So, quite a while ago, I wrote an analysis here about the American League in the 1920s. I argued that we often read Yankees' dominance back too far into history, based on our knowledge of what came later. We create a linear history of Yankees dominance from the twenties to the late 90s or at least to the mid-sixties. But I think that the reality is quite different.
So, back then, I showed that the 1920s AL was actually quite competitive:
The Yankees won pennants from 1921-23, but in 21 they beat out the Indians by only 4 games and in 1922 there is good reason to think that the Browns were a better team, falling just a game short of the Yankees in the pennant race.
Then in 1924 and 25 the Senators won the pennant.
The Yankees were not even second in 1925, the Athletics were.
In 1926 the Yankees won the pennant by only 3 games ahead of Cleveland.
In the 1927 to be sure the Yankees were very dominant. But in 1928 they beat out the Athletics by only two games. The Athletics then won three straight pennants, 1929-31, and in one of those years, the Yankees were not even the second place team, even with Ruth and Gehrig.
The Yankees then won in 1932, but in 33 it was the Senators, and in 1934 the Tigers.
So from 1924-1934, the Yankees won four pennants, the Senators three, the Athletics three, the Tigers one, and Cleveland and St. Louis came pretty close a couple of times, as did Washington and Philadelphia.
That is a pretty competitive league I think.
The real idea of a Yankees dynasty, I think, comes from the amazing 1936-39 team, four straight World Series championships, Gehrig, Dimaggio, Dickey. Maybe the real greatest team ever.
After a one-year hiatus, they won three more straight pennants from 1941-43, though we are now entering the War years, so we should take some things with a grain of salt. Still, 7 pennants in 8 years is pretty damn amazing.
1944-48, five different teams won the AL pennant, the Yankees in 1947 being one of them, so “systemic chaos” – no hegemonic power ruling things – had returned, a normal competitiveness.
It was respite only. From 1949-53, the New York Yankees won five straight World Series under Casey Stengel. Here, for real, we have the second genuine era of real Yankees dominance. And the whole “Damn Yankees”, “Break up the Yankees” etc. mythology really gets into gear. And for good reason. But only Dimaggio is really around from the 1936-39 era.
Anyway, now I have to make a confession: I was raised a Yankees fan, but…I never really had much feeling for the pre-late 1960s Yankees and their dynasties.
I loved Phil Rizzutto – mainly because he was the announcer for the teams I watched in the 1960s, 70s, and 80s. I love Yogi cause he’s Yogi, and Stengel was often fun.
That’s about it. I never loved the Dimaggio Yankees or Dimaggio himself, great as he was. I like Mickey Mantle, but not any more than Willie Mays, Henry Aaron or Stan Musial.
And I particularly feel little warmth for the Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek era. My Yankees sucked in the late 60s and early 70s, so their slow rise to greatness in the 70s was particularly satisfying. And the 70s Yankees had personality, which I just find lacking in the 40s, 50s and early 60s Yankees, again, the Scooter and Yogi excepting.
So pardon me for some myth-busting: after the genuinely dominant team of 1949-53, we find the following:
From 1954-64, the following happens:
54: Cleveland wins the pennant
55: the Yankees lose the World Series to Brooklyn
56: the Yankees win against Brooklyn in 7 games
57: Milwaukee beats the Yankees in the Series
58: the Yankees beat Milwaukee in 7 games
59: Chicago wins the pennant
60: the Yankees lose the World Series
61: the Yankees overpower the Reds in five games
62: the Yankees literally win game 7 of the Series by a few inches, as McCovey’s line drive is just within reach of Bobby Richardson.
63: The Koufax Dodger sweep the Yankees
64: the Cards beat the Yankees in 7 games.
In other words, from 1954 to 1964 there was exactly one season in which the Yankees won a World Series without having to go to a game 7.
They won four World Series in that time, but three were very close things, and only one a dominant victory. Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, gave the Yankees a run in some of those seasons or actually won the pennant.
What this tells me is that the National League had shown that the Yankees were good but no longer dominant and could be beaten, and therefore, Yankees continual winning of the pennant was due to AL teams being weak, not Yankees teams being strong.
One factor we need to acknowledge is the Kansas City factor, in which the Yankees treated KC as though it were their AAA team and could get key players and ship washed up ones to KC in exchange at will. This was a factor in the Yankees having a major edge, is shameful really and the league should have done something to prevent it.
But I think the really big issue is another one: the lack of great black players in the American League.
The National League, by the mid-50s, had Willie Mays, Henry Aaron, Ernie Banks and Frank Robinson. Four of the very greatest players ever. Don Newcombe won the Cy Young and the MVP one year. No major AL African American pitcher of that quality comes to mind for decades – maybe Vida Blue in the early 70s? The AL had had Larry Doby, and an aging Satchel Paige, but no one of the level of those players in the NL. Am I forgetting someone?
The best players in the AL in this era were Mickey Mantle and Ted Williams. Later Harmon Killebrew, so along with the African American players in the NL mentioned above and Stan Musial and Duke Snider, there is the list of the best.
The first really good African American players in the AL that I can call to mind are Elston Howard – very good, an all-star, but not Henry Aaron. Only around the mid-60s do the Twins have Tony Oliva and Earl Battey, and Zoilo Versailles. Later Rod Carew. They win the pennant and take the Dodgers to game 7 in 1965. By this point the best players in the AL are probably Al Kaline, Killebrew and Carl Yastrzemski. In the early 1960s, the best African American AL player might have been Luis Aparicio.
Only in 1966, when the Orioles get Frank Robinson in a trade, and the following year when the Athletics draft Reggie Jackson, does the AL have Black players of the level (and I forget but I think the As got Campaneris right before Reggie).
In other words, if the other AL teams had been more proactive in drafting or recruiting good to great Black players before the late 60s when such players were more common in the AL (Willie Horton, Roy White), they might have shown the Yankees to be vulnerable. But it is strange how few AL teams moved in that direction at all.
It is interesting that it was Minnesota and the Athletics that seems to have been ahead of the AL curve with Battey, Carew, Oliva, Versailles and the As with Reggie, Campaneris, Vida Blue, Blue Moon Odom, that broke the mold. The first won a pennant in 1965 and almost another one in 1967 but Yaz won out for Boston by one game. The latter won three straight World Series from 1972-74. The first AL team to do so since 1953.
The last era of Yankees pennants in the golden/silver age was 1960-64 and as we have seen, they won one World Series convincingly in 1961, and one by a hair in 62. They lost in 1960, 63 and 64 to NL teams with great Black players like Clemente, Gibson, Tommy Davis, Willie Davis etc. And had won one of two against the Henry Aaron Braves in 1957-8.
So, I think that Yankees era teams were not that great, their opponents were weak, and they had a psychological edge that made them competitive with their NL opponents because of the mythology built up.
Have I forgotten something? Have I missed some great AL Black players in the AL ? Or was the AL’s organizational culture of not having many African Americans a major reason that the illusion of Yankees dominance was maintained for so long?