Sports

It’s time to celebrate history of city’s baseball ‘World’

It is a splendid year for anniversaries if you are a baseball fan. 2013 will mark 110 years since the first World Series, 90 years for the first Yankees championship, 60 years since the ’53 team ended a streak of five straight titles. The Giants won a title 80 years ago, the Mets polished off one of the great comebacks in sports history 40 years ago.

The games start for real tomorrow, and there will be plenty of living in the present across the next six months and 162 games. For now, let’s look back, at the start of a great anniversary year. New York has enjoyed 35 championships across those 110 years since the World Series was invented. Here are the 10 best, in this one man’s (and one fan’s) opinion.

My email already is open for business for rebuttals:

1. Yankees, 1927: It’s good when you have 27 separate chapters to choose from. The Yankees have three obvious candidates, all on this list. But how in the world do you not pick the one that has Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig in the middle of your lineup winning 110 games? Answer? You don’t. Murderer’s Row it is.

2. Giants, 1905: Some baseball buffs like to say it might have been the ’04 Giants — who refused to play in the Series — who might have been the best New York team ever — but the ’04-’05 teams taken together won 211 games, had the best manager of all time (John McGraw) and a forever pitcher (Christy Mathewson) who only threw three shutouts at the A’s in a five-game Series. No typos.

3. Yankees, 1998: When you consider what latter-day teams had to do, and all the pressure that 114-win team had to endure in October, it’s in many ways an unprecedented tribute to excellence. And here’s the thing: No one had a career year that year. No top-two finishes in either MVP or Cy Young. Remarkable.

4. Mets, 1986: Much like the ’98 Yankees, it was a roster stuffed with guys who had spectacular years … in years other than ’86. And like the ’98 Yankees, the ’86 Mets grinded through the playoffs with the world rooting against them, then survived being one strike away from extinction three different times in Game 6. Hard to argue with 116 wins.

5. Yankees, 1961: Yes, there was expansion that year, which probably helped the M&M Boys hit 115 homers between them and helped the Yankees win 109. But it should have helped the rest of the league, too. What may have been most impressive was beating a feisty Reds team in five games, with a hurt Mantle only getting six at-bats.

6. Dodgers, 1955: The ’53 team had won seven more games (105) and by ’55 Jackie Robinson was on the decline. But this is a team that counters the argument you have to break up a team that keeps coming up short. In their fifth try, they beat the Yankees and won Game 7 in The Bronx. Next Year at last.

7. Yankees, 1936: Honestly, you could pick any of the teams that won four straight from ’36-’39, but this one had both Gehrig in his prime (.354/49/152) and a rookie named DiMaggio (.323/29/125) and scored a staggering 1,065 runs. That’s a hair under seven runs a game. That’s terrifying.

8. Mets, 1969: We tend to remember the miraculous aspect of that season, focus less on the fact the Mets not only won 100 games in the regular season but blitzed through the playoffs, too, winning seven out of eight.

9. Yankees, 1978: The more time goes on, the more the ’70s-era Yankees seem to get lost amid the crowd of champs from the ’90s/’20s/’50s/’30s. This one shouldn’t, a paragon to toughness and will, and check the lineup out if you question its ability to hang with the others.

10. Yankees, 1932: History remembers one thing: Ruth’s called shot. But they won 111 of 158 games (including a sweep of the Cubs in the Series). Ruth and Gehrig’s combined OPS was 2.222. That’s a 1-2 punch.

Whack Back at Vac

Peter Matlock: Interesting article about the ’65 Yanks. The ineptitude carried over to ’67, the fans were disgusted. I remember the home opener: Things were so bad that when Elston Howard broke up Boston’s no-hitter, the Yankees fans booed. I haven’t thought about that for many years. Thanks for reminding me.

Vac: Yankees fans too young to remember those days might also be Knicks, Rangers or Giants fans and know: Nothing makes winning sweeter than having endured a whole lot of losing.

John Moorfoot: I think you’re wrong that Knicks fans don’t want Boston in the playoffs. I’m a 57-year-old fan from the Clyde/Willis days and I want the Celtics — I hate them and I think we’re ready to beat them. Knocking them out of the playoffs would give me great joy. Do you think the Celtics are in the Knicks’ heads?

Vac: I think most Knicks fans should feel this way, actually. Are the C’s in the Knicks’ heads? Not this very moment. But one playoff loss, and that could change …

@stpierrekj: Never ever sign a pitcher whose velocity is declining. It was on record at the time that Johan Santana’s velocity was down.

@MikeVacc: The pity is that the only time Mets fans saw Santana at his peak was the night of June 19, 2007, at Shea, when as a Twin Santana breezed through one of the best lineups in Mets history in 92 pitches, facing four over the minimum.

Wayne Vanyo: The Islanders do know that they are allowed to check their opponents, right? I have seen more touching during square dancing in my junior high school days than in their games.

Vac: So does that explain why the Isles sometimes seem so incredibly generous at giving away so many early leads, and not just a general sense of sportsmanship?

Vac’s Whacks

Just in time for Opening Day, two baseball books that must be at the top of your lineup: First, “The Victory Season” by Robert Weintraub, a beautifully written paean to the 1946 baseball season, when normalcy returned to the national pastime.

Second: “Swinging ’73” by Matthew Silverman, a fantastic ode to a year that began with the Yankees wife-swap and ended with the Mets’ second miracle. You know I wouldn’t steer you wrong on this stuff, right?

* The Yankees playing an exhibition at West Point is such a natural fit that it should become a regular part of the spring itinerary.

* Dave DeBusschere and Gus Johnson used to have handshakes that were more of a flagrant foul than the one LeBron James got called on for running into Carlos Boozer the other night.

* Walt Frazier and Henry Winkler both were born in 1945, and yet Clyde’s cool has outlived Fonzie’s by decades, and I think that’s a sign that God keeps score.