New York Yankees News

Home

Quizzes

Watch

Newsletter

Catching Up With Yankees Fan Favorite Luis Sojo

Originally posted on The Spun | By Mike DiGiovanna | Last updated Dec 18, 2025 1:41 PM ET

[Editor’s note: This article is from The Spun’s “Then and Now” magazine, featuring interviews with more than 50 sports stars of yesteryear. Order your copy online today, or pick one up at retail racks and newsstands nationwide.]

Luis Sojo doesn’t know if it was a premonition, wishful thinking or bravado, but as the infielder sat in the visiting New York Yankees’ dugout at Shea Stadium during Game 5 of the 2000 World Series, he sensed something good was about to happen.

“I was talking to [pitcher Orlando Hernández] on the bench, and I told him, ‘I’m gonna grab a coffee. Can you hold this bat for me because it’s going to deliver the winning hit later in the game,’ ” said Sojo, now 60. “He looked at me like I was crazy.”

There was one problem with Sojo’s prediction: He wasn’t in the game at the time. But he would enter as part of a double switch in the eighth, and a two-out rally in the ninth inning of a tie game set the stage for “the best thing to happen in my career,” said Sojo.

Mets left-hander Al Leiter struck out Tino Martinez and Paul O’Neill to start the ninth, but Jorge Posada worked a nine-pitch walk and took second on a Scott Brosius single. Up stepped Sojo, wielding the Clay Bellinger M-356 model bat Hernández had tossed to him in the on-deck circle.

Sojo poked a first-pitch, seeing-eye grounder up the middle, the ball bouncing four times before reaching the outfield and eluding the gloves of diving shortstop Kurt Abbott and second baseman Edgardo Alfonzo.

Center fielder Jay Payton made a strong throw home, but the ball hit Posada as he slid in with the go-ahead run and caromed into the first-base dugout, allowing Brosius to score for a 4-2 lead. Closer Mariano Rivera’s scoreless ninth sealed the Yankees’ third straight title and fourth in five years.

“To come through for the Yankees in the World Series, with all those superstars like [Derek] Jeter and Bernie [Williams], was a dream come true,” Sojo said. “It’s been 25 years, and everyone says that ball took 18 hops, 14 hops, seven hops … all I know is it went through, and that was the most important thing.”

That hit earned Sojo his fifth World Series ring — four with the Yankees and one with the 1993 Blue Jays — a remarkable hardware haul for a slap hitter who spent his 13-year career as a reserve and only twice reported to spring training with a guaranteed contract after signing a two-year, $1.8-million deal with the Yankees in 1998.

Those rings are stored in a bank safe deposit box near Sojo’s home in Tampa, where he moved with his wife and three kids after his retirement in 2003.

Sojo spent two years as a Yankees third-base coach, four years as a minor league manager, and he managed Team Venezuela in the 2006, 2009 and 2013 World Baseball Classics.

He travels between Tampa and his native Venezuela, where he has served as general manager for the winter league Tiburones de La Guaira and done television work. Much of his free time is spent with his four grandchildren.

“I tell them their grandfather played for the best organization in the world,” Sojo said. “It was very special.”

This article first appeared on The Spun and was syndicated with permission.

More must-reads: