The Seattle Mariners would not have won an American League-record 116 games in 2001 if they hadn't first won the previous offseason. They were able to do that because of a pair of all-time steals in free agency, the second of which turned 25 years old on Monday.
It's not the three-year, $13.125 million deal that the Mariners did with Ichiro Suzuki. That one happened about a month earlier, and it proved to be the start of a beautiful friendship that yielded an AL MVP, an AL Rookie of the Year, 10 All-Star selections, 10 Gold Gloves and countless hits.