| 2000 National League Championship Series | ||||||||||
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| Dates | October 11–16 | |||||||||
| MVP | Mike Hampton (New York) | |||||||||
| Umpires | Bruce Froemming Tim Tschida Ed Rapuano Dale Scott Dana DeMuth Steve Rippley | |||||||||
| Broadcast | ||||||||||
| Television | Fox | |||||||||
| TV announcers | Joe Buck, Tim McCarver, and Bob Brenly | |||||||||
| Radio | ESPN | |||||||||
| Radio announcers | Charley Steiner and Dave Campbell | |||||||||
| Streaming | ||||||||||
| NLDS |
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The 2000 National League Championship Series (NLCS), to determine the champion of Major League Baseball's National League, was played between the Central Division champion St. Louis Cardinals and the wild card New York Mets.
This series pitted a pair of teams that were former division rivals.[1] In the mid-1980s, the Mets and Cardinals fought it out for supremacy in the National League East over four seasons, with each team alternating division championships between 1985 and 1988 (the Cardinals in their pennant seasons of 1985 and 1987, the Mets in their championship season of 1986 and 1988; however, the Cardinals weren't serious contenders in both of those years).[1]
The Cardinals, led by manager Tony La Russa, had played through the 2000 season in relatively businesslike fashion. They had won the National League Central division, and swept the Mets' fiercest rival, Atlanta Braves, in three games in the NL Division Series (the first time that Atlanta did not make the NLCS since 1991) that gave St. Louis home field advantage in the NLCS. However, they were struck with several injuries to key players as the playoffs began, including slugger Mark McGwire, catcher Mike Matheny, starting pitcher Garrett Stephenson in Game 3 of the NLDS, and the sudden, unexplained wildness of rookie pitcher Rick Ankiel.[2][3]
The Mets, on the other hand, engaged in battle with the Braves for much of the season, eventually falling one game short of a division title. They matched up with the San Francisco Giants in the Division Series. After dropping the first game, they would rebound to win the following three games in heart-stopping fashion, including a 13th inning walk off home run from Benny Agbayani to win Game 3 and an improbable one-hit shutout by Bobby Jones to win the clinching Game 4.[3]
This was the first played NLCS since 1990 to not feature the Atlanta Braves as one of the teams; the Braves had competed in the NLCS eight times in the 1990s (the exceptions also included 1994, which did not hold a series due to the 1994-95 Major League Baseball strike).
The Mets would go on to lose to the New York Yankees in the World Series in five games.