The 2002 American League Division Series (ALDS), the opening round of the 2002 American League playoffs, began on Tuesday, October 1, and ended on Sunday, October 6, with the champions of the three AL divisions—along with a "wild card" team—participating in two best-of-five series. The teams were:
- (1) New York Yankees (Eastern Division champion, 103–58) vs. (4) Anaheim Angels (Wild Card, 99–63): Angels win series, 3–1.
- (2) Oakland Athletics (Western Division champion, 103–59) vs. (3) Minnesota Twins (Central Division champion, 94–67): Twins win series, 3–2.
The higher seed (in parentheses) had the home field advantage (Games 1, 2 and 5 at home), which was determined by playing record. The Yankees were not required to make up one remaining game against the Tampa Bay Devil Rays, potentially allowing the Athletics to tie them for the best record, because they had a 5–4 advantage over Oakland in head-to-head play and thus would win the tiebreaker for home field advantage through the playoffs.
The Division Series saw the wild card-qualifying Angels beat the defending league champion Yankees, and the Twins defeat the Athletics in a startling upset. The Angels and Twins went on to meet in the AL Championship Series (ALCS). The Angels became the American League champion, and defeated the National League champion San Francisco Giants in the 2002 World Series.
Famous quotes containing the words american, league, division and/or series:
“The American landscape has no foreground and the American mind no background.”
—Edith Wharton (1862–1937)
“Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
“Forward the Light Brigade!”
—Alfred Tennyson (1809–1892)
“Major [William] McKinley visited me. He is on a stumping tour.... I criticized the bloody-shirt course of the canvass. It seems to me to be bad “politics,” and of no use.... It is a stale issue. An increasing number of people are interested in good relations with the South.... Two ways are open to succeed in the South: 1. A division of the white voters. 2. Education of the ignorant. Bloody-shirt utterances prevent division.”
—Rutherford Birchard Hayes (1822–1893)
“The theory of truth is a series of truisms.”
—J.L. (John Langshaw)