New York Yankees Tickets

Staff Writer Russell Puntenney
The New York Yankees are historically the most dominant team in Major League Baseball, and are without question the most successful sports team in American history. Their 26 World Series titles in 39 appearances is virtually unprecedented: in comparison, the St. Louis Cardinals and the Oakland Athletics have each won 9 champions, tied for the second most in history.

That 17-title lead threatens to grow larger every year too, as the Yankees continue to acquire the most talented players in the game and remain the league’s most intimidating team. Their heated rivalry with the Boston Red Sox is widely considered the biggest feud in all of sports, and has earned the Yankees its appropriate nickname, “The Evil Empire.”

That rivalry was born after Boston traded an unlikely pitcher named Babe Ruth to the Yankees in 1920, roughly fifteen years after the New York franchise had settled on its official name. Prior to being called the Yankees, the team was also known as both the “Invaders” and the “Highlanders.”

Boston traded the superstar because he demanded a raise, which in retrospect seems like a reasonable request considering he’d just set the single season homerun record with 29 dingers in 1919. The Red Sox ownership, however, saw Ruth as a rebellious presence and showed no reluctance in letting the soon-to-be legend get away.

That single transaction would haunt the Red Sox organization for nearly a century, as the Yankees consistently flourished with and after the Babe while the Boston club experienced a World Series drought of over 80 years. “The Curse of the Bambino,” as the result of the trade is so often referred, was finally broken in 2004 when the Red Sox won their first championship since 1919.

With Ruth in the lineup, crowds filled the seats like never before, mesmerized by the Sultan of Swing’s relentless onslaught toward shattering every homerun record that existed at the time. In 1923, the team’s growing popularity forced the construction of a bigger ballpark, and the Bronx officially became the home of Yankee Stadium, commonly known as “the house that Ruth built.” It was the first triple-deck venue in MLB history and seated nearly 60,000 Yankee fans.

The peak of the first of many Yankee dynasties came in 1927, a squad forever remembered as “Murderer’s Row.” Their American League record 110 wins that season came with just 44 losses, and the team swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in the World Series. Ruth shattered his own single season homerun record that year with 60 bombs, a record that would stand for 34 years, and first baseman Lou Gehrig produced his first breakout performance with a season batting average of .373.

The 1927 club is just one of several Yankees teams that could reasonably be labeled the best of all time. As baseball progressed, so did the Yankees, somehow always seeming a step above their unfortunate competition.

Centerfielder Joe DiMaggio began his legendary career with the team in 1936, batting .323 and hitting 29 homeruns as a rookie. In the summer of 1941, while the Red Sox’s Ted Williams was busying chasing an historic .400 batting average, DiMaggio was also busy extending the league’s all-time hitting streak from 44 to an unheard of 56 games.

When DiMaggio’s career came to an end in 1951, a new superstar had already arrived to carry the load left behind. A rookie that season, the “Oklahoma Kid” Mickey Mantle lead a team that included pitcher Whitey Ford and catcher Yogi Berra to yet another World Series title, this one smack dab in the middle of the franchise’s most impressive run: the Yankees won five consecutive championships from 1949 to 1953, the longest streak in MLB history.

In 1956, Mantle won the major league triple crown, leading all ballplayers in batting average, homeruns, and RBIs. Five years later, in perhaps the most glaring example of Yankee dominance, Mantle became involved in a highly public chase with teammate Roger Maris for the single season homerun record set by Babe Ruth. While other teams were in heavy competition just to make the playoffs, the biggest concern of Yankee fans that season was which of their future Hall of Fame inductees would break the record already held by another former Yankee great, and by how much. When the 1961 season ended, New York had won the title yet again, this time in 5 games, and Maris had set the new record of 61 homeruns.

The team was sold to CBS in 1964 for $11.2 million, a deal that put the team’s dominance in jeopardy for the first time in its existence, as CBS-owned teams traditionally performed poorly. In 1973 however, the team was sold once again, this time to the deep-pocketed George Steinbrenner, a millionaire intent on producing a winning team.

Steinbrenner renovated Yankee Stadium, replaced the team’s aging superstars and primed it to achieve the same success it had been accustomed to. By the late 70’s, the team had won back to back championships again, starting with the incredible performance of outfielder Reggie Jackson in the 1977 finals. In game six of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers, Jackson hit three homeruns against three different pitchers, each one hit on the first pitch of each at-bat.

That memorable performance was a lasting one, but what followed was quite uncharacteristic of the organization. After 1978, the Yankees would experience a World Series drought they would not overcome until 1996, 15 years since their last appearance and 18 years since their last win.

After that, however, the team won four of five championships from 1996 to 2000, culminating in 1998 with a total 125 wins, playoffs included, an all-time major league record. Since 2000, the team has continued to add superstars every season, including the extremely hyped 2004 acquisition of then-MVP shortstop Alex Rodriguez to a deal worth over $250 million, but the club has been unable to find the post-season success expected of such an All-Star caliber squad.

A new era in the team’s history will begin in 2009, when a new Yankee Stadium opens, an attempt to update the club’s facilities to the same level it has updated its roster. The new stadium is to be built right across the street from the existing Yankee Stadium, with identical field dimensions and plenty of memorabilia from the original building. What will change, however, is the distribution of space within the facility, which will better reflect the personality of the most expensive team in sports: it will seat about 6,000 less fans than the current Yankee Stadium holds, but will now feature more than one million square feet of retail space, a considerable increase.

For more information about the New York Yankees, visit www.yankees.mlb.com