In their second consecutive series against a fellow AL East squad, the Yankees began a three-game set against the Devils Rays on a high note, winning the first game in the Bronx behind Andy Pettitte. Joe Torre’s dynastic club had already built a solid lead in the division at this point 25 years ago, and would continue in that direction with another win over the relatively newborn Tampa Bay squad, this one in rather dramatic fashion.

May 9: Yankees 4, Devil Rays 3 (box score)

Record: 22-9 (4.0 GA in AL East)

After a fairly clean victory in the first game, this one ended up being a real grinder for the Yankees. David Cone was on the bump for New York, and though he may not have had his best stuff going, he was able to muscle his way through a decent outing.

Coney ran into his first trouble of the evening in the top of the second, when Vinny Castilla poked a double into center field off a flat pitch that scored Fred McGriff and put them up 1-0. The following inning, the list of odd players to don the Tampa Bay uniform contributing to this game grew, when little-known 50-Homer Club member Greg Vaughn launched a two-run shot deep into left field. The blast, his 10th of the season, put the Devil Rays up 3-0, and had the Yankees on the ropes early in this one.

From that point forward, Cone would actually stop the bleeding, and help to keep the Yankees alive in the ballgame. At this point, I’ll turn it over to the late legend Roger Angell for a moment, as he recounted Cone’s workmanlike efforts here in his book A Pitcher’s Story:

The pitch counts go down and a sense of pattern comes into his work. [Miguel] Cairo, leading off the fifth, looks at a slider for a called strike, fouls off a fastball, lays off another slider that just misses, for ball two, and is out on an easy bouncer to third. Gerald Williams hits a double, but after another out Vaughn fouls off an up-fastball (whew) and then flies to left, to end the inning. Eleven pitches, and then David requires only nine more to whiz through the sixth.

The Yankees began their chipping away efforts in the bottom half of the fifth, when Shane Spencer teed off and belted a two-run home run into left-center off of Rays starter/Milhouse hero Esteban Yan.

In the bottom of the seventh, Jorge Posada made this a whole new ballgame, when he led off the frame with a solo blast into dead center field. The eighth homer of his excellent season to that point tied the game up at three, and suddenly gave the Yankees the momentum.

Cone would actually pitch into the eighth inning in this one, though he exited with two outs after José Canseco singled. All in all, the Yankees’ starter had grinded through 7.2 innings, keeping the damage to just three runs on eight hits. It would be up to the bullpen to keep things in check the rest of the way. Once again, here’s the incomparable Angell:

Not a memorable game … and I offer it to only suggest the sort of everyday, bourgeois hard work that goes into a pitcher’s pretty good outing—the kind of office day that eluded Cone so often this season but kept him in good standing with his manager and still in the rotation. His ninety-five pitches included only four strikeouts, but he looked almost at home on that little hill this time and free to enjoy the tasks. In the clubhouse, he was semi-elated. He’d hung some sliders, he admitted, but then he got better. “It’s all tempo and rhythm,” he said.”

Luckily for Cone and New York, a combination of Mike Stanton and Jeff Nelson held the fort. Though the offense couldn’t muster anything more through nine innings, the ‘pen helped push this game into extra innings. Nelson set down Tampa Bay in order in their half of the ninth, setting the stage for what they hoped would be a dramatic bottom half of the inning.

With Rick White pitching for the Devils Rays, Scott Brosius started the rally with a one-out walk. Chuck Knoblauch followed with an automatic double to put the Yanks in prime position. White and the coaching staff elected to intentionally walk Derek Jeter to load the bases next, giving the big chance to Paul O’Neill. With White in his third inning of work, and clearly having some trouble, they elected to stay with him.

Intentional or not, White had trouble finding the zone, and brought this game to an anticlimactic finish, walking O’Neill on four pitches, the final being an up-and-in heater. If you want to draw some more excitement from it though, consider this walk-off walk by O’Neill possible foreshadowing for arguably the most memorable plate appearance of the season, five and a half months later in the Subway Series.

Wins all count the same in the standings, and the Yankees were netting plenty of them to this point in 2000. Great teams are almost always able to win these games on the margins, the close, grind-it-out types, and this 2000 squad was making itself look like just that kind of team.

Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.