New York Yankees established

Identification: American professional baseball team

Date: Established in 1901

During the 1920s, talented players and strong team managers established the New York Yankees as one of the most successful teams in major-league baseball. Winning its first American League pennant in 1921, the team claimed five more league championships and three World Series titles before the end of the decade. Meanwhile, the opening of the first Yankee Stadium in 1923 gave the team a new home.

Known as the Highlanders until 1913, the New York Yankees was one of the least successful teams in the American League for much of its early history. This changed in 1921, when the Yankees won the first of three consecutive American League championships. After losing the World Series to the National League’s New York Giants in 1921 and 1922, the Yankees beat the Giants in 1923, winning the team’s first World Series. The Yankees won an additional three consecutive league championships between 1926 and 1928, losing the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals before sweeping the Pittsburgh Pirates in 1927 and the Cardinals the following year.

The Yankees dominated the American League throughout the 1920s, ranking below second place only twice during the decade. Three other teams won league championships during the period—the Cleveland Indians in 1920, the Washington Senators in 1924 and 1925, and the Philadelphia Athletics in 1929—but no team won as consistently as the Yankees did.

Players and Managers

The New York Yankees comprised a number of talented players during the 1920s, the most notable of which was George Herman “Babe” Ruth. Ruth, whose contract was purchased from the Boston Red Sox for $125,000, joined the Yankees at the start of the decade. He had been a successful pitcher with the Red Sox, but with the Yankees, Ruth became a full-time outfielder known for his powerful batting skills. Ruth set multiple home run records, establishing his reputation as one of the greatest power hitters of all time by the end of the decade. In 1925, another strong hitter, Lou Gehrig, became a fixture in the Yankees’ lineup and would go on to play in more than two thousand consecutive games. Sluggers Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri, Earle Combs, and Mark Koenig further strengthened the team’s offense and, along with Ruth and Gehrig, became one of the most feared batting orders in baseball history, known as “Murderers’ Row.” The Yankees’ notable pitchers of the decade included Bob Shawkey, Herb Pennock, and Waite Hoyt, the latter two having joined the Yankees through trades with Boston early in the decade.

Two others who played important roles in the team’s success were field manager Miller Huggins and business manager Ed Barrow. Hired in 1918, Huggins devised a new baseball strategy to take full advantage of the team’s power hitters. Prior to the 1920s, teams employed the “inside game” strategy, which emphasized a tight defense, speed on the bases, and discipline at the plate. Huggins instead introduced a strategy that played on the strengths of power hitters such as Ruth and Gehrig, placing more emphasis on home runs. This new focus on batting spread to numerous other teams by the end of the decade. Ed Barrow, like several Yankee star players, came to New York from Boston. Known as a hardnosed negotiator, Barrow orchestrated player trades and purchases and organized the Yankees’ farm system, which became a major source of talented new players.

Yankee Stadium

In 1923, the New York Yankees moved into a new facility, the first Yankee Stadium. For the previous decade, the Yankees had played home games in the Polo Grounds, also the home of the New York Giants. After conflicts with the Giants and amid growing competition for the New York fan base, team owner Jacob Ruppert purchased a lumberyard in the Bronx, located across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. There, he built the venue that would play host to the Yankees’ home games for more than eighty years. The stadium had three tiers of seating that could accommodate as many as seventy thousand spectators, more than double the capacity of some other ballparks. Yankee Stadium hosted its first game on April 18, 1923, during which the Yankees beat the Red Sox by a score of four to one.

Impact

Having been established as one of the most successful baseball teams in the United States during the 1920s, the New York Yankees continued to build upon this reputation in the subsequent decades. A number of talented players of the 1920s, such as Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, continued to play for the Yankees into the 1930s, and new star players joined the team and contributed to its ongoing success over the years. During the remainder of the twentieth century, the New York Yankees went on to win more than twenty World Series titles.

Bibliography

Levitt, Daniel R. Ed Barrow: The Bulldog Who Built the Yankees’ First Dynasty. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2008. A biography of the business manager who led the Yankees throughout the 1920s.

Rader, Benjamin G. Baseball: A History of America’s Game. 3d ed. Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 2008. Explores the development of the game of baseball, including discussion of the events of the 1920s.

Reisler, Jim. Before They Were the Bombers: The New York Yankees’ Early Years, 1903–1915. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2002. Chronicles the early years of the team, prior to the 1920s.

Seymour, Harold. Baseball: The Golden Age. New York: Oxford University Press, 1989. A history of baseball focusing on the early twentieth century through the 1920s.

Stout, Glenn, and Richard A. Johnson. Yankees Century: One Hundred Years of New York Yankees Baseball. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002. A retrospective on the Yankees’ long history, featuring several sections related to the 1920s.