7. It would be one of the most remarkable games in Arizona Diamondbacks history. The main players included three 20-game winners with 10 Cy Young Awards between them, a man with 57 home runs, and the best relief pitcher in the history of postseason baseball. It was like an action movie script sent back for rewrite because it was too over-the-top. Clemens and Schilling were the starting pitchers and both pitched well. Clemens departed in the seventh with the game tied at one. The exhausted Schilling was pitching on fumes and gave up an eighth-inning homer to Soriano, who was shaping up as the hero of the Series for New York. Schilling was relieved by Batista and then Johnson, who pitched despite going seven strong innings the night before.

The Yankees appeared to have the Series wrapped up when they brought in Rivera to get the last six outs with a 2-1 lead. The unflappable reliever's career postseason ERA was now 0.70. But Grace, who had led the 1990s in hits, got one to lead off the bottom of the ninth. Then it all unraveled. "It was surreal," Johnson said later, "watching all this develop." Rivera threw wildly on an attempted sacrifice bunt to put the tying run on second and the winning run on first. Tony Womack then shot a double to right to tie the game. Next a Rivera pitch grazed Craig Counsells hand to load the bases. With only one out and the winning run at third, the Yankees were forced to play their infield in with the powerful Gonzalez batting. Gonzalez poked a soft liner into short center field that Jeter could have caught with the infield playing at normal depth. But with Jeter playing in, the ball flew over his head for a Series-winning hit. It was the first blown save in Rivera's World Series career and it came in the most important game he ever pitched. "That was the one guy we wanted to stay away from the whole Series," Gonzalez said. "We got him the one time it counted."

Brenly became the first rookie manage to win the World Series since Ralph Houk in 1961, but it seemed clear that Arizona Diamondbacks baseball team won in spite of Brenly, not because of him, Arizona used four different cleanup hitters during the Series, but Brenly's pitching moves were even more suspect. For example, Brenly allowed Schilling to pitch several meaningless innings in a Game 1 blowout. That robbed his star pitcher of rest that he would need to start the fourth game. As a result, Brenly had to remove Schilling early in that fourth game despite having only a two-run lead. Schilling's replacement, Kim, gave up Martinez's homer. Although Kim threw a career-high 61 pitches in that game, nearly a starter's workload, Brenly invited trouble by pitching Kim the next night also. Not surprisingly, it backfired on him when Kim blew the game again. Brenly wasted Randy Johnson in Game 6 by allowing him to throw 104 pitches in a 15-2 laugher despite knowing that Johnson might have to pitch again the next night. Brenly's work in the World Series was a clinic in how not to manage.

But Schilling and Johnson made up for Brenly's apparent mistakes with their remark-able pitching. Johnson was the seventh game's winning pitcher in relief, his third victory of the Series. The pair combined to start five games in the Series, including all four that Arizona won, and posted a 1.40 ERA with 45 strikeouts in 38 innings. Fittingly, they were named co-MVPs, and as they hoisted the trophy over their heads they cemented their place as one of the greatest World Series pitching tandems ever. "Now I know what it takes to win the World Series," Johnson said. "You've got to push the limits."