The brilliant light given off by reflections from 26 World Championship rings cannot be allowed to blind us. The difficult job is to pick the best Yankee era from five that they have dominated, no swaying allowed for franchise ghosts sending down their votes in bolts of lightning or 100 years of thunderous applause.
First the nominees, then the envelope:
THE MILLER HUGGINS WINNERS (1921-28)
How do you argue with … the Yankees making the World Series six times in eight seasons and winning three. Two Top-10 all time players, Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, plus three other Hall of Famers, shortstop Tony Lazzeri and pitchers Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt. The 1927 version, which performed the first of consecutive Series sweeps, won 110 games, hit .307 and didn’t have a regular under .275. It probably was the best team ever.
Except that … The Yankees were humiliated by the Giants and John McGraw, who had evicted them from the Polo Grounds, in their first two World Series in 1921 and 1922. The 1925 team (though pre-Lazzeri) finished 28½ games out, serious underachievement, and Ruth, in inexplicable brainlock, was thrown out stealing second for the final out of the Cardinals’ 3-2 Game 7 win of the 1926 World Series.
THE JOE McCARTHY WINNERS (1932-43)
How do you argue with … being taken as far as six games only once in winning seven of eight World Series over 12 seasons. Six teams that won more than 100 in 154-game seasons.
Pitchers Lefty Gomez and Red Ruffing, who each won 20 games four times, were the constants of a remarkable transition that produced a staggering 10 Hall of Famers (including McCarthy) on the 1931-33 teams. As Ruth, Lazzeri, Gehrig, Earle Combs, Pennock and third baseman Joe Sewell (who had joined the Yankees at the end of his career) left, Bill Dickey, the greatest catcher of all time, and Joe DiMaggio, one of the best five players ever, made their debuts. In fact, the only two regulars on the 1931-33 teams not in the Hall were shortstop Frank Crosetti and left fielder Ben Chapman.
The 1936 (five 100-RBI guys including Gehrig, Lazzeri, DiMaggio, Dickey, George Selkirk) and 1939 teams (four including DiMaggio, Selkirk, Dickey and Joe Gordon) were two of the best-hitting clubs of all time.
Except that … there was a three-year gap without a Series appearances (1933-35) and a five-game humiliation by the great 1942 Cardinals, even if the Yankees did avenge it in five the following fall.
THE CASEY STENGEL-RALPH HOUK-YOGI BERRA WINNERS (1949-64)
How do you argue with … nine Series wins in 14 appearances over 16 seasons, including a record five straight (1949-53), three over legendary Brooklyn teams. The Yankees began the run by sweeping Boston in the final two games of the 1949 season to eke out the AL by one game, then outlasted a powerful Cleveland team by an average of 5½ games during the five title years before the Indians interrupted the reign with a 111-win season in 1954. New York won only 103 that year.
Two more Hall of Famers, Yogi Berra and Stengel, were constants of the era. Another, Phil Rizzuto, played until 1956, and a seamless and spectacular transition had Mickey Mantle coming up the same year – 1951 – DiMaggio bowed out. Whitey Ford, who has the third-best winning percentage (.690) in history, became a mainstay in 1953, while Allie Reynolds, Ed Lopat and Vic Raschi went a combined 246-117 during the five-year title run. Roger Maris and Mantle’s chase of The Babe making 1961 probably the most legendary season in Yankee history, if not the best. The Tigers won 101 games that year and the Yankees still won by eight, clubbing 240 home runs.
Except that … the 1959 team finished 15 games out and Casey blew the 1960 series by starting Ford only twice. Aside from Mantle, whose seasons fluctuated from good to great in relation to his health, and Berra, uncanny in the clutch, these were not spectacular-hitting teams. And they were swept by the Dodgers in 1963.
THE BILLY MARTIN-BOB LEMON-DICK HOWSER-GENE MICHAEL WINNERS (1976-81)
How do you argue with … back-to-back Series wins over the Dodgers in 1977-78, highlighted by Reggie Jackson’s three homers in the first clincher. Or, for all-time drama second only to Dodgers-Giants in 1951, the classic race of 1978, when the Yankees overcame a 14-game deficit to tie the Red Sox and beat them in a one-game Bucky Dent playoff. Or three straight ALCS wins over an excellent Royals team, two in the Yankees’ final at-bat, one of which they entered behind at Kansas City.
Except that … the Yankees were swept in the 1976 Series by the Reds and in the 1980 ALCS by the Royals. And errors, bad decisions by Lemon and ineptitude with runners in scoring position turned a 2-0 World Series lead on the Dodgers in 1981 into a six-game LA vengeance for 1977 and 1978.
THE CURRENT WINNERS (1994-??)
How do you argue with … four World Series victories in which the opposition cumulatively won only three games. A record 14 consecutive postseason series wins. Eight straight postseason appearances. First-place finishes in seven of nine years, counting the strike-shortened 1994 season. And three of the four series the Yankees lost went the maximum number of games, two to the opposition’s final at-bat.
The only sure-shot Hall of Famer on these teams, Roger Clemens, arrived halfway through the run, but Mariano Rivera, Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams and Joe Torre, all members of each title team, plus Jason Giambi, have fair-to-good chances for election (it’s way early on Alfonso Soriano).
Except that … some day maybe something will come to us.
THE ENVELOPE PLEASE …
For pure star power, the McCarthy teams were tops, but three straight years (1933-35) they didn’t get to the Series, gaps not suffered by Stengel or, as yet, Torre. So it comes down to those two eras. And four World Series wins in five years (1996-2001) remains one short of five straight (1949-53), and seven between 1949-60 are still three more than the current era.
It is easier to make the postseason in the wild-card era, of course. But history will frame Torre’s teams reaching five World Series through 10 preliminary rounds among the greatest team feats in history. Would those 1949-53 Yankees have beaten that great Indian pitching staff every time in ALCS or Division Series and still had enough gas left against the Dodgers?
The percentages argue no, but undeniably clutch teams like those Stengel Yankees should not be denied the benefit of the doubt in series they never had an opportunity to play.
Stengel’s Yankees were the best Yankees on the basis of their staying power. And what makes the argument so compelling is that Torre’s teams may end up staying longer.