“I still get such a bang out of it,” John Cusack as Buck Weaver says late in Eight Men Out, the cinematic telling of the scandal that engulfed the 1919 Chicago White Sox, a team that was eliminated in the postseason, ostensibly because they weren’t trying to win. I thought of that line Wednesday night when the 2026 New York Yankees were eliminated in the postseason, despite presumably trying to win. The final out of Game Three of the American League Division Series — a sweep by the Tampa Bay Rays [1] — activated the annual municipal observance of Elimination Day, a bacchanalia of Sheadenfreude for New Yorkers who prefer their late Octobers and early Novembers free and clear of ticker-tape if it’s not falling directly on us.
Though the first recorded celebration [2] of Elimination Day took place in 2005, with festivities on some scale recurring every autumn save one since then, the inaugural modern gala surrounding the end of the Yankees’ chance to reign as world champions occurred in 1997, when the Cleveland baseball club then called the Indians ousted the defending titleholders in the fifth game of that year’s ALDS. The Yankees did not go down easily. Trailing, 4-3, at Jacobs Field, the team from New York got the tying run to third base in the eighth and, with two out in the ninth, another potential knotting tally to second via a Paul O’Neill double. The exhalation and exultation that followed when the next batter, Bernie Williams, flied out to left to end the game and championship defense reflected the sense of liberation inherent in the moment.
It also proved prophetic in its way, for the reaction seemed to take into account that Elimination Day 1997 better be enjoyed, for there wouldn’t be another one until 2001, the legendary Game Seven of that season’s World Series. The Arizona Diamondbacks’ triumph in the name of all that is good presaged the first golden age of Elimination Days, those wrought by the 2002 Anaheim Angels, the 2003 Florida Marlins, and the 2004 Boston Red Sox, each, like the ’01 D’Backs, a worthy world champion.
[3]It’s getting to be old but attractive hat.
By the time Elimination Day was penciled onto the baseball calendar in ’05 (another gift from the Angels), the sincere appreciation evinced for its existence nearly every October remained, yet the emotional heft associated with the widespread expression of gratitude may have begun to diminish at the edges. The 2004 Elimination Day celebration, considered the granddaddy of them all, what with the Red Sox rebounding from an 0-3 ALCS deficit to take four straight and clinch the pennant at Yankee Stadium, proved difficult to match in the years ahead. Those who continued to celebrate, via the playoff victories of the 2006 Tigers and 2007 Indians and other worthy squads in the early 2010s, nonetheless remained steadfast in their observance.
Scholars say the contemporary era of Elimination Day emerged around 2017, with the tone attached to the holiday growing more subdued than in its Golden Age heyday, thanks to its eventual routine nature. Every year the coming of Elimination Day could practically be counted on. An element of predictability set in. Veterans of the Elimination Day movement were never fully certain it would show up and therefore refused to take it for granted, but those might have been instincts tempered by the 1996-born dynasty, disciplined by the hard and bitter 1998-2000 threepeat speaking, to say nothing of the notion that any team that makes the playoffs can conceivably go all the way. Make no mistake, however: The fact that you can almost surely count on Elimination Day coming around again doesn’t provide any less of a bang when it does come as we edge toward the late 2020s.
Why, it’s almost as if you can reach out over a high fence and touch Elimination Day when it descends toward the palms of your hands. But you shouldn’t do that, for they have video replay now and can call spectator interference on you.
ELIMINATION DAY HONOR ROLL, 1921-2026
1921 New York Giants
1922 New York Giants
1926 St. Louis Cardinals
1942 St. Louis Cardinals
1955 Brooklyn Dodgers
1957 Milwaukee Braves
1960 Pittsburgh Pirates
1963 Los Angeles Dodgers
1964 St. Louis Cardinals
1976 Cincinnati Reds
1980 Kansas City Royals
1981 Los Angeles Dodgers
1995 Seattle Mariners
1997 Cleveland Indians
2001 Arizona Diamondbacks
2002 Anaheim Angels
2003 Florida Marlins
2004 Boston Red Sox
2005 Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim
2006 Detroit Tigers
2007 Cleveland Indians
2010 Texas Rangers
2011 Detroit Tigers
2012 Detroit Tigers
2015 Houston Astros
2017 Houston Astros
2018 Boston Red Sox
2019 Houston Astros
2020 Tampa Bay Rays
2021 Boston Red Sox
2022 Houston Astros
2024 Los Angeles Dodgers
2025 Toronto Blue Jays
2026 Tampa Bay Rays
With eternal thanks as well to those who did their part in seasons from 1903 to 2023 in which Elimination Day was a less formal yet no less valued affair.