The New York Yankees are on the verge of avoiding the World Series for 14 seasons. This is equivalent to the period from 1982 to 1995, when he was unable to play in the World Series.
The 2010s were a unique decade for the Yankees as it was the first decade since 1910 in which they failed to play in a World Series.
Since Babe Ruth became a Yankee in 1920, the decades of World Series participation have gone like this:
In the 1920s, six (3-3); 1930s, five (5-0); 1940s, five (4-1); 1950s, eight (6-2); 1960s, five (2-3); 1970s, three (2-1); 1980s, one (0-1); 1990s, three (3-0); 2000s, four (2-2).
The Yankees played 26 of their 40 games (through 1968), when the requirement to reach the World Series was to finish first in an eight- or 10-team league.
The playoffs began in 1969 and now, if a team doesn’t finish with a top-two record among three division winners, it will take seven postseason wins to reach the World Series.
So yes, getting there is harder than beating seven other American League teams, most working with much smaller budgets for players and talent.
It was in 1954, when the Yankees were winning five consecutive World Series championships, that Douglass Wallop wrote the novel “The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant.”
The premise is that Joe Boyd, a rabid fan of the hapless Washington Senators, sold his soul to the devil so that his team would have a chance to finish ahead of the Yankees.
Ultimately, the real Yankees lost the pennant that season, although the then-Cleveland Indians went a spectacular 111-43 to finish eight games ahead of New York.
Cleveland was then defeated by Willie Mays and the New York Giants, causing a 9-year-old baseball boy in Fulda, Minnesota to lose 50 cents to his Uncle Harry.
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The willingness to make light of taking down the Yankees was so popular that Wallop’s novel was turned into a play and a film titled “Damn Yankees,” with the play’s original run lasting more than 1,000 shows on Broadway.
The film was released in 1958, when the Yankees were winning nine AL pennants in 10 seasons (1955-1964), with four World Series titles.
And surely you know, local baseball fans, even if it took a grandfather to point it out, that what it took for the hapless Senators to steal a pennant from the Yankees was not a deal with Beelzebub, but Calvin Griffith transferring the original franchise to Minnesota for the 1961 season.
By Year 5 on the Bloomington prairie, the Yankees were old and crippled, the Twins had pitching, fielding, and a potent lineup, and they would snap New York’s five-game winning streak.
And how: 102-60, seven games ahead of the second-place White Sox and 25 games — 25! – removed from the Damn Yankees there in sixth place.
Do you think there is long-term Yankee “bad luck” about the home club that manifested itself during the Twins’ postseason failures?
This idea can be cured by finding audio of Ray Scott setting up and describing Harmon Killebrew’s home run to beat (and bury) the Yankees on the last Sunday before the 1965 All-Star Game.
There is never bad luck in baseball. The season is very long. Getting 27 outs (or more) in pressure situations is very difficult.
The Yankees went 16-2 (including 13 straight) in the playoffs against the Twins starting in 2003, being superior in pitching and hitting, if not fielding.
If you want to spend money to explain the disparity, that’s another matter. The Yankees are currently at $305 million (not all active) and the Twins are down to $128 million.
Somehow, with their shortcomings, the Twins entered Tuesday night’s start of a three-man game against New York having won 17 of 20 to improve to 24-16. The Yankees were 27-15 and dueling with Baltimore for first place in the AL East.
The Yankees were a modest 82-80 and ranked fourth in the AL East in 2023, but don’t consider that a trend.
The addition of Juan Soto to Aaron Judge is scary, especially when at home, with a home run target in right field more suited to a Jordan Brewers townball game.
They don’t have Gerrit Cole for now, and these young Orioles are talented and aggressive, but here’s my initial pick to represent the American League in 2024:
Those damn Yankees. They are dangerous and they are due.
