NY Yankees History Part I

Franchise history:


History of the New York Yankees

Origins:

At the end of the 1900 season the American League (AL) re-organized and, with its president Ban Johnson as the driving force, decided to assert itself as a new major league. Known as the Western League until 1899, the AL carried over five of its previous locations and added three more on the East Coast, including one in Baltimore, Maryland, which had lost its National League team when that league contracted the year before. The intention of Johnson and the American League had been to place a team in New York City, but their efforts had been stymied by the political connections that owners of the National League New York Giants had with Tammany Hall.

When the team began play as the Baltimore Orioles in 1901, it was managed by John McGraw. As a result of a feud with league president Ban Johnson, who rigidly enforced rules about rowdiness on the field of play, McGraw jumped leagues to manage the New York Giants in the middle of the 1902 season. A week later the owner of the Giants also gained controlling interest of the Orioles and raided the team for players, after which the league took control of the team, still intending to move the franchise to New York when and if possible.

In January 1903, the American and National Leagues held a "peace conference" to settle conflicts over player contract disputes and to agree on future cooperation. The NL also agreed that the "junior circuit" could establish a franchise in New York. The AL's Baltimore franchise became the New York franchise when its new owners, Frank Farrell and William Devery, were able to find a ballpark location not blocked by the Giants. Farrell and Devery both had deep ties in city politics and gambling. Farrell owned a casino and several pool halls, while Devery had served as a blatantly corrupt chief of the New York City police and had just been forced out of the department at the start of 1902.

The Highlanders

The original Highlanders:

The franchise's first park in New York was located at 165th Street and Broadway in Manhattan, near the highest point on the island. Consequently the field was known as Hilltop Park and the team quickly became known as the New York Highlanders. The name was also a reference to the noted British military unit The Gordon Highlanders, as the team president from 1903 to 1906 was named Joseph Gordon. Today the site of the original Hilltop Park is occupied by buildings of the Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center.

As the Highlanders, the team enjoyed success only twice, finishing in second place in 1904 and 1910; but otherwise, much of its first fifteen years in New York was spent in the cellar. Its somewhat corrupt ownership, along with the questionable activities of some players - notably first baseman Hal Chase - raised suspicions of game-fixing, but little of that was ever proven.

Hilltop Park, home of the HighlandersThe Highlanders' best chance came on the last day of the 1904 season at the Hilltop. New York pitcher Jack Chesbro threw a wild pitch in the ninth inning which allowed the eventual pennant-winning run to score for the Boston Americans. This event had historical significance in several ways. First, the presence of the Highlanders in the race had led the Giants to announce the team would not participate in the World Series against a "minor league" team. Although Boston had won the pennant, the Giants still refused to participate. The resulting tongue-lashing of the Giants by the media stung its owner, John T. Brush, who then led a committee that formalized the rules governing the World Series. 1904 was the last year a Series was not played, until the strike-truncated year of 1994. For fans of the team formally named the Red Sox in 1908, the 1904 season ending game would prove to be the last time for a century that Boston would defeat the Yankees in a pennant-deciding game.

The Polo Grounds, home of the Yankees from 1913 to 1922From 1913 to 1922 the team would play in the Polo Grounds, a park owned by its National League rivals, the Giants. Relations between the clubs had warmed when the Giants were allowed to lease Hilltop Park while the Polo Grounds was being rebuilt in 1911 following a disastrous fire. During the early 1900s, the nickname "Yankees" was occasionally applied to the club, as a variant on "Americans." Publisher William Randolph Hearst's New York Evening Journal called the team the "Invaders" in 1903, but switched to "Highlanders" in the spring of 1904. On April 7, 1904, a spring training story from Richmond, Virginia carried the headline: "Yankees Will Start Home From South To-Day." The April 14, 1904 opening day headline on page one of the New York Evening Journal screamed: "YANKEES BEAT BOSTON."[1] The name grew in popularity over the team's first decade. With the change of parks in 1913, the "Highlanders" reference became obsolete, and the team nickname became exclusively "Yankees". Before very long, "New York Yankees" had become the official name of the club.

By the mid 1910s, owners Farrell and Devery had become estranged and both were in need of money. At the start of 1915, they sold the team to Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Captain Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston. Ruppert inherited a brewery fortune and had also been tied to the Tammany Hall machine, serving as a U.S. Congressman for eight years. He later said, "For $450,000 we got an orphan ball club, without a home of its own, without players of outstanding ability, without prestige." But now with an owner possessing deep pockets, and a willingness to dig into them to produce a winning team, the Yankees were on their way to acquiring more prestige than Ruppert could have envisioned.

The Ruth and Gehrig era:

Perhaps one of the greatest ironies of the Yankees' dominance comes from its roots. The Yankees detente with the Boston Red Sox and Chicago White Sox circa 1920 (all three collectively known as the "Insurrectos") paid off well. Over the next few years the new owners would begin to enlarge the payroll. Many of the newly acquired players who would later contribute to the team's success came from the Boston Red Sox, whose owner, theater impresario Harry Frazee, had bought his team on credit and needed money to pay off his loans and purchase Fenway Park from the Fenway Park Trust. Further, as Frazee owned the strongest of the "Insurrectos" franchises, which antagonized A.L. President Ban Johnson, Frazee faced most of the legal battles which proved costly.[2] From 1919 to 1922, the Yankees acquired pitchers Waite Hoyt, Carl Mays and Herb Pennock, catcher Wally Schang, shortstop Everett Scott and third baseman Joe Dugan, all from the Red Sox.

Babe Ruth in 1920, the first year he joined the YankeesHowever, pitcher-turned-outfielder Babe Ruth was the most talented of them all. The Babe accumulated 2,213 RBIs over his career which ranks second in Major League History, and totaled 1,971 as a Yankee which is second best in the Yankees team history. Frazee traded Ruth to the Yankees in January of 1920, citing Ruth's demand for a raise after being paid the highest salary in baseball, and despite owning the single season home run record at the time of the trade (hitting 29 home runs in 1919).[3] Frazee also wished to aid the Yankees, as giving the Yankees a box office draw would strengthen a legal ally, and reduce the pressure he faced. Ruth was also regarded as a problem, a carouser. That would continue during his Yankees years, but the New York ownership was more tolerant, provided he brought fans and championships to the ballpark.

The perceived outcome of the trade in favor of the Yankees would haunt the Boston club for the next 84 years. The Red Sox ended up not winning a World Series from 1919 until 2004 (see Curse of the Bambino), often finding themselves out of the World Series hunt as a result of the success of the Yankees. Frazee would not have to wait that long to produce success from the Ruth trade - on Broadway. In 1925 he scored a hit with the musical comedy No No Nanette, a production perhaps financed with at least some of the proceeds from the Ruth trade.

Other important newcomers in this period were manager Miller Huggins and general manager Ed Barrow. Huggins was hired in 1919 by Ruppert while Huston was serving in Europe with the American army (this would lead to a break between the two owners, with Ruppert eventually buying Huston out in 1923). Barrow came on board after the 1920 season, and like many of the new Yankee players had previously been a part of the Red Sox organization, having managed the team since 1918. Barrow would act as general manager or president of the Yankees for the next 25 years and may deserve the bulk of the credit for the team's success during that period. He was especially noted for development of the Yankees' farm system.

The home run hitting exploits of Ruth proved popular with the public, to the extent that the Yankees were soon outdrawing their landlords, the Giants. In 1921, when the Yankees made their first World Series appearance, against the Giants, the Yankees were told to move out of the Polo Grounds after the 1922 season. At that time, John McGraw was said to have commented that the Yankees should "move to some out-of-the-way place, like Queens". Instead, to McGraw's chagrin, the Yankees broke ground for a new ballpark just across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. In 1922 the Yankees returned to the Series again, and were again defeated by the Giants. Meanwhile, the construction crew moved with remarkable speed and finished the big new ballpark in less than a year. In 1923 the Yankees moved into Yankee Stadium (at East 161st Street and River Avenue) in the Bronx. The site for the Stadium was chosen because the IRT Jerome Avenue subway line (now the NYCTA's number 4 train) has a station stop practically on top of Yankee Stadium's right-field wall. The Stadium was the first triple-deck venue in baseball and seated an astounding 58,000. In the first game at Yankee Stadium, Babe Ruth hit a home run. He would end the year with "only" 41 home runs, but he was walked a then record 170 times and he batted .393, which is still the highest batting average for a Yankee playing in Yankee Stadium. Because of his success and all the fans that he brought to see the Yankees, the Stadium became known as "The House that Ruth Built".

In 1923 the Yanks faced the Giants for a third straight year in the Series, finally turning the tables on the Giants. Giants outfielder Casey Stengel, who even then was being called "Old Case", hit two homers to win the two games the Giants came away with. Stengel would later come to the Yankees as a successful manager.

The 1927 team was so potent that it became known as "Murderers' Row" and is sometimes considered to have been the best team in the history of baseball (though similar claims have been made for other Yankee squads, notably those of 1939, 1961 and 1998). The Yankees won an AL record 110 games against only 44 losses and swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the 1927 World Series. Ruth's home run total of 60 in 1927 set a single-season record which would stand for 34 years. Ruth also batted .356 and drove in 164 runs. Meanwhile, first baseman Lou Gehrig had his first big season, batting .373 with 47 round-trippers. He also broke Ruth's single season RBI mark (171 in 1921) with 175. Ruth hit third in the order and Gehrig fourth. However, right behind them were two more sluggers: Bob "The Rifle" Meusel, who played either of the corner outfield positions, and Tony Lazzeri, who played second base. Lazzeri actually ranked third in the league in home runs in 1927 with 18, and he hit .309 with 102 RBI. Meusel hit .337 with 103 RBI. Speed was another weapon used by both: Meusel's 24 stolen bases were second best in the league, while Lazzeri swiped 22. All of these numbers were due in part to the leadoff man Earle Combs who played center field. Combs hit .356 and lead the AL with 231 hits that year (a team record until Don Mattingly broke it with 238 in 1986), and had a .414 on base percentage. The 1927 Yankees' team batting average was .307.

The Yankees would repeat as American League champions in 1928, fighting off the resurgent Philadelphia Athletics, and would go on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the Series. Ruth got 10 hits in 16 at-bats for a single Series record batting average of .625; three of those hits were home runs. Meanwhile, Gehrig went 6 for 11 (.545), with four of those six hits being round-trippers. After three also-ran seasons went to the Philadelphia Athletics, the Yankees returned to the American League top perch under new manager Joe McCarthy in 1932 and swept the Chicago Cubs in the Series, running the team's streak of consecutive World Series game wins to 12, a mark which would stand until the Yankees bested it in the 2000 World Series. Babe Ruth hit his famous "Called Shot" home run in Wrigley Field in Game Three of that Series, a fitting "swan song" to his illustrious post-season career.

The DiMaggio era:

The Yankees' run during the 1930s could also be called the "McCarthy era", as manager Joe McCarthy (no relation to the Senator of the same name) would guide the Yankees to new heights. Just as Gehrig stepped out of Ruth's considerable shadow, a new titan appeared on the horizon, in the person of Joe DiMaggio. The young center fielder from San Francisco had an immediate impact, batting .323 and hitting 29 homers while driving in 125 runs in his rookie season of 1936.

Behind the Yankee bats of DiMaggio, Gehrig and Frank Crosetti, and a pitching staff led by Red Ruffing and Lefty Gomez and anchored by catcher Bill Dickey, the team reeled off an unprecedented four consecutive World Series wins during 1936 to 1939. They did it without Gehrig for most of 1939, as the superstar's retirement due to ALS saddened the baseball world.

The strongest competition for the Yankees during that stretch were the Detroit Tigers, who won two pennants before that Yankees four-year stretch, and one after. When the Yankees did get into the Series, they had little trouble. During Game Two of the 1936 Series, they pounded the Giants 18-4, still the World Series record (through 2006) for most runs by a team in one game. They took the Giants four games to two in that Series, and four games to one the next year. The Yankees also swept the Chicago Cubs in 1938, and the Cincinnati Reds in 1939.

Joe DiMaggio:

After an off season came the Summer of 1941, a much-celebrated year, often described by sportswriters as the last great year of the "Golden Era", before World War II and other realities intervened. Ted Williams of the Red Sox was in the hunt for the elusive .400 batting average, which he achieved on the last day of the season. Meanwhile, DiMaggio, who had once hit in 61 straight games as a minor leaguer with the San Francisco Seals, began a hitting streak on May 15 which stretched to an astonishing 56 games.

A popular song by Les Brown celebrated this event, as Betty Bonney and the band members sang it: "He tied the mark at 44 / July the First, you know / Since then he's hit a good 12 more / Joltin' Joe DiMaggio / Joe, Joe DiMaggio, we want you on our side."

The last game of the streak came on July 16 at Cleveland's League Park. The streak was finally snapped in a game at Cleveland Stadium the next night before a huge crowd at the lakefront. A crucial factor in ending the streak was the fielding of Cleveland third baseman Ken Keltner, who stopped two balls that DiMaggio hit hard to the left.

Modern baseball historians regard it as unlikely that anyone will ever hit .400 again, barring a change to the way the game is played, and that it will be extremely difficult to approach DiMaggio's 56-game streak, which is far beyond second place (44) and a modern day phenomenon.

The Yankees made short work of the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1941 Series. Two months and one day after the final game of the Yanks' four-games-to-one win, the Pearl Harbor attacks occurred, and many of the best ballplayers went off to World War II. The war-thinned ranks of the major leagues nonetheless found the Yanks in the post-season again, as the team traded World Series wins with the St. Louis Cardinals during 1942 and 1943.

The team then went into a bit of a slump, and manager McCarthy was let go early in the 1946 season. After a couple of interim managers had come and gone, Bucky Harris was brought in and the Yankees righted the ship again, winning the 1947 pennant and facing a much-tougher Dodgers team than their 1941 counterparts, in a Series that took the Yankees seven games to win, and was a harbinger of things to come for much of the next decade.

Despite finishing only three games behind the pennant-winning Cleveland Indians in 1948, Harris was released, and the Yankees brought in Casey Stengel as the team's manager. Casey had a reputation for being somewhat of a clown and had been associated with managing particularly bad teams such as the mid-1930s Boston Braves, so his selection was met with no little skepticism. His tenure would prove to be the most successful in the Yankees' history up to that point. The 1949 Yankees team was seen as "underdogs" that came from behind to catch and surpass the powerful Red Sox on the last two days of the season, in a faceoff that fueled the beginning of the modern intense rivalry between these teams. The post-season proved to be a bit easier, as the Yankees knocked off their cross-town Flatbush rivals - the Dodgers - four games to one.

By this time, the great DiMaggio's career was winding down. It has often been reported that he said he wanted to retire before he became an "ordinary" player. He was also hampered by bone spurs in his heel, which hastened the final docking of the “Yankee Clipper". As if on cue, new superstars began arriving, including the "Oklahoma Kid", Mickey Mantle, whose first year (1951) was DiMaggio's curtain call.

Casey Stengel:

The 1950s Bettering the McCarthy-era clubs, Stengel's squad won the World Series in his first five years as manager, 1949 through 1953. The Yankees won over 100 games in 1954, but finished second to the Indians who won an AL record 111 games; that record stood for 44 years until the 1998 Yankees surpassed it. The five consecutive championships won by the Yankees during this period remains the major league record. Led by players like center fielder Mickey Mantle, pitcher Whitey Ford, and catcher Yogi Berra, Stengel's teams won 10 pennants and seven World Series titles in his twelve seasons as Yankee manager. Casey Stengel was also a master at publicity for the team and for himself, even landing a cover story in Time magazine in 1955.

The 1950s was also a decade of significant individual achievement for Yankee players. For example, in 1956 Mantle won the major league triple crown, leading both leagues in batting average (.353), home runs (52), and RBIs (130).

In 1955, the Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in the World Series, after five Series losses to the Yankees in '41, '47, '49, '52 and '53. But the Yankees came back strong the next year. On October 8, 1956, in Game Five of the 1956 World Series against the Dodgers, pitcher Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history. Not only was it the only perfect game to be pitched in World Series play, it also remains the only no-hitter of any kind to be pitched in postseason play. The Yankees went on to win yet another World Series that season, and Larsen earned World Series MVP honors.

Yankee players also dominated the American League MVP award, with a Yankee claiming ownership six times in the decade (1950 Rizzuto, 1951 Berra, 1954 Berra, 1955 Berra, 1956 Mantle, 1957 Mantle). Pitcher Bob Turley also won the Cy Young Award in 1958, the award's third year of existence.

The Yankees lost the 1957 World Series to the Milwaukee Braves. Following the Series, the New York Giants and the Brooklyn Dodgers left New York City for California, leaving the Yankees as New York's only team. In the 1958 World Series, the Yankees got their revenge against the Braves, and became the second team to win the Series after being down three games to one.

For the decade, the Yankees won six World Series championships ('50, 51, '52, '53, '56, '58) and eight American League pennants (those six plus '55 and '57). Led by Mantle, Ford, Berra, Elston Howard (the Yankees' first African-American player), and the newly acquired Roger Maris, the Yankees burst into the new decade seeking to replicate the remarkable success of the 1950s.