Good teams can win in a variety of ways. They can win on the back of a strong start from an ace pitcher. The offense can pick up their pitching staff and slug their way to a victory in a shootout. And sometimes, everything’s working, and a decisive win ends in a blowout.

Twenty-five years ago, the Yankees won one such game against the Baltimore Orioles.

July 25: Yankees 19, Orioles 1 (box score)

Record: 53-42 (1st in AL East, 3.0 games ahead)

In many ways, the game can be summarized by the first inning. José Vizcaíno hit a ground ball to second base. Not only did he reach on an infield single, he advanced to second on a throwing error by Baltimore second baseman Delino DeShields. The Yankees immediately capitalized, as Derek Jeter bunted him over to third and Paul O’Neill drove him in with a single up the middle. While Bernie Williams lined into a double play, the Yankees had a 1-0 lead.

Meanwhile, in the bottom of the first, Yankees starter Andy Pettitte allowed a leadoff single to Brady Anderson and a two-out double to DeShields. In between, however, he got Mike Bordick to ground into a double play, and Albert Belle grounded out to third to strand DeShields at second. Despite getting good wood on the ball, the Orioles came up empty.

This essentially defined the game. The Orioles got baserunners against Pettitte, who allowed eight hits and walked two batters in seven innings. He managed, however, to work out of the jam every time, keeping the O’s off the board.

Baltimore starter Scott Erickson, however, had no such luck. He walked two batters in the second, escaping unscathed only because Ryan Thompson got himself thrown out stealing third for the third out of the inning. In the third, though, the Bombers began to open up the floodgates. Scott Brosius and Vizcaíno led off the inning with a pair of singles, then each advanced to third and second, respectively, when Jeter grounded out to short. An O’Neill 4-3 groundout scored Brosius and sent Vizcaíno to third. Vizcaíno then scored on a Bernie single, and Bernie followed that up by scoring on a David Justice double. Just like that, the Yankees had a 4-0 lead.

They continued to add on in the fourth. After Jorge Posada worked a walk to lead off the inning, Erickson got Thompson and Brosius out, and it looked for a moment he might right the ship. Vizcaíno singled to put runners on the corners, however. Jeter then grounded a single through the middle that scored Posada and put runners on second and third thanks to an error by center fielder Luis Matos. Of course, that error ultimately didn’t matter, as they would have scored no matter what base they were on: O’Neill deposited the very first pitch he saw into the right field seats, extending the Yankees’ lead to 8-0.

Jeter tacked on two more in the sixth, as he hit a two-run homer off reliever Gabe Molina, to give New York a ten-run lead. In the seventh, the Yankees lit the game on fire and turned it from a blowout to an absolute laugher. Posada opened the inning with a walk off Chuck McElroy, on in relief of Molina. Thompson and Brosius then singled to load the bases with nobody out. A sac fly by Vizcaíno brought in Posada, a walk by Jeter reloaded the bases. O’Neill singled to bring in Thompson, keeping the bases loaded for Williams. The Yankee center fielder proceeded to launch an 0-1 pitch into the left field seats for a grand slam. Yankees 16, Orioles 0.

The final two innings saw some low-intensity fireworks. Thompson and Clay Bellinger (who came on in the bottom half of the seventh to get Williams some time off his feet) each homered to bring the Yankees’ run total up to 19, while B.J. Surhoff homered off Darrell Einertson in the eighth to save the O’s from the ignominy of a 19-run shutout.

It’s hard to put together a better performance than the Yankees did in this game. Collectively, the offense scored 19 runs on 20 hits, but that only tells part of the story. They worked seven walks, struck out only five times, and hit a whopping five home runs (oddly enough, Justice’s double was their only other extra-base hit of the night). They went 8-for-15 with runners in scoring position, leaving only six runners on base. In contrast, the pitching staff stranded nine runners and limited opposing batters to one hit with runners in scoring position out of nine opportunities. Everything that could have gone right did go right.

Read the full 2000 Yankees Diary series here.