October 27, 1999: The Yankees Close Out as the Team of the Century

"Past Tense," a two-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, aired on December 31, 1994 and January 7, 1995. It was a time-travel episode set in 2024, and when the subject of the greatest baseball team ever came up, one of the characters who belonged to that time said it was the 1999 New York Yankees. Another said it was the 2015 London Kings, and Captain Benjamin Sisko, played by Avery Brooks, agreed with him.

In real life, at the dawn of 1995, the Yankees hadn't won the World Series since 1978. But they won in 1996, and put together an all-time great season in 1998, before winning it all again in 1999 and 2000. The '96 team is remembered as the one that ended a drought, the '98 team is often held up as one of the best ever, and the 2000 team is remembered as winning a "Subway Series" against the crosstown New York Mets. But the '99 Yankees kind of got lost in the shuffle. So they got more respect before they played than after!

October 27, 1999: The Yankees defeat the Atlanta Braves‚ 4-1 at Yankee Stadium‚ to win their 25th World Championship. Roger Clemens gets the win‚ hurling 4-hit ball before leaving the game in the 8th inning, to finally get his first World Series ring, 13 years after his only previous appearance, with the ill-fated '86 Red Sox.

Mariano Rivera gets the save‚ his 2nd of the Series. Jim Leyritz hits a solo homer in the 8th, the last home run, and the last run, in baseball in the 20th Century. The last out is Keith Lockhart flying out to left field, where the ball is caught by Game 3's hero, Chad Curtis. Rivera wins the Series' Most Valuable Player award.

It is also the last major league game for New York baseball legend -- if not quite "hero" -- Darryl Strawberry, who goes 1-for-3 as the Yankees' designated hitter, his last hit a single off John Smoltz in the 2nd inning.

Four years earlier, as the final out was registered of the 1995 World Series, NBC's Bob Costas called the Braves "The Team of the Nineties." That label made sense at the time. Going into this Series, in the decade, the Braves had won 8 Division Titles and 5 Pennants, but just that 1 World Series; the Yankees had won 3 Division Titles (4 counting the strike-shortened 1994), 3 Pennants and 2 World Series.

This Series decided it, and in indisputable fashion, as the Yanks were now 2-0 over the Braves in Series play in the decade. This time, after the final out, Costas got it right: "The New York Yankees. World Champions. Team of the Decade. Most successful franchise of the Century."

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October 27, 1999 was a Wednesday. Football was in midweek. The NBA season started 6 days later. There were 7 games in the NHL:

* The New York Islanders lost to the Florida Panthers, 6-3 at the National Car Rental Center (now the Amerant Bank Arena) in the Miami suburb of Sunrise, Florida.

* The New Jersey Devils beat the St. Louis Blues, 2-1 at the Continental Airlines Arena at the Meadowlands.

* In an "Original Six" matchup, the Chicago Blackhawks beat the Montreal Canadiens, 1-0 at the Molson Centre (now the Bell Centre) in Montreal.

* The Toronto Maple Leafs beat the Atlanta Thrashers, 4-0 at the Air Canada Centre (now the Scotiabank Arena) in Toronto.

* The Buffalo Sabres beat the Tampa Bay Lightning at the Marine Midland Arena (now the KeyBank Center) in Buffalo.

* The Detroit Red Wings beat the Colorado Avalanche, 5-3 at the Joe Louis Arena in Detroit.

* And the Mighty Ducks of Anaheim beat the Pittsburgh Penguins, 2-1 at the Arrowhead Pond of Anaheim (now the Honda Center). Teemu Selänne scored the winning goal with 1:22 left in overtime.

Among the games played that night in the Group Stage of European soccer's UEFA Champions League, AFC Fiorentina, the team in Florence, Italy, beat Arsenal, 1-0 at Wembley Stadium in London. This defeat essentially knocked Arsenal out of the competition, "relegating" them to that season's UEFA Cup (the tournament now known as the UEFA Europa League), in which they reached the Final before losing.

With the recent expansion of the CL to include teams that hadn't won their country's national league the season before, the team's ownership decided that their North London stadium, the 38,000-seat Highbury, was too small to meet the demand for tickets, so they moved their home CL games to the old Wembley, where crowds exceeded 73,000.

But that stadium was badly in need of replacement, and closed a year later, to be torn down and replaced by a new stadium that opened in 2007. That forced Arsenal to hold future CL games at Highbury, which led them to decide to build a larger stadium. The 60,000-seat Emirates Stadium opened in 2006.