Ah, 1913, those halcyon days before the first world war and the Yankees were still the Highlanders.
The newly renamed Yankees weren't the most successful or famous team in baseball or even in New York when they shed the awkward Highlanders moniker that year -- that distinction belonged to their Gotham neighbors, the Giants.
Long before they moved to San Francisco, the Giants were New York's top team. They were playing their home games at the Polo Grounds when the Highlanders' park, the aptly named Hilltop Park in Washington Heights, was badly damaged in a fire in 1911.
The Highlanders started playing their home games at the Polo Grounds while Hilltop Park was being repaired, but they ultimately decided to stay. The Highlanders name no longer made sense with the Yankees now playing at the Polo Grounds, situated in the low-lying Coogan's Bluff nearby.
Newspapers had already been using nicknames for the Highlanders because their name was too long to fit into headlines. The Americans was shorter, and the Yankees -- which could be shortened to Yanks -- was even shorter.
The Yankees lost their first game with their nickname now official, a 2-1 pitchers' duel won by future Hall of Famer Walter Johnson of the Washington Senators.
But the name stuck, the Yanks acquired the Babe in 1920, the Giants are on their second ballpark in San Francisco, and the rest is history.
