Reasons for Yankee dominance?
Chris Brewster
In the 44 years from 1921 to 1964, the Yankees won 29 pennants. There
were long stretches when they won it every year. I can understand a
team dominating for a decade, but not four and a half decades. Is there
any good explanation for this (whether hackneyed, brilliantly original,
or pure crackpot)? Was it just a matter of money?
--
Chris Brewster Cray Research, Inc.
Robert Levin
Brewster) wrote:
Don't forget, in those days, there was no draft so the team with the most
dough could snatch up all the best young players. And the Yanks had the
dough. Also, without free agency, a team could hold onto its stars
forever. You also have to give credit to ownership, led by George Weiss.
Unlike a certain Fat Man who currently owns the team, Mr. Weiss knew not to
meddle in the team's baseball affairs.
-- Rob Levin, Haverford College
Scott R. Susor
It was, in fact, just a matter of money. But is those days, people
didn't think of sports teams as businesses. Looking back, its obvious
that the New York Yankees had more resources than any other team. So
they were able to outbid other teams for most of the better young players.
There were exceptions, of course. Some young players just wanted to play
for their hometown team or for another specific team. But, one thing was
as true then as it is today -- money talks. And the Yankees money was
big enough to SHOUT !!!
SRS
--
Scott Susor *** Houston Texas
"Its good to be the King ..."
Barry Mednick
>In article <CB.94May...@willow021.cray.com>, c...@cray.com (Chris
>Brewster) wrote:
>> In the 44 years from 1921 to 1964, the Yankees won 29 pennants. There
>> were long stretches when they won it every year. I can understand a
>> team dominating for a decade, but not four and a half decades. Is there
>> any good explanation for this (whether hackneyed, brilliantly original,
>> or pure crackpot)? Was it just a matter of money?
Berra had a lot to do with this. Plus the managers.
However, in the 1950's, the owner of the Yankees had non-baseball business
dealings with the owner of the Kansas City A's, which may have influenced
the lopsided trades made between those two teams (ie, Maris for Larsen).
Barry
Eric Smith
>It was, in fact, just a matter of money. But is those days, people
>didn't think of sports teams as businesses. Looking back, its obvious
>that the New York Yankees had more resources than any other team. So
>they were able to outbid other teams for most of the better young players.
>There were exceptions, of course. Some young players just wanted to play
>for their hometown team or for another specific team. But, one thing was
>as true then as it is today -- money talks. And the Yankees money was
>big enough to SHOUT !!!
I think a very large percentage of young players wanted to play for
the Yankees, because they knew that if you played for the Yankees you
were among the cream of the baseball talent. They also had all those
great, legendary figures that kids looked up to when they played
sandlot ball. And young players knew that if they played for the
Yankees they'd have a good shot at World Series checks, which were
nothing to sneeze at in the era before free agency and arbitration.
But you're right that at the bottom it came down to money. The Yankees
were able to do things like treat other major league teams as virtual
farm teams (e.g. the Kansas City Athletics in the '50s), and either
buy their best talent from them, or get them in trades because the
Yankees' minor league teams always had a surplus of talent. But behind
the money, there had to have been a great organization. A team can buy
all the players it wants, but unless it recognizes which players will
win championships, there's no way it can win 29 pennants in 44 years.
-----
Eric Smith
er...@netcom.com
CI$: 70262,3610
Joseph L. Ellen
Yankees dynasty. also, with no free agency, the owners had alot of
power, and players often had to plea for raises. the post-season
meant a great deal to the players because the bonuses were quite
substantial, especially in days when players didn't make a whole
lot more than most people. Players also had strong allegiances
to their teams (unlike today) so they took alot of pride in their
play. The Yanks also had some great scouts in the organization.
An incredible book to read about the team is
Dynasty:The New York Yankees 1949-1964
The Greatest Years of the Greatest Team on Earth
by Peter Golenbock
It is a great novel, reviewing the team, year by year.
It was a different game back then, a much better game.
Cheers,
Joey E....
Yankee Fan
--
--------------THWUGA----------------------Rangers s--k 1940---------------
Joe Ellen Freeze this moment a little bit longer
Damn Yankee Make each sensation just a little bit stronger gt8...@prism.gatech.edu --Peart
----------------------------LET'S GO TECH!--------------------------------
Allan_Rube...@fc.jlc.mv.com
Damn Yankees. However, I agree it was due to money. As Scott says
> Looking back, its obvious
> that the New York Yankees had more resources than any other team. So
> they were able to outbid other teams for most of the better young
> players.
with the KC Athletics, when the Yankees would get a player they needed for a
couple of players they did not need.
Oh, the good old days....I am not against competition, I just liked to lazily
watch summer baseball while waiting to see whom the Yankees would complete
against in October.
Allan Rube
Allan_Rube%Gate...@fc.jlc.mv.com
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Eric Robins
I thought this about THIS year!!!
Eric
--
Women, you can't live with 'em; they can't pee standing up.
Chris Brewster
|> Is there any good explanation for [Yankee dominance '21-'64]?
|> ... Was it just a matter of money?
It was, in fact, just a matter of money. ...
OK, so *why* did they have so much money? Why didn't, say, the Giants
have just as much?
Roger Lustig
> Casey Stengal & Joe McCarthy were the managers during the
> Yankees dynasty.
So were Ralph Houk, Yogi Berra, and Bucky Harris.
>also, with no free agency, the owners had alot of
> power, and players often had to plea for raises. the post-season
> meant a great deal to the players because the bonuses were quite
> substantial, especially in days when players didn't make a whole
> lot more than most people. Players also had strong allegiances
> to their teams (unlike today)
What could constitute allegiance to a team when one's contract states
explicitly that one may not negotiate with any other team except at
the owner's discretion?
Nowadays, we *do* have genuine allegiances to a team. Players have a
chance to be loyal, something they could never have done in the past.
>so they took alot of pride in their play.
Unlike today? I think there are a lot of players today who are
proud of what they do.
>The Yanks also had some great scouts in the organization.
> An incredible book to read about the team is
> Dynasty:The New York Yankees 1949-1964
> The Greatest Years of the Greatest Team on Earth
> by Peter Golenbock
> It is a great novel, reviewing the team, year by year.
Novel? I wouldn't go that far...
> It was a different game back then, a much better game.
Why? Less base-stealing, a fair amount of racism (especially early
on, and especially in Yankeeland), no more than four or five good teams
in baseball at any one time, dilapidated ballparks in most cities,
small crowds, and bad teams that were worse for longer than anything
we see today.
Roger
Roger Lustig
>
>In the 44 years from 1921 to 1964, the Yankees won 29 pennants. There
>were long stretches when they won it every year. I can understand a
>team dominating for a decade, but not four and a half decades. Is there
>any good explanation for this (whether hackneyed, brilliantly original,
>or pure crackpot)? Was it just a matter of money?
Let's sum up. It was a lot of things.
It started with money: the Yankee owners, Ruppert and Huston, had it.
Harry Frazee, a New York impresario who owned the Red Sox, didn't, and
needed it to finance Broadway shows. So he sold off most of the
players he had left from the four WS-winning teams the Bosox had had
in the 1910's: a 4-man pitching rotation, the shortstop Everett (Von)
Scott, a catcher, and an outfielder guy named Rath or something. OR he traded
them for cheaper players. This pattern continued for a decade; the
Yankees went to the well several times, the last one yielding Red
Ruffing, a good-hitting pitcher who's in the HOF.
That outfielder guy, of course, redefined the game, and the Yankees
had the best view of what was going on. That the Giants won the
NL the first three of the pennant years didn't hurt either; the
Subway Series hype was incredible. Profitable, too.
Inheriting a great pitching staff that didn't have to face Ruth
meant that they could work out new ways of pitching, too. And find
new pitchers who could handle the rest of the league. The 1927
Yankees are known as Murderers Row, because everyone had a great
year at the plate, but the pitching staff was almost a full earned
run per game ahead of whoever came second.
That year, Wilcy Moore was a reliever almost of the modern type;
he closed a lot of games. 20 years later, relief pitching would be
important again.
In the 1930's, money meant the development of a farm system, following
Branch Rickey's lead with the Cards; good scouting; and enough money
to lure Joe DiMaggio away from the PCL, which was almost a third major
league (and which had a season of 180 games or more, reaching into
November at times. What fun!). The Ruth-Gehrig-DiMaggio-Mantle
continuity meant that the team always had an American hero in the
spotlight, and often more than one. And Gehrig's early death made
for more publicity still.
Joe McCarthy had brought a lot of young talent up; having a farm
club in Newark, i.e., within close observation range, certainly
didn't hurt. He also did more with platooning than other managers
did; and when Casey Stengel took over in 1949, he raised it to
an art form. He also learned to take care of his pitchers as McCarthy,
now with the Red Sox, couldn't seem to; the Yankees always had a bullpen
that actually helped, instead of just performing damage control or mopping
up.
(Trivia, albeit easily lookuppable: what was the last year in which
either league had as many as 50% complete games?)
1950 or so also marked the end of the RedSox-Yankee rivalry that had
begun in the 1930's when Tom Yawkey bought the Bostons. Yawkey,
alas, had never been able to keep his mitts off the running of the team,
and was hardly the most stable man around. Foxx, Grove, Williams, etc.
weren't enough; they often had teammates of dubious quality who also
didn't get to pal around with the boss, and some of whom resented this.
A fair amount of ethnic tension was also visible; Irish ballplayers
had an advantage. Management such as Cronin, Higgins, Collins--HOFers
among them--don't seem to have been able to look beyond ethnicity
all the time. The Red Sox' record with black players was dreadful
(they gave Jackie Robinson a sham tryout in 1945, having pretended
until then that no black player had ever wanted to play for them; later,
they blew the chance to sign Willie Mays, and didn't have a black
player on the big club until Pumpsie Green in 1959; nor more than a
few in the minors); but thngs like Frnk Malzone's story of Higgins
cutting all the Italian players on the team one spring training
suggest that things were completely out of hand, that the Bosox
had a management that did not put winning first. Of course, the
mortal rivalry between the two teams never let up, but after the
beginning of the 50's, it didn't matter; the Bosox were in advanced
stages of self-destruct mode.
In the 50's, two teams made up the Yankees' prime competition;
the White Sox, who finished third five years in a row, and the
Indians, who finished second to the Yankees for four of those
years, beating them out (although the Yankees won more games
that year than in any other of Stengel's tenure) in the middle
year, 1954. These teams generally had good-to-great pitching
(3 HOFs in the Cleveland rotation, plus Mike Garcia), but couldn't
assemble a set of everyday players and good platoonists the way
the Yankees could. Again, money made the difference; Del Webb
owned the team; a man who could build Las Vegas could also
afford a few ballplayers.
Heck, he could afford another owner! Arnold Johnson, owner of
the KC A's, was in Webb's pocket; when the A's made a trade for
a young ballplayer, e.g., Roger Maris, it was obvious that he'd
soon be a Yankee. Enos Slaughter and Ralph Terry were two other
players shipped to KC for safekeeping. Johnson held a mortgage
on Yankee Stadium, and Webb held one on the KC ballpark; Johnson
openly boasted about how Del Webb would take care of him.
After 1960, when Stengel and the great GM George Weiss were let go
(they hitched up with the Mets in 62, after Weiss' wife had noted
that she'd married him for better or worse, but not for lunch),
things began to slide. The 1961 team hit like gods, but the bench
wasn't all that great (didn't need to be), some of the players were
getting old (e.g., Berra) and not being replaced by anything nearly
as good, and more and more of the prospects weren't working out as
planned. If you go over the 1964 pennant race, you'll see that it's
quite amazing that the Yankees pulled it out one more time (after
their first-ever WS ofer at the hands of the Koufax-Drysdale-Osteen-
Wills-Davis-Davis-Roseboro-Etc. Dodgers), everything coming together
the way it never had to in the past.
But then the collapse was total, from the new ownership (CBS) to
management (the sleazy Berra-Keane affair) to the players (Mantle
finally giving in to the reality of his deteriorating body, if
not to the booze, Richardson going from so-so to bad, Tresh,
Bouton, Hector Lopez, and a raft of others not working out, Maris
getting injured a lot) to the insult of having the Mets be far more
interesting, even as they stank.
It's a complicated history, one having to do with a) money, and
b) an awareness of what to do with it. The Yankees got the players,
let them play, and had them do what they did best. By platooning
and relieving better than others, and by finding pitchers who could
pitch to the talent in the league, the Yankees stayed ahead of the
game for a long time. Without the owners and managers they happen
to have had, without the hirings and firings when they came,
without scouting and coaching that was ahead of other teams, they
would not have done so well; other teams had the players, but other
teams didn't support the players or allow them to shine with such
regularity either.
There were setbacks and flat-out mistakes, such as the cheapness
that sent Joe DiMaggio to a second-rate surgeon who probably made
matters worse with his heel and hastened his retirement, and
accidents such as Mantle's destruction of his knee in the 1951 WS
(imagine if he'd stolen 40 bases a year on top of everything, or
turned some of those doubles into triples? He was *fast*.); but
the Yankees had the reserves to come back from such setbacks,
unlike other teams: think of what happened to the RedSox every
time a player got hurt, e.g., Foxx, Williams, Boo Ferriss, Tex
Hughson, Mel Parnell, Harry Agganis.
The ultimate testimony to the Yankees' reserves is the fact that,
when in 1939 they had to replace Lou Gehrig with Babe Dahlgren,
their record improved over the previous year's by eight games.
Roger
Eric Smith
>Oh, the good old days....I am not against competition, I just liked to lazily
>watch summer baseball while waiting to see whom the Yankees would complete
>against in October.
Yes, those were the days when the New York football Giants always scheduled
their first four games on the road, because it was just assumed that the
Yankees would be in the World Series. (It was also the days when the football
Giants still played in New York City! :-)
- Eric
Roger Lustig
>In <1994May16.1...@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu> ga...@ns1.cc.lehigh.edu (Gail A. Fullman) writes:
>>ESPN had a short take on the dominant teams in baseball. Naturally, the
>>Yankees were one of them. Ruth and Gehrig were with the Yankees over 10
>>years. (I'm going by memory here so some facts may be fuzzy but I'm trying to
>>get the point across.) Modern free agency does nothing for keeping a winning
>>team together. Sure, franchise players will get the contracts, but the
>>supporting players are interchangeable in the eyes of management, fans, media,
>>etc.
>Is this really so different, I wonder, from the bygone years? I'm not a
>baseball historian, so maybe it is. However, Ruth and Gehrig are bad
>examples, I think, since they (and Joe Dimaggio) are the very "franchise
>players" whom you say would get the contracts even today.
Indeed: consider the currently popular trivia question--what three
players played together the longest?
>What about the supporting players of the 1920s-60s?
Especially on the Yankees! Murderers Row was basically over after
two years; and the 1953 team was quite different from the 49 one.
The supporting cast is what made the Yankees great; the Red Sox
have also had many of the great stars, from Cy Young to Wade Boggs.
>Besides, the Yankees' "dominance" outlasted the CAREERS of probably every
>single player who played for the team through that time, and that can't easily
>be explained away by a lack of modern free agency.
The Yanks *do* have a core of great players who did all their glorious
deeds with the team: Ruth, Gehrig, Dickey, DiMag, Mantle, Mattingly.
(Willie Randolph, guys!)
This is what makes the "Yankee tradition" look so strong.
Roger
Gail A. Fullman
>Scott Susor writes:
>
> |> Is there any good explanation for [Yankee dominance '21-'64]?
> |> ... Was it just a matter of money?
>
> It was, in fact, just a matter of money. ...
>
ESPN had a short take on the dominant teams in baseball. Naturally, the
Yankees were one of them. Ruth and Gehrig were with the Yankees over 10
years. (I'm going by memory here so some facts may be fuzzy but I'm trying to
get the point across.) Modern free agency does nothing for keeping a winning
team together. Sure, franchise players will get the contracts, but the
supporting players are interchangeable in the eyes of management, fans, media,
etc.
--
Gail Fullman
Manager - ADMO
Michael Rawdon
>Yankees were one of them. Ruth and Gehrig were with the Yankees over 10
>years. (I'm going by memory here so some facts may be fuzzy but I'm trying to
>get the point across.) Modern free agency does nothing for keeping a winning
>team together. Sure, franchise players will get the contracts, but the
>supporting players are interchangeable in the eyes of management, fans, media,
>etc.
Is this really so different, I wonder, from the bygone years? I'm not a
baseball historian, so maybe it is. However, Ruth and Gehrig are bad
examples, I think, since they (and Joe Dimaggio) are the very "franchise
players" whom you say would get the contracts even today.
What about the supporting players of the 1920s-60s?
Besides, the Yankees' "dominance" outlasted the CAREERS of probably every
single player who played for the team through that time, and that can't easily
be explained away by a lack of modern free agency.
--
Michael Rawdon raw...@colby.cs.wisc.edu
University of Wisconsin Computer Sciences Department, Madison, WI
WWW Home Page: http://www.cs.wisc.edu/~rawdon/rawdon.html
Pro-choice: The American way!
Gerald Lanza
>ssu...@huxley.csc.bcm.tmc.edu (Scott R. Susor) writes:
>
>>It was, in fact, just a matter of money. But is those days, people
>>big enough to SHOUT !!!
>
>I think a very large percentage of young players wanted to play for
>
>But you're right that at the bottom it came down to money. The Yankees
It was having the money and spending it wisely. In 1935 DiMaggio
was playing for the S.F. Seals and included a 61 game hitting
streak in his resume. He hurt his knee that year and scared off
most major league teams but not the Yankees.
I actually think the entire Yankee reign was determined by the
purchase of Ruth. He permitted the creation of the cathedral of
baseball, Yankee Stadium and established the winning tradition
that lured the better players to the Yankees. Only the best
would sign with the team that presented the most difficult
lineup to break into. (c.f. the Newark Bears in the '40's with
Rizzuto and Priddy, etc. reprenting the Yankees AAA team thought
to be better than the majority of major league teams at the time.)
jerry
ami a silberman cis fac/staff
> Yankees dynasty. also, with no free agency, the owners had alot of
> power, and players often had to plea for raises. the post-season
> meant a great deal to the players because the bonuses were quite
> substantial, especially in days when players didn't make a whole
> lot more than most people.
> Players also had strong allegiances
> to their teams (unlike today) so they took alot of pride in their
> play. The Yanks also had some great scouts in the organization.
reading about the holdouts, player-management feuds etc. of yesteryear
that the players had any stronger allegiance. A bit of the plantation
mentality if you ask me. Anyway, could anyone really feal loyalty to
the Cleveland Browns?
>
> An incredible book to read about the team is
>
> Dynasty:The New York Yankees 1949-1964
> The Greatest Years of the Greatest Team on Earth
> by Peter Golenbock
>
> It is a great novel, reviewing the team, year by year.
>
> It was a different game back then, a much better game.
>
through a particular filter. The announcers, and hall-of-famers, and
writers are all affiliated with the elite teams, the Yankees, Red Sox,
Dodgers, etc. Of course Rizzuto claims that fundementals were better in
his day. He played on fine defensive teams. Of course Whitey Ford talks
about how pitchers really knew how to find the plate. He was on a great
staff. Now, I'm not saying that the game hasn't changed. For instance,
strikeouts really are up greatly over the 40's and 50's. The quality of
play, however, is not appreciably worse. What has happened is that the
really terrible teams, the Browns, the Charles Finley owned Athletics,
and so forth don't exist anymore. Even the 93 Mets, about as sorry a team
as one could think of, had hope (illusory as it might be) for the future.
They aren't doomed to be mired in the cellar for a decade.
Here's a thought experiment, if you play PTP or Strat or any
table top game. (Actually, the computer version might be better.)
Play a season with the following rules:
1) No minimum play requirement. (For example, if you have Travis Fryman
and Cal Ripken, you can keep both of them even if you only use Cal for 20AB
in a year.)
2) Draft a 12 team league out of the 1993 AL (or NL, doesn't matter) as
follows. Divide the league into class A, B, C, and D teams, two apiece.
The class A teams draft for five rounds by themselves, then add the class
B teams for five rounds, then the class C teams for five rounds. Finally,
the class D teams can only draft starting in the sixteenth round.
This is about the talent distribution of the teams before the draft.
> Cheers,
> Joey E....
> Yankee Fan
Roger Lustig
>In article <ericsCp...@netcom.com> er...@netcom.com (Eric Smith) writes:
>>ssu...@huxley.csc.bcm.tmc.edu (Scott R. Susor) writes:
>>I think a very large percentage of young players wanted to play for
>>the Yankees, ......
>>But you're right that at the bottom it came down to money. The Yankees
> It was having the money and spending it wisely. In 1935 DiMaggio
> was playing for the S.F. Seals and included a 61 game hitting
> streak in his resume. He hurt his knee that year and scared off
> most major league teams but not the Yankees.
> I actually think the entire Yankee reign was determined by the
> purchase of Ruth.
Certainly true, but remember that the Yankees got *seven* players
from the Red Sox around that time. One player doth not a winning
tradition make, but an all-star pitching rotation, a good catcher,
a shortstop, and Babe Ruth all together can certainly help your team.
(They also got Home Run Baker around that time...)
>He permitted the creation of the cathedral of
> baseball, Yankee Stadium and established the winning tradition
> that lured the better players to the Yankees. Only the best
> would sign with the team that presented the most difficult
> lineup to break into. (c.f. the Newark Bears in the '40's with
> Rizzuto and Priddy, etc. reprenting the Yankees AAA team thought
> to be better than the majority of major league teams at the time.)
Late 30's; Rizzuto came up in 41, Priddy just after.
But yes, you're right.
Roger
Ted Frank
>single player who played for the team through that time, and that can't easily
>be explained away by a lack of modern free agency.
Actually, it can, especially in conjunction with the lack of a draft. Simon
Rottenberg wrote a paper in the mid-1950's on the effects of monopsony, and
he turned out to be right on the money.
--
ted frank "It's so rare for intellectuals to be smartly dressed,
the law skool and not to smell, and to understand jokes."
the u of c
kibo#=0.5 -- The Duchess of Orleans (on Leibniz)