The New York Yankees are coming off the first calendar decade in which they did not reach a World Series – a fascinating stat considering all the permutations and alignments the American League has had over the 117 years of the team’s existence.
Here’s what’s more fascinating, though: the Yankees made their first World Series appearance in 1921, their 19th season overall, and since then, the 10-year (and counting) drought isn’t the longest in team history, nor is it even the second-longest.
Quite stunning that such a dynasty, with 27 titles and 40 pennants in 117 years, and a pennant in every decade from the 1920s to the 2000s, and only five droughts of five years or more, has seen four of them last at least a decade.
Amazing, indeed, but these are the five longest World Series droughts in Yankees history – one of which they, of course, hope they started down the road to ending on Thursday night when they defeated the Nationals in a rain-shortened 2020 opener.
1903-1920 (18 seasons)The New York Highlanders began play in 1903, and morphed into the New York Yankees in 1913. In that decade as the Highlanders, only twice did the team finish within 10 games of the American League winner, and they actually finished 55 games out in 1912. The Yankees didn’t get within single digits until 1919, but then the Babe came, and well, two years later, well, the first of 40 pennants finally came.
1982-1995 (14 seaons)The six-year period between 1976-1981 saw the Yankees reach five postseasons, play in four World Series and win two, and was thought to be a return to prominence for a franchise whose last postseason game before that was a crushing loss in Game 7 of the 1964 World Series. Unfortunately, that half-decade didn’t portend the future, as the entire Don Mattingly era came and went without another appearance in the Fall Classic – and only included one postseason berth, coming in the final year of the drought (and of Mattingly’s career).
1965-1975 (11 seasons)If you hear older Yankees fans talk about the ‘lean years,’ they’re likely talking about this decade. Who can blame them? Over the previous 18 seasons (1947-64), the Yankees won 15 pennants and 10 World Series, including five titles in a row from 1949-53. But the era of DiMaggio, Mantle, Yogi and company came to an end with that 1964 loss to the Cardinals, and in the final four years of the pre-divisional era, the Yankees finished at least 20 games out of first place in the AL each season. The shift to divisional play in 1969 didn’t help much initially either, as they finished 12 or more games out in five of the first seven seasons of the AL East before Billy Martin took over in late-1975 and got the Bronx burning.
2010-present (10 seasons and counting)We’re living in this era, so it’s not hard to recall, but given the expanded playoffs, the six World Series in eight years and five titles of the Core Four era, it’s still hard to swallow. Choose your poison: the 2011 AL East title season that saw only Jorge Posada show up in a weather-impacted ALDS? The 2012 battle with the Orioles that saw perhaps CC Sabathia’s best game as a Yankee in Game 5 of the ALDS…only to see Derek Jeter break his ankle and the Tigers sweep the ALCS? What about the 2013 and 2014 seasons that ended in no postseason for retiring legends? The 2015 Wild Card loss? The 2016 selloff? The last three seasons of cheating scandals? It’s been a long decade, and no Yankees fan will care if there’s an asterisk next to “Yankees – 2020 World Champions” in the books come November.
2004-08 (5 seasons)Well, folks, at least take solace that while some teams wait centuries (literally) between titles, the Yankees’ fifth-longest drought came in between pennants 39 and 40. This one hurts just as bad, though, because it started with the most crushing defeat in postseason history, continued with three straight division series losses to three different teams, and ended with the closure of the old House That Ruth Built and the first season without the Yankees playing, as Steve Somers says, “serious October baseball” since before the strike. A tough end to the Joe Torre era and tough beginning for the Joe Girardi era, but we all know what happened in 2009.
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