20 Amazing Things from MLB's Epic 2001 Season

Because the present reality of Major League Baseball can be adequately described as "not great," indulging in a little nostalgia is really the only way to feel good about baseball right now.

So, what's say we treat ourselves with a look back at MLB's 2001 season?

Talk about a season that had it all. Most famously, a historic home run outburst and one of the most incredible World Series ever played. There were also extraordinary individual seasons aplenty, as well as a whole menagerie of awesome, weird, cathartic and generally memorable moments.

We would go through all of it if we could, but we figured it was best to compromise with a list of 20 amazing things from the 2001 season. They are presented here in no particular order, though we did think it appropriate to start with a bang.

That Barry Bonds Season Happened

Now, "bang." Barry Bonds made that noise a lot in 2001.

Specifically, in the 73 instances that he hit the ball over the fence to break Mark McGwire's three-year-old record for home runs in a season. His relentlessness knew no bounds, as he homered in all but two of the parks he played in and against all but one of the San Francisco Giants' opponents.

The lesser-known aspect of Bonds' prodigious dingering in '01 is that he also broke Babe Ruth's record for slugging percentage in a season, set in 1920. Not bad, considering that was the year that Ruth out-homered every American League team except the one he played for.

Granted, it later came to light that Bonds used performance-enhancing drugs to turn himself into the ultimate home run honcho. But as with all superhero media, his '01 season is nonetheless enjoyable if you ignore the artifice and appreciate it for what it is.

That Sammy Sosa Season Also Happened

Speaking of prolific home run hitters from the 2001 season, it was then that Sammy Sosa found himself in an all-too-familiar position as he also specialized in yardwork.

The Chicago Cubs star ended 2001 with 64 home runs of his own, marking the third time that he had crossed the 60-homer threshold. He's the only player ever to do that...and yet because of McGwire in 1998 and 1999 and Bonds in '01, Sosa was the league's leading home run hitter in none of those years.

However, Sosa actually did set a home run record in 2001. He became the first (and is still the only) player to record three games with as many as three home runs within a single season.

Which brings us to some bonus trivia! There were a record-setting 22 three-homer games in 2001, including the only instance of teammates doing it in the same game. Take a bow, Jeromy Burnitz and Richie Sexson.

That Roger Clemens Season Happened

It wasn't all about the dingers in 2001. There was also some great pitching that year, including by two legends who won their sixth and fourth Cy Young Awards, respectively.

The former is Roger Clemens, who won his Cy Young on the American League side the old fashioned way: by racking up wins.

Clemens' 20-1 start for the New York Yankees in '01 was the first of its kind. Those 20 wins also made the then-38-year-old just the third pitcher to win as many as 20 games in three different decades, as well as the oldest pitcher to do so in the AL since 1959.

Come the end of the regular season, Clemens "sunk" to 20-3 after losing his last two decisions. But he made up for that in the playoffs, wherein he pitched to a 2.36 ERA in a journey that ended in Game 7 of the World Series. More on that later.

That Randy Johnson Season Happened

Though Clemens had a darn good year in 2001, he still ended up one win and 159 strikeouts short of what Randy Johnson did to earn his Cy Young Award in the National League.

The "Big Unit" set an ominous tone for hitters by obliterating a bird in spring training, and it never really let up as he became the first pitcher since Nolan Ryan in 1973 to cross the 370-strikeout threshold.

Already the only pitcher to do it twice, Johnson also matched his 1999 and 2000 seasons by striking out at least 10 batters in 23 different games. He even did so in a relief, setting a record by coming out of the bullpen on July 18 and fanning 16 batters.

Oh, and Johnson also won Games 6 and 7 of the World Series while pitching to a 1.52 ERA throughout the playoffs. Jeepers, could that man throw a baseball.

That Alex Rodriguez Season Happened

Meanwhile in Texas, one of Johnson's former teammates with the Seattle Mariners somehow looked underpaid in 2001.

This was the first year of Alex Rodriguez's record-shattering 10-year, $252 million contract with the Rangers. The season itself didn't go well for the team, which only lost two fewer games than it had in 2000 in spite of its new superstar shortstop.

This was no fault of A-Rod's, though. He became only the fourth player in history to tally 200 hits and 50 home runs in a single season. His 52 homers also set a record for an everyday shortstop, which stood until he broke it with 57 blasts the following season.

Alas, this is yet another season that was later tainted by an admission of PED use. But like with Bonds' superheroics, if you can enjoy a man dressed like a bat punching another man dressed like a clown, you can appreciate this.

That Manny Ramirez Season Also Happened

Baseball had never had a $20-million-per-year player before A-Rod signed his deal with the Rangers. But within 24 hours, it had another when Manny Ramirez signed with the Boston Red Sox.

As his deal was for $92 million less than Rodriguez's, Ramirez kinda-sorta had a lower bar to clear to live up to his new contract. Yet he still did so immediately, posting a 1.014 OPS and homering 41 times in '01.

It's a shame that Statcast wasn't around back then, because a bunch of Ramirez's long balls were absolute wallops. The one featured here might not have even been his longest of the season. Heck, he purportedly hit nearly 1,000 feet worth of home runs just in one game on June 23.

No wonder Ramirez led the AL in intentional walks. Four of those came in one game, a rare honor that even Bonds wasn't granted until 2004.

That Mike Hampton Season Happened

Right around the time that Rodriguez and Ramirez cashed in, the Colorado Rockies also made Mike Hampton the richest pitcher in major league history with an eight-year, $121 million contract.

They unfortunately didn't get the ace left-hander they were hoping for, but at least the deal put a history-making slugger on their side.

In 2001, Hampton went off for not one, not two...[goes on for a while]...but seven home runs. Thus did he become only the sixth pitcher in history to hit that many home runs. And before anyone says the name "Shohei Ohtani," the distinction here is that Hampton and the other five did so in games they also pitched.

Plus, Hampton even homered in three straight at-bats at one point. Even Ohtani hasn't done that. Yet.

That CC Sabathia Season Happened

You know which left-hander had a better year than Hampton in 2001? As in, besides that one 6'10", 225-pound bird obliterator?

CC Sabathia. That's who.

The future Cy Young Award winner and Hall of Fame hopeful was only 20 years old when he debuted for Cleveland in 2001. It ended up being a breakthrough for the books, as he's still the last rookie lefty to win as many as 17 games in a season.

Not bad for a guy who wasn't yet a finished product as a pitcher, though Sabathia's enormous upside was plenty apparent when he got two strikes on hitters. In those instances, the .136 average against him placed ahead of even Johnson and Clemens.

That Ichiro Suzuki Season Happened

Sabathia did not win the AL Rookie of the Year in 2001, however, because he had to share the field with a certain Japanese outfielder for the Mariners.

At least, that's how Ichiro Suzuki was generally known to stateside fans when the season began. That began to change when he beat A-Rod and the Rangers with a clutch home run on April 6. After he made that legendary throw opposite the Oakland Athletics five days later, Ichiro-mania was officially on.

Ichiro ultimately did a lot to earn baseball's Fred Lynn special, but what he mainly did was hit. His 242 hits marked baseball's second 240-hit season in as many years, yet also only its third since 1930.

It kinda felt like Ichiro got at least one hit every day, which was actually because he kinda did. His 135 games with at least one knock set a bar that he didn't even reach again in 2004.

That Albert Pujols Season Happened

Whereas Sabathia at least managed to take one vote away from Ichiro in the American League, the Rookie of the Year winner in the National League for 2001 was unanimous. 

All Albert Pujols did for the St. Louis Cardinals in '01 was get on base at a .403 clip and hit 37 home runs. Before him, the last rookie to hit those marks was Al Rosen in 1950. Nobody hit them again until Aaron Judge in 2017.

More specifically, Pujols also became just the second rookie in history to finish with a .300/.400/.600 slash line. The other was the greatest hitter who ever lived, Ted Williams.

Though nobody will argue now for Pujols to share that label with Williams, his debut season was a fitting appetizer for a Cooperstown-bound career punctuated by 679 home runs, three MVPs and two World Series rings.

That All-Star Game Happened

As 2001 marked the beginning of three amazing major league careers, it also marked the end for eventual Hall of Famers Cal Ripken Jr. and Tony Gwynn.

This was no secret at the All-Star Game, where the Baltimore Orioles and San Diego Padres legends were the guests of honor at Safeco Field in Seattle. The late Gwynn unfortunately didn't get to play, but Ripken did and was at the center of two unforgettable moments.

First, when Rodriguez insisted on Ripken taking over his old haunt at shortstop during the first inning. And then in the third inning, when the 40-year-old ripped a ball over the left field fence to become the oldest player to ever go deep in the Midsummer Classic.

Another fun fact about the 2001 All-Star Game is that Derek Jeter's home run in the sixth was the first by a Yankee in the All-Star Game since Yogi Berra in 1959. Not his greatest feat of the season, but...well, spoilers.

That Mike Piazza Home Run Happened

Did someone mention unforgettable home runs from the 2001 season? Must be time to talk about Mike Piazza, then.

According to win probability added, the New York Mets star's two-run homer against Atlanta on Sept. 21 was his...

Nope. Shut up, sentence. That's not the point. There simply is no number that can capture the magnitude of one of New York's biggest stars hitting a game-winning home run in the first professional sporting event in the city after the events of Sept. 11, 2001.

No, Piazza's home run didn't raise the Twin Towers or prevent the wars that followed. But even watching it now, 21 years later, the sheer catharsis of it can still be felt.

That Scott Hatteberg Game Happened

Things got a little heavy for a moment there, so let's lighten the mood by remembering that time the Red Sox's reserve catcher had the best/worst day a hitter can have.

On Aug. 6, Scott Hatteberg's day against the Rangers got off to a rough start when he lined into a 6-4-4 triple play in his second at-bat. It was one of only two triple plays turned that entire season.

In his next at-bat, however, Hatteberg turned his fortunes right the heck around when he erased a 7-6 deficit with a grand slam. Thus did he become the first (and still only) player to hit into a triple play and hit a grand slam in the same game.

This would be Hatteberg's primary claim to fame if he didn't, you know, go on to become the face of a 20-game winning streak in a scene that was later replicated by an A-list star in an award-winning movie.

That A.J. Burnett No-Hitter Happened

Also on the topic of weird stuff that happened in 2001, A.J. Burnett did more that year than break a car window with a wayward warm-up pitch.

He also twirled a no-hitter on May 12. And not just any no-hitter, but one with nine walks.

That set a new mark for the most walks in a nine-inning no-no, though Jim Maloney still holds the overall record with the 10 batters he walked in his 10-inning no-hitter from 1965. What's more, the only starting position player that Burnett didn't walk that day was Damian Jackson. Burnett hit him with a pitch instead.

Burnett also struck out only seven batters in that game, making his one of only 27 of 256 no-hitters since 1900 with more walks than strikeouts.

That Mike Mussina One-Hitter Happened

Though there were no perfect games in 2001, Mike Mussina came as close as a pitcher can come to throwing one.

Facing the Red Sox at Fenway Park on Sept. 2, Mussina retired the first 26 batters he faced and got ahead 1-2 on the 27th hitter, Carl Everett. Alas, he was able to bloop a single into left-center field.

This wasn't the first time that Mussina, who was elected to the Hall of Fame in 2019, had come so close to a perfect game. Four years prior on May 30, 1997, he was two outs away from a perfecto when Cleveland's Sandy Alomar singled to end the bid.

On the plus side, Mussina's performance against the Red Sox is one of only 10 one-hitters with no walks and at least 13 strikeouts. Another was actually thrown earlier that year by Boston's Hideo Nomo, though that's not to be confused with the no-hitter he also threw in 2001.

That Amazing Cleveland Comeback Happened

Imagine it's Aug. 5 and your team is down by 12 runs to a club that's already 50 games over the .500 mark. Time to pack it in, right?

Well, not if you're the Cleveland Guardians on that date in 2001.

The 14-2 lead that the Mariners took on the Guardians at Jacobs Field didn't start to get smaller until the bottom of the seventh inning. But then it was gone in a flash. Cleveland scored three in the seventh, four in the eighth and then five in the ninth to tie the game. In the 11th, they won it on Jolbert Cabrera's single.

By coming back from a 12-run deficit, the Guardians tied a major league record that hadn't been touched in 76 years. And in case you're wondering if you might have missed it: no, it hasn't happened since then either.

That Seattle Mariners Team Happened

Do not weep for the 2001 Mariners. Though they took a licking on Aug. 5 of that year, they had been ticking before and they kept right on ticking after.

So much so that they ended up winning 116 games to best an American League record that the Yankees had set just three years earlier. The '01 Mariners also had a plus-300 run differential and darn near a .700 winning percentage against fellow winning clubs.

So, yeah, they were good. More to the point, at no point were they ever bad. The worst thing they experienced was mediocrity in that one instance when they sunk to .500 with a loss in their second game on the second day of the season.

It's a shame that the '01 Mariners flamed out in the American League Championship Series, but, hey, best team to not win the World Series isn't exactly an insult.

That Oakland Athletics Team Also Happened

They largely had to operate in the Mariners' shadow throughout the year, but one of the other great teams in recent memory is likewise from the 2001 season.

Though the '01 A's won "only" 102 games, they did so with a plus-239 run differential in their own right. Jason Giambi, Miguel Tejada and Eric Chavez became the first infield trio to hit 30-plus homers apiece, while aces Mark Mulder, Tim Hudson and Barry Zito combined for a 3.43 ERA and 678.2 innings.

By the second half of the season, even the Mariners weren't winning games as frequently as the A's. They won 58 of the 75 contests they played, achieving the best winning percentage after the All-Star break since 1954.

But whereas the Mariners at least made it out of the first round of the playoffs, the A's couldn't make it that far in part because of a rather famous flip.

That Derek Jeter Flip Happened

Derek Jeter is a 14-time All-Star and five-time World Series champion who fell one vote short of unanimous induction into the Hall of Fame in 2020.

A career like that doesn't come without memorable moments. Easily the most memorable, though, was when Jeter made "the flip" in Game 3 of the American League Division Series on Oct. 13, 2001.

In 2021, an oral history of the play by ESPN's Tim Kurkjian would reveal that the Yankees had actually practiced the play in spring training. So while it seemed random at the time that Jeter would be in that spot at that precise moment to do that with the ball, you might say it was premeditated.

Whatever the case, Jeremy Giambi (RIP) was called out and the Yankees kept their 1-0 lead for the game. It held up and they also won Games 4 and 5 to complete a comeback from the 0-2 hole they had been in.

That World Series Happened

Not long after Jeter's flip, the Yankees were in the World Series for the fourth year in a row. Also there were the Arizona Diamondbacks, who had only just been born four years earlier.

More than two decades later, it's still hard to believe what happened next.

The D-backs actually outscored the Yankees by 23 runs throughout the series, but four of the seven games were decided by one run. The Yankees won three of those, including two by way of game-tying home runs in the ninth inning and game-winning hits in extra innings in Games 4 and 5 at Yankee Stadium.

The single one-run win that Arizona had in the series, though, counted the most. Down 2-1 and facing Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning, Tony Womack set 'em up and Luis Gonzalez knocked 'em down.

There have been a great many clutch hits in baseball since the beginning of the 21st century. So amazing was the 2001 World Series, however, that it accounts for six of the top 20 by championship win probability added.

Stats courtesy of Baseball Reference and FanGraphs.