Despite bruising their toes on Friday and Saturday, the Yankees still are in position to make a playoff run this year, and if they do it’ll be the 17th time in the last 18 seasons they will get there — and if you figure that only the strike could stop the ’94 team, that really should be 18 out of 19.
But even if they don’t, the ’13 Yankees already have clinched one title.
They now, officially, own the longest run of any singular baseball team when it comes to ownership of New York. They officially and unequivocally took the town back from the Mets in 1993, so this is their 21st straight year of inarguable ownership. That is a subjective title, sure: I just came up with it now. There is no trophy, no monetary bonus, nothing other than the knowledge the Yankees have been terrific while the Mets are somehow in their third separate era of awfulness in that time.
Still, since we started keeping score in 1903, when the old Orioles became the new Highlanders and the eventual Yankees, this is how one man’s scorecard reads:
1. Yankees 1993-2013
(and counting)
Five world championships. All those playoff memories. All those stars. And, it should be noted, just enough heartache mingled in to keep the fiercely faithful honest. Twice the Mets have mounted small charges (1998-2001, 2006-08) but never have really come close since ceding the town for good (forever?) in ’93.
2. Giants 1903-1922
It was a pretty good run for Muggsy McGraw’s boys, but we can now officially close the book on them. But in parting we should remember: Nobody — not even any of the Yankees teams on this list — ever owned Gotham as completely as those Giants did. Nobody ever will. They were that revered, and that dominant. Christy Mathewson was as beloved as Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte and Mo Rivera combined.
3. Yankees 1936-1950
Fifteen years that yielded nine championships and 10 pennants and spanned the end of the Gehrig Years to the doorstep of the Mantle Years and all but one of Joe DiMaggio’s years. The 1936-39 teams were the most fearsome team ever assembled. The Yankees even kept winning during the war.
4. Mets 1964-75
At first it was just box office (the ’64 Mets, who lost 109 games, drew 400,000 more fans than the Yankees, who won 99), but then it also included the on-field product, and by ’71 the Mets drew a million more customers.
5. Yankees 1923-32
It was going to take characters as over-the-top as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig to unseat McGraw’s Giants, and they did. And interestingly, these Yankees can serve as an inspiration for the Mets: As big a disparity as it sometimes seems there is today? It was nothing compared to what the Yankees faced before 1923. Nothing.
6. Mets 1984-92
A perfect storm of a winning, sexy team and a major case of Steinbrenner fatigue among Yankees fans helped the Mets to a second era of primacy, though even the fiercest devotee will tell you they should have more than one World Series and 20 postseason games to show for it.
7. Yankees 1976-83
A refurbished Stadium helped; the Bronx Zoo championship teams helped more. And the vanishing of the Mets — seven losing seasons in those eight years — solidified it.
8. Yankees 1956-63
Helped along, of course, by the fact they were a baseball monopoly from ’58-61.
9. Giants/Dodgers 1951-55
Maybe it’s bending the rules to let them gang up on the Yankees, but both teams won titles in this era, and also engaged in the most epic pennant race ever. You almost have to take them as an entity.
10. Giants 1933-35
The last gasp, post-McGraw; the ’35 team was the last to outdraw the Yankees.