March 29 in Yankee History

  • Few would deny that one man, Babe Ruth, will forever sit atop the Baseball Pantheon. Among a handful of others competing for second place would be legendary pitcher Cy (Denton True) Young, born this day in 1867. In 22 years, Cy sandwiched stints in Cleveland (early with the NL Spiders, later with the AL Indians) around a long stay in Boston, and amassed two equally impregnable numbers: 511 wins, 316 losses. Cy threw the first perfect game in AL history, and in 1904 he went 24.33 innings without giving up a hit. And as if in confirmation that this is a day for champions, the prize-winning racehorse Man O’War was born exactly 50 years later. Continue reading

March 28 in Yankee History

  • The Yankees crushed the visiting Orioles 7-2 in the Stadium on March 28, 2019, their home opener. Both Aaron Judge and Luke Voit reached safely four times, with the latter’s three-run bomb in the first setting the tone. Masahiro Tanaka pitched into the sixth for the win, and Adam Ottavino had a strong Stadium debut, retiring four straight, three on strike outs. Continue reading

March 27 in Yankee History

  • Songwriter Patty Smith Hill, author of no less famous a tune than Happy Birthday to You, was born on March 27, 1868, so today we lead off with one Yankee birthday, and there are few bigger than that of Hall of Fame Yankee Manager Miller Huggins (1879). He managed five years in St. Louis and 12 in New York, spanning the years the Yanks played in the Polo Grounds and then across the Harlem River once the Bombers opened their jewel in the Bronx. His Yankee teams won six AL pennants and three World Series, including the record franchise’s first. Continue reading

March 26 in Yankee History

  • It’s a good day to feature Mickey Mantle, who on March 26, 1951, hit a homer estimated to have traveled between 654 and 660 feet in an exhibition game at USC. “Good fences make good neighbors,” the poet Robert Frost wrote. We feature fence-buster extraordinaire The Mick for his homer on March 26, and the poet, who was born this day in 1874. Continue reading

March 25 in Yankee History

  • When after the 2003 season Aaron Boone blew out his knee playing basketball, leaving the Yankees without any promising options at third base, their first move was to make a February 4 trade with the Rangers for Mike Lamb. Lamb was prepared to fight for the third-base job with free agent Tyler Houston, but twelve days later, the Yanks swooped in and claimed the prize the Red Sox had failed to get, pulling off a deal with Texas that brought Alex Rodriguez to New York for Alfonso Soriano. Before the trade, the Yanks had made sure that Rodriguez was amenable to a shift from short to third, thereby eliminating their need for Lamb. On March 25, 2004, Lamb found himself on the move again after the Yanks traded him, sending him to the Astros for minor league righthander Juan DeLeon. Continue reading

March 24 in Yankee History

  • We could call today’s rundown The Great Escape in honor of what is the late iconic movie star Steve McQueen‘s birthday, as it was on this day that any semblance of a battle for the starting Yankee shortstop job in 1996 came to an end when the late Tony Fernandez fractured his right elbow in a game with the Astros. Tony was a veteran on the ’95 playoff team, and until recently was the most recent Yankee to have hit for the cycle, but he was never accepted in New York as he was in Toronto, for whom he played four separate times in his career. Given the unexpected opportunity to start on the rookie-phobic Yankee team, Derek Jeter began a magical year at short by homering in Jacobs Field in his first regular-season game in Cleveland. He won the Rookie of the Year Award, and the Yanks won the Series. The rest, as they say, is history. Continue reading

March 23 in Yankee History

  • On March 23, 1972, the Yankees agreed in principle to continue playing ball in the Bronx. Later that year on August 8, they put it in writing by signing a 30-year lease contingent on a modernization to be completed in time for the 1976 season. Old-time Yankee fans point to this renovation as the true end of the original ballpark, though most of us point to the final game in September 2008. Continue reading

March 22 in Yankee History

  • The lead March 22 story for Yankee fans is the 1972 trade of Danny Cater and Mario Guerrero to the Red Sox for Al “Sparky” Lyle. Not only would Sparky post a 57-40 record with 141 saves in six years for the Yanks, he played on three World Series teams (two wins) and won an American League Cy Young Award. Lyle was a famous prankster, and the Stadium actually used to play Pomp and Circumstance (think High School Graduation) when he came to the mound in search of a save. The manager of the Somerset (N.J.) Patriots in the independent Atlantic League for years, Lyle still has an association with the team. Cater, meanwhile, notched 14 homers and 83 rbi’s in three years for the Red Sox, resulting in a far from even swap. Continue reading

March 21 in Yankee History

  • The early career of Yankee star Joe DiMaggio took off when he attended Spring Training with the Yanks in 1936, and by the end of an 11-2 thrashing of the Boston Bees on March 21, he had stroked 12 hits in his first 20 at bats. But this is not a great day in Yankee history, and a post-game slip-up stopped the man who was to become “Joltin’ Joe” in his tracks. Joe’s foot was burned in an unattended diathermy machine, and his regular-season debut would have to be delayed until after he recovered in May. Continue reading

March 20 in Yankee History

  • On March 20, 1958, the Phillies attempted to trade for first baseman and outfielder Joe Collins from the Yankees, but Joe opted to retire rather than report. A lefty like Don Mattingly who both threw and batted that way, Joe appeared in seven World Series in his Yankee career; the Yanks won five of them. He played for the Yanks exclusively, for whom he slugged 86 round-trippers with 329 rbi’s and 27 steals from 1948-1957. Continue reading