The legacy of the 2001 Seattle Mariners is a complicated one.

Very rarely do franchises as cursed as this one have iterations of their team that are remembered so fondly, despite not claiming the ultimate success. In Seattle's case, this team didn't even make the World Series, losing the ALCS to a galvanised New York Yankees, who were supposed to be on the decline.

The ‘01 Mariners co-own the record for the most regular season wins in a given campaign; their 116 victories matched the mark set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs, who coincidentally, also failed to hang the World Series pennant that year.

Lou Piniella's team wasn't supposed to be good, let alone all-time great. With a meagre return in a lopsided trade that saw favourite son Ken Griffey Jr. become a Cincinnati Red fresh in the mind, pre-season polling of 12 ESPN experts and analysts saw just two pundits brave enough to predict a Mariners wild card berth.

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Instead, they would qualify for the post-season as the top seed, defeat Cleveland in 5 games to move on to the American League Championship series, before the Yankees, still mourning after the 9/11 terror attacks, would halt their run.

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It would be 21 years before the Mariners featured in playoff baseball again, winning a 2022 Wild Card series against the Toronto Blue Jays, before being swept 3-0 in the Divisional Round by the eventual champions, the Houston Astros.

That means the Seattle Mariners had not won an ALCS game since their solitary victory in the 2001 series against the Yankees. Until yesterday.

Here's a brief look at how the world looked last time the Mariners won a game in the American League Championship Series.

  1. Queen Elizabeth was 75
  2. The Nokia 3310 was the year's highest selling mobile phone
  3. Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone dominated the box office
  4. P!nk's ‘M!SSUNDAZTOOD' was the highest selling album of the year
  5. Facebook was still almost 5 years away from its public launch
  6. Michael Jordan was still suiting up for the Washington Wizards
  7. Shaq and Kobe went back to back
  8. The Brisbane Lions had just won the first flag of their threepeat
  9. Tom Brady had just been named the Patriots starter, after Drew Bledsoe's injury, and was four months shy of winning the first of his seven Super Bowls
  10. The separation of power couple Tom Cruise and Nicole Kidman was still dominating tabloid headlines.