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“The only real game, I think, in the world is baseball.”
-Babe Ruth
The best thing about the Super Bowl is that it is the last game of the football season and when it is over we can turn our attention to what really matters, which is the opening of baseball spring training camps in less than two weeks. That this past weekend also saw Babe Ruth’s 126th birthday — he’s almost as old as Tom Brady — was an added bonus.
The 2021 baseball season will be very special for several reasons. One, we hope it will be a complete one after last year’s Covid-shortened 60-gamer. Two, with the collective-bargaining agreement between players and owners ending, it could be the last complete season for a while, unless rational minds prevail. Third, it is the centennial of the first American League pennant earned by the most winning franchise in sports history: the New York Yankees.
With some justification, some Yankee fans are painted with the brush of having jumped on the bandwagon. However, I came by it naturally – it is in the blood. I was born in the Bronx into a family who had been Yankee fans for generations. My grandfather James Clavin’s favorite player was Babe Ruth. My father’s was Joe DiMaggio. Mine was Mickey Mantle. My son’s was Derek Jeter (with a nod to Tino Martinez). Baseball has changed in many ways and there are other teams I’ll root for (except when playing the Yankees) but a constant my entire life has been the Bronx Bombers. Their story began well over a century ago, with the beginning of the American League.
At the end of the 1900 baseball season, the Western League was transformed by its president, Ban Johnson, into a new major league that would compete with the established National League. The American League of eight cities fielded teams in the 1901 season. During that season, the Baltimore Orioles under John McGraw had a 68–65 record and finished in fifth place in the AL. Rumors began to spread that Johnson was interested in relocating the team to New York City in an attempt to compete directly with the NL. Stealing a march, McGraw left the Orioles and joined the New York Giants as their manager. The AL and NL signed an agreement after the 1902 season that ended the leagues' battles for players, which had led to increasing salaries. Johnson’s application to locate an AL team in New York City was granted as part of the leagues' peace agreement. A pair of Tammany Hall politicians, Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery, purchased the new New York franchise — formerly the Orioles — for $18,000.
The ballpark for the New York team was constructed between 165th and 168th Streets on Broadway in Manhattan and was nicknamed Hilltop Park because of its relatively high elevation. The team did not have an official nickname; it was often called the New York Americans in reference to the AL. Another common nickname for the club was the Highlanders, a play on the last name of the team's president, Joe Gordon, and the British military unit the Gordon Highlanders. The team acquired players such as outfielder Willie Keeler and pitcher Jack Chesbro, and the player-manager was Clark Griffith, obtained from the Chicago White Sox. On April 22, 1903, the Highlanders began their season with a 3–1 loss to the Washington Senators. Eight days later, they won their first game in Hilltop Park, defeating the Senators 6–2.
The Highlanders had their highs over the years, such as Chesbro winning 41 games in New York's 1904 season, still an AL record. But they also had their lows, and a league pennant proved elusive. The team began playing home games at the Polo Grounds in 1913 as tenants of the Giants and also that year they became known officially as the Yankees. Seven years later, when the 1920 season began, in the lineup was George Herman “Babe” Ruth, who had starred for the Boston Red Sox as a pitcher before becoming a full-time outfielder. Suddenly, the Yankees were serious contenders. On the other hand, after the trade, Boston did not win a World Series championship until 2004, thanks to the “Curse of the Bambino.”
The addition of Ruth helped the Yankees increase their attendance to 1,289,422 for the 1920 season, the first time that any MLB team drew more than one million fans in a year. The Yankees became solidly profitable as well, making over $370,000 in 1920 and remaining in the black for the rest of the decade. Most important, the team won consistently. In 1920, Ruth hit 54 home runs for a new record; his total was higher than that of all other MLB teams but the Philadelphia Phillies. New York had 95 wins, the most in team history to that point, but fell three wins short of the AL championship and finished third. Adding salt to Boston’s wound, after the season ended the Yankees hired general manager Ed Barrow from the Red Sox. He made numerous trades with his former club, including one immediately after his departure that brought catcher Wally Schang and pitcher Waite Hoyt to New York. Ruth was now surrounded by enough solid pieces to win a championship.
In 1921, with the Bambino hitting 59 home runs -- setting a new major league home run record for the third consecutive year -- while also having his greatest overall season statistically, the Yankees appeared to be the team to beat in the World Series. Their landlords at the Polo Grounds, the New York Giants, had won the National League pennant. For the first time, all the games of a World Series would be held in the same ballpark. The best-5-of-9 Series (its last before returning to the best-4-of-7 format) saw the Yankees take a 2-0 lead and later a 3–2 series lead. But Ruth had suffered a serious injury in Game 3 that limited his appearances in the remaining games, save for one pinch-hit appearance, and the Giants rallied to win the World Series 5 games to 3.
The Yankees would not win their first world championship until two years later, helped by Ruth’s career-high .393 batting average and a late-season call-up named Lou Gehrig. This year, the Bronx Bombers, after an unusually long drought, will be going for their 28th world championship (and 41st AL pennant). That quest begins next week, in spring training. Already, the Super Bowl is a distant memory.
Tom Clavin is the bestselling author/co-author of 18 books, including, most recently, “Tombstone: The Earp Brothers, Doc Holliday, and the Vendetta Ride From Hell.” The next collaboration with Bob Drury, “Blood and Treasure: Daniel Boone and the Fight for America’s First Frontier,” will be published in April by St. Martin’s Press. There is a pre-order promotion underway which includes a specially made bookmark. Please click here for more information.