Deja Vu

26 27 World Championships

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New York City,

Philadelphia,

sports,

Yankees

“Back on Top, Yankees Add a 27th Title,” The New York Times, Nov. 5, 2009.

A sliver of time for other teams is an epoch for the Yankees, who define themselves by championships. For eight seasons, they led the majors in victories, payroll and drama. They built a ballpark, created a network and expanded their brand around the globe. But they did not win the World Series.

Now they have done it. There is a 27th jewel in the Yankees’ crown and a peaceful, easy feeling across their empire. The Yankees captured their first title since 2000, humbling the defending champion Philadelphia Phillies on Wednesday, 7-3, in Game 6 of the World Series at Yankee Stadium.

Hideki Matsui homered, with his six runs batted in tying a World Series record, and Andy Pettitte ground through five and two-thirds innings for his second victory in five days. Mariano Rivera collected the final five outs, getting Shane Victorino to ground out to second to end it.

“They persevered and they were determined, a lot like the ’98 team,” General Manager Brian Cashman said, referring to the best Yankees team of modern times. “They had the attitude that nothing was going to stop them. But they had to prove it, and they proved it.”

The first of the New York Yankees’ twenty-seven championships came in 1923, the year the original Yankee Stadium opened.

“Yanks Win Title; 6-4 Victory Ends $1,063,815 Series,” The New York Times, Oct. 16, 1923.

The Yankees are the champions. In the greatest game of the greatest world’s series they beat the Giants yesterday at the Polo Grounds, 6 to 4, winning in the eighth inning when Arthur Nehf collapsed and Bob Meusel drove a single to centre field with the bases full.

Dreams came true in the eighth inning. The Yankees reached the journey’s end, and a world’s championship flag in the Yankee Stadium next year. Dreams also went up in a puff of smoke, for when Meusel made that hit and the Giants went crashing down, the life-long hope of John J. McGraw for three world’s championships went down with them.

This dramatic eighth inning finish was a fitting climax for the great three-year battle that had been waged by the two New York teams. Twice McGraw’s baseball machine had emerged the winners and only as late as last Friday it seemed invincible. Then the Yankees with their backs to the wall staged one of the most remarkable fights in the history of sport and swept everything before them for three consecutive victories and the championship. Twice the Giants had taken the lead and twice the Yankees had overhauled them before Miller Huggins’s team, with a determination that could not be denied, swept on to a…triumph and its first world’s championship.

Great as was this series in the tenseness of the games played and in the varying fortunes of the combatants, it was probably most remarkable of all for the interest it stirred in fandom. Large new grounds, just completed, and built with an eye to the future, proved inadequate to accommodate the thousands who rushed the gates to be spectators at this gigantic struggle. Scores of thousands were turned away, but 301,430 did get in to witness the six games played, for which they paid the sum of $1,063,815, both figures eclipsing all former records for baseball….

The best team won the greatest of all world’s series. Except in fielding, smartness and finish of team play, the Giants were outplayed, for they were outbatted and outpitched by a smashing margin. In the two games that they did win, the champions were extended to the last limit of strength. In a measure, the terrific strain that the McGraw men were under even in victory led to their undoing, for their pitchers cracked in the last three games and even their superb defense showed signs of wear and tear.

This fact is the best of tributes to the power that the Yanks can apply when they are aroused. As water wears away a stone, only faster, did the Yanks wear down the Giants, forcing them, step by step, to the wall until yesterday’s breakdown became inevitable.

For the first time in three years the Yanks showed their real form, and this may be attributed not so much to Ruth as to the finer spirit and the deeper determination behind their every move. If the 1923 series did nothing else it showed the value of discipline.

In attendance and receipts, of course, the series will not be equaled in many years, perhaps never—unless the same two teams should come together again and a way could be found to squeeze more people into a given space than were squeezed recently. If the promised enlargement of Colonel Ruppert’s park is made, new records may be seen.

But, leaving aside the financial aspect, the series will rank high among its fellows. The first game, for one thing, was the greatest series game ever played in the opinion of John McGraw and hundreds of others who have seen baseball come and go. Nehf’s third-game pitching, along with Jones’s, was almost unequaled. Great crowds, but also great sensations and many thrills and bitter fighting, made the games stand out.

The hero? Joe Dugan, who was of greatest all-around value to his team; Ward was close behind him, and also [Aaron] Ward, Meusel, [Whitey] Witt, [Babe] Ruth and [Wally] Pipp. If by hero is meant the best player, [Frankie] Frisch was the best man on the Giants. But if the hero is the obscure chap who was last in the experts’ calculation, then Casey Stengel and Everett Scott win laurel wreaths. They deserve equal rank with the Rohes, the Rawlings and the Hendricksons of world’s series baseball.

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