October 15, 1923: The 1st Yankee World Series Win

The 1923 World Champion New York Yankees.

Babe Ruth is in the top row, 2nd from the right.

October 15, 1923, 100 years ago today: The New York Yankees, managed by Miller Huggins, win Game 6 of the World Series, riding a 1st-inning home run by Babe Ruth and the pitching of "Sad" Sam Jones, to beat the New York Giants, 6-4 at the Polo Grounds, and clinch their 1st World Championship, in their 1st season of playing in Yankee Stadium in The Bronx.

This was not, however, the 1st title for many of the Yankee players. Some of them, including Ruth and Jones, had won titles with the Boston Red Sox in the 1910s. In fact, of the 25 men on the Yankee roster when they won their 1st World Championship, 12, nearly half, had been Red Sox sold off by Boston owner Harry Frazee.

This was also the beginning of the end for Giant manager John McGraw and his style of baseball: Finally, the Yankees had put together a team that did not have to simply rely on Ruth's home runs to beat McGraw's style of "inside baseball" – what would, today, be called "small ball." The Giants would win another Pennant the next season, but that would be their last under McGraw’s leadership.

Up until this moment, the Giants had won 11 Pennants and 3 World Championships, either through the World Series, pre-1900 postseason series, or the title of the only league then playing; the Brooklyn Dodgers, 6 and, by the means available to them to win a "world championship" at the time, 3, but none since 1900; the Yankees, 3 and none.

From the Yankees' 3rd Pennant in September 1923 until the end of the Giants' and Dodgers' last season in New York, September 1957, the count was: Yankees, 21 and 17; Giants, 7 and 2; and Dodgers, 7 and 1.

Lou Gehrig had made his major league debut on June 15, 1923, a 10-0 Yankee win over the St. Louis Browns at Yankee Stadium. But he only played 13 games at the major league level that 1st season, and was not included on the World Series roster.

The last surviving member of the 1923 Yankees was center fielder Ladislaw Waldemar Wittkowski, a.k.a. Lawton Walter Witt, a.k.a. Whitey Witt, who lived until 1988.