The strike was the harbinger of the 1995 season for the Yankees. Although the Red Sox jumped out to a fast start and finished the season in first place, the Yankees were not serious contenders for the division title. With the Yankees clinching the inaugural American League Wild Card on the last day of the season, the Yankees and Red Sox reached the post-season in the same season for the first time. Before the postseason began, Mattingly contemplated about the first-ever playoff series in the rivalry, saying, "That would be pretty cool. It wouldn't hurt the rivalry any. There'd be a few deaths...just kidding". Both teams lost in separate ALDS series, with the Red Sox being swept by the Cleveland Indians and the Yankees losing in five games to the Seattle Mariners. For the Yankees, the loss led to another post-strike fallout: both Showalter and general manager Gene Michael were fired as a result of the loss. Similarly, the firing of Showalter as Yankees manager and the loss in the 1981 World Series were fallouts from the strike that year. In fact, the 1981 strike was antecedence to the Yankees' demise and downfall of the 1980s and 1990s and the strike in 1994 was part of that demise.