Yankees Baseball: The Golden Age
By Richard Bak
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About this ebook
game of baseball. It was a time when baseball players enjoyed an elevated status as national icons, a time when men wearing baggy, flannel uniforms and sporting pancake gloves played for little more than the love of the game. In this striking and nostalgic volume featuring many rarely seen photographs, we meet the heroes that were the New York Yankees. The Yankees won 29 American League pennants and 20 World Series during this golden era, their diamond exploits thrilling generations of fans and their statistical achievements becoming familiar numbers in the lore of the game: Babe Ruth s 714 home runs; Lou Gehrig s 2,130 consecutive games played; Joe DiMaggio s 56-game hitting streak; Casey Stengel s 5 straight world championships; Mickey Mantle s 565-foot home run; and Roger Maris s 61 round-trippers. The tradition of excellence began in the 1920s with the Murderers Row teams, named for their killer batting lineups, and continued through the early 1960s, by which time the Bronx Bombers had established themselves as the most successful franchise in sports history.
Richard Bak
Richard Bak, sports historian and author of New York Yankees: The Golden Era, tells the story of this historic team with an illustrated chronicle using nearly 190 vintage photographs, period advertisements, and historic scorecards to recapture 75 years of memories provided by the New York Giants, a team that�with apologies to Tony Bennett�may have moved to San Francisco but left its heart in Manhattan.
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Yankees Baseball - Richard Bak
championships.
INTRODUCTION
The toughest part of being a success, composer Irving Berlin once remarked, is that you have to keep on being a success. Nowhere is the pressure to win more intense than in New York, where the citizenry is used to having the best in everything, including baseball. Some might say, especially in baseball. In this they have been fortunate, for not only have the New York Yankees been the most successful franchise in the annals of baseball, they have been the most successful club in the entire history of team sports.
At no time was the Bronx Bombers’ domination more pronounced than between 1920 and 1964. During this period, the Yankees captured 29 American League pennants and won 20 World Series, six of them in four-game sweeps. In 11 different seasons, they won 100 or more games, often outdistancing the runner-up by 10, 13, or even 19 games. They annually dominated All-Star Game selections and typically grabbed the lion’s share of post-season awards. They did it with a certain mystique that began with the Murderers’ Row teams of the 1920s and was passed on to several generations of players.
There was something special about being a Yankee back in those years,
said pitcher Vic Raschi, a major contributor to the team’s five straight world championships between 1949 and 1953. We believed we were the best and that we couldn’t lose. It wasn’t arrogance, it was pride. We used to go out there each day with every expectation of winning. And when we didn’t win, then it was more than just losing a ball game, because it hurt our pride.
On these pages is a visual record of the Yankees’ glory years, an unprecedented run that spanned five decades and included some of the most famous names and memorable moments in the game’s long history. Meet Ruth, Lou, Lazzeri, Joltin’ Joe, Scooter, Yogi, Casey, Roger, The Mick, and Gene Woodling, who defended the Yankees’ monopoly in his retirement. I didn’t think it was unfair how good the Yankees were,
said the old outfielder. I thought that was the way it was supposed to be.
ED BARROW AND BABE RUTH, C.1930. The two principal engineers of the Yankees’ dynasty of the Roaring Twenties and the Depression of the 1930s were general manager Ed Barrow and Babe Ruth, both of whom came over from the Boston Red Sox. Barrow was an intense, two-fisted baseball executive who managed the Red Sox to a world’s championship in 1918 and gained renown for switching Ruth, then the league’s top southpaw, from the mound to the outfield. During the 1920s, Barrow acquired a steady stream of Red Sox players from Boston owner Harry Frazee, a theatre owner who needed the cash to keep his stage productions going.
One
BUILDING A DYNASTY
THE CONTROVERSIAL CARL MAYS. Among the many transplanted Bostonians on the Yankees’ roster was Carl Mays, a stocky right-hander who racked up records of 26-11 in 1920 and 27-9 in 1921, his first two years in New York. His submarine-style pitching motion baffled hitters and on one infamous occasion killed a player. On August 16, 1920, Mays struck Cleveland shortstop Ray Chapman in the temple with a pitch. Chapman fell into a coma and died the following morning, becoming the first and only on-field death in major league history. Roundly vilified, Mays later had to contend with suspicions that he helped throw the 1921 World Series to the Giants. The charges were never proven, but they led to his sale to Cincinnati after the 1923 season.
WALLY PIPP. First baseman Wally Pipp became a footnote in baseball history when he took a day off in 1925, allowing a young Lou Gehrig to move permanently into the lineup. Although Pipp hit only 90 home runs during his 15 years in the majors, he twice led the league—in 1916 with 12 and in 1917 with 9.
THE ORIGINAL IRON MAN. Shortstop Everett Scott, acquired from Boston prior to the 1922 season, reeled off a record 1,307-game playing streak that finally ended on May 5, 1925. The lively ball ended my string,
the career .249 hitter said, not bad legs.
MURDERERS’ ROW, 1921. The Yankees won their first pennant in 1921, thanks in large part to a murderous offense. Shown here are, from left