2001: A sick season

What an incredible season the 2001 campaign was for Major League Baseball…

Recently watched the MLB TV show Baseball’s Seasons on 2001, and I was absolutely struck by how many big things went down, the greatest of which was a dramatic seven-game Arizona vs. New York World Series less than two months after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11.

But that culmination was far from the only storyline:

• Cal Ripken, Jr. and Tony Gwynn took their historic retirement victory laps.
• Ichiro led the Mariners, breaking Spring Training as the first everyday position player from Japan.
• He collected his first All-Star appearance, Silver Slugger and MVP in a Rookie of the Year season.
• Racking up 242 hits, 127 runs scored and 56 stolen bases and 69 RBI, the right fielder with a rocket arm also helped his club set the Major League record for regular season wins.
• Barry Bonds and Roger Clemens showed the power of better living through chemistry.
• With 73 homers, Bonds laid waste to Mark McGwire’s single-season record, topping 50 for the first time in his career at age 36.
• The 38-year-old Clemens chalked up 213 strikeouts in 220-plus innings, “earning” himself a sixth Cy Young award.
• In the other league, in possibly his best year ever, the 37-year-old Big Unit’s nearly 250 innings included 372 Ks versus 71 walks in route to a third-straight Cy Young.
• Josh Beckett, Carlos Zambrano and CC Sabathia took the hill for the first time.
• Eric Davis, Mark McGwire and Paul O’Neill said good bye to the game.
• And Derek Jeter did this.

A number of storylines turned on the St. Louis Cardinals:

• Along with the imagery of American flags everywhere, of George W. Bush wearing an FDNY jacket to throw out the first pitch of Game 1 of World Series in Yankee Stadium, of full ballparks observing moments of silence, Jack Buck’s voice in these historic times brought comfort.
• On Sept. 17, a teary-eyed Buck took the field at Busch Stadium and declared a return to America’s game, offering us permission to be distracted occasionally while we stand up as a nation with these words that still bring chills.
• While lower Manhattan was still blanketed in carnage and little else seemed normal, when baseball returned, there really seemed to be a lift in the national spirit that only this boys’ game could accomplish.
• A 21-year-old rookie by the name of Albert Pujols introduced himself to the world.
• Albert appeared in the All-Star game, collecting Rookie of Year and Silver Slugger honors along with a fourth place finish in MVP voting.
• The 1.013 OPS set a standard that we’ve come to expect, but it’s incredible how big and how immediate an impact he had on the club, knocking out 37 home runs, 130 RBI and 112 runs scored.
• On Sept. 3, another 21-year-old, rookie lefty Bud Smith, twirled a no-hitter against the San Diego Padres.
• Yet another 21-year-old, Rick Ankiel, saw the meltdown of his pitching career come to an exclamation point with six starts, 24 innings and five wild pitches.
• In his last full season of life, Darryl Kile took the ball 34 times, as he’d done so many years before, and he put up great numbers as the anchor of the pitching staff.
• Stubby Clapp and Keith McDonald’s brief but inspiring MLB careers came to an end.
• For the first time since 1967 and 1968, the Birds made the playoffs in back-to-back years, taking the National League Wild Card with 93 wins.
• The good guys fell in the NLDS to the eventual World Champion Arizona Diamondbacks.

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