By now, the game was over five hours long: It was well past 1 a.m. and it was raining. Jim Leyritz stepped to the plate: He was hitless in six plate appearances. Leyritz was ahead 3-and-0 when Belcher avoided his fifth walk by grooving the next pitch to Leyritz for strike one. But Leyritz then drove Belcher’s last pitch of the night high to right field; it just cleared the wall and ended the marathon in dramatic walkoff fashion: Yankees 7, Mariners 5.12
It was an epic with seven lead changes, akin to a 15-round heavyweight bout ended by a knockout. There was another significant element. This was Don Mattingly’s last game at Yankee Stadium. While Yankee fans witnessed the end of one great career, they also saw the beginning of Mariano Rivera’s. Rivera got the win this night, but had struggled as a starter during his rookie season.13 His last start had been a month earlier against the Mariners, who banged him up for five runs and seven hits in 4⅓ innings.14 Based on what Rivera had done thus far in 1995, virtually no one would have predicted the dominant relief performance they witnessed from Rivera under these playoff conditions — or the Hall of Fame career that lay ahead.
