55. 2015. reached the AL Wild Card Game, lost it to the Houston Astros. There was some optimism going into this one, but it was a total capitulation. The fact that the Astros have now won 2 Pennants in the following 4 seasons does not mitigate this one.
54. 2007. Won the AL Wild Card, lost the ALDS to the Cleveland Indians. Game 2 was The Bug Game. Had we just gotten 1 more run before the bugs hit, it would have set up an ALCS showdown with the Red Sox. But once the bugs hit, it was over. We just didn't hit in this series.
53. 2018. Won the AL Wild Game Game vs. the Cleveland Indians, lost the ALDS to the Boston Red Sox. Taking Game 2 at Fenway gave us a lot of hope going into Game 3 at Yankee Stadium II. But we lost 16-1, and then Game 4 was kind of a damp squib, too. For the 2nd time, the 1st being in 2004, the Red Sox clinched a postseason series on our field.
52. 1995. Won the AL Wild Card, lost the ALDS to the Seattle Mariners. Donnie Baseball's Last Stand. After a hard season that saw 2 Yankee Legends dented -- the death of Mickey Mantle and Lou Gehrig's playing streak record broken by Cal Ripken -- and a 2nd place finish to Boston, we took a 2-0 lead in the ALDS, and then dropped 3 straight in the Kingdome, Games 4 and 5 being winnable classics.
For the Cult of St. Donald Arthur of Evansville, this was heartbreaking. I just felt empty. There was such an air of finality about it. If you had told me then that the Yankees would win 6 Pennants in the next 8 years, I would have taken it, but I wouldn't have believed you.
51. 1997. Won the AL Wild Card, lost the ALDS to the Cleveland Indians. Despite blowing a 2-1 lead, this one didn't hurt as much, because of the previous year's title.
50. 2006. Won the AL Eastern Division, lost the ALDS to the Detroit Tigers. The 5-game sweep at Fenway, followed by the Red Sox falling to 3rd behind us and Toronto, felt really good. That's what made the disintegration of the bats so much more pathetic. Joe Torre batting Alex Rodriguez 8th in the order angered many, but it was completely justified. Not that anybody else hit much, either.
49. 2005. Won the AL East, lost the ALDS to the Los Angeles Angels. Given the emotions of the previous 2 seasons, ending with a win and then a loss against the Red Sox, this year's race with them was exhausting in every way. I can't really fault the Yankees for falling flat against the Halos, especially since they ended up losing to the White Sox, who on their 1st World Series in 88 years.
48. 2011. Won the AL East, lost the ALDS to the Detroit Tigers. Another disappearing act by the Yankee bats, and Ivan Nova's injury forced Joe Girardi to take him out after the 1st inning of Game 5, making it feel like we'd already lost in Game 4. This team should have won: Big years from big names, and the Yankees winning the Pennant instead of the Texas Rangers and the World Series instead of the St. Louis Cardinals wouldn't have denied a worthy team in either case.
47. 2002. Won the AL East, lost the ALDS to the Anaheim Angels. (The name was changed back to "Los Angeles" in 2004.) After 5 Pennants in 6 years, this loss didn't sting as much, but we still should have hit better.
46. 2004. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Minnesota Twins, lost the ALCS to the Boston Red Sox after being up 3-0. The worst loss in Yankee history, in terms of both how close we came to winning and in how badly it made us feel. Although losing the 2000 World Series to the Mets would have been 10 times worse. This season still ranks ahead of any season in the post-1968 Divisional Play Era where we didn't make the ALCS, but it is the worst loss.
45. 1980. Won the AL East, lost the ALCS to the Kansas City Royals. The 1st 3 against the Royals, 1976, '77 and '78, were not easy, but they should have given the Yankees enough confidence to win in '80 as well. But it was already a different team: Gone were Thurman Munson, Chris Chambliss, Mickey Rivers, Catfish Hunter, Ed Figueroa and Sparky Lyle. And the Royals were what the Yankees no longer were: Hungry. So they swept us in 3 straight. Embarrassing.
44. 2010. Won the AL Wild Card, won the ALDS over the Minnesota Twins, lost the ALCS to the Texas Rangers. The Rangers had never won a Pennant before, and, basically, Joe Girardi gave them this series by pitching lefthanded reliever Boone Logan against lefthanded steroid-aided slugged Josh Hamilton, and it didn't work.
43. 2012. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Baltimore Orioles, lost the ALCS to the Detroit Tigers in 4 straight. With Derek Jeter breaking his ankle in Game 1, and Mariano Rivera already lost for the season to a torn ACL, losing the ALCS was a formality. Rain delaying the inevitable Game 4 defeat didn't help. Still, I'd rather lose to a team from Detroit than a team from Dallas.
42. 2017. Reached the AL Wild Card Game, won it over the Oakland Athletics, won the ALDS over the Cleveland Indians, lost the ALCS to the Houston Astros. The home team won every game, so with the Yankees having a 3-2 lead, they ended up losing Games 6 and 7 in Houston. This was infuriating: Had Brian Cashman traded for Justin Verlander, he would have been available to the Yankees in that series, not the Astros. It made all the difference.
41. 2019. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Minnesota Twins, lost the ALCS to the Houston Astros. This would have hurt a lot more losing in 6 than in 7, like in 2017. But once we lost Game 2 when we had a chance to go 2-0 up before leaving Houston, I had no confidence. This was supposed to be the year Cashman's grand plan reached its conclusion, with Title 28. It didn't. We're still waiting.
40. 1981. Won the AL East in the 1st half, won the Strike-forced ALDS over the Milwaukee Brewers, won the ALCS over the Oakland Athletics, lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 6 games.
We were up 2 games to 0, then dropped the next 4. Reggie Jackson missed Games 3 and 4 with an injury, and told manager Bob Lemon he was ready for Game 5, but was held out of the lineup -- possibly on George Steinbrenner's order. Then he went 0-for-5 in Game 6 to prove Lemon's (Steinbrenner's?) point, and that was his last game in Pinstripes. Losing was bad enough, but losing to the L.A. O'Malleys? This one still sticks in my craw.
39. 1963. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees won 104 games, their highest total between 1939 and 1998, but got swept in 4 straight. That Dodger team was the 1st ever to win the World Series without a single hitter reaching the Hall of Fame, but Sandy Koufax (winner of Games 1 and 4) and Don Drysdale (winner of Game 3) did, and that was enough.
38. 1926. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. This was the 1st Pennant won by the team that became known as Murderers' Row: Although Babe Ruth, Waite Hoyt and Herb Pennock were holdovers from the 1921-23 Pennant run, new to such glory were Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri and Earle Combs. No way were the Cards the better team. But Grover Cleveland Alexander won Game 6 and saved Game 7 for them. The Yankees returned the favor by sweeping the Cards in 1928.
Book about this season: The Cardinals and the Yankees, 1926: A Classic Season and St. Louis in Seven, by Paul E. Doutrich, published 2011.
37. 2003. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Minnesota Twins, won the ALCS over the Boston Red Sox, lost the World Series to the team then known as the Florida Marlins. After the Aaron Boone Game, we thought this was another Yankee team of destiny. But it wasn't. I could have lived with losing the Series to the Cubs. But the Marlins? Thanks for nothing, Jeff Weaver!
36. 1960. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the Pittsburgh Pirates. To say that the Pirates were deserving Champions is fair. To say they were the better team is not. The Yankees won their wins 16-3, 12-0 and 10-0; the Pirates won theirs 6-4, 3-2, 5-2 and 10-9, the Bill Mazeroski Game.
Mickey Mantle said not only that, out of the 12 World Series in which he played, including those the Yankees lost, this was the only one in which he thought the better team didn't win, but that he cried the entire flight home.
Book about this season: Bottom of the Ninth: Branch Rickey, Casey Stengel, and the Daring Scheme to Save Baseball from Itself, by Michael Shapiro, published in 2010. It's mainly about baseball's greatest bluff, the Continental League, which led to the creation of 4 teams, the ones now known as the New York Mets, the Houston Astros, the Los Angeles Angels and the Texas Rangers. But it also details Stengel's last season as Yankee manager, including the World Series, and its aftermath, when he "resigned," and then general manager George Weiss saw the writing on the wall and resigned.
35. 1922. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the New York Giants. After having lost to them the year before, it should have gotten better. But, this time, they got swept, not counting Game 2 which got called due to darkness (no lights in those days) after 10 innings.
34. 1942. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. The Yankees won Game 1 in St. Louis, then lost the next 4, all by 3 runs or less.
33. 1957. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the Milwaukee Braves. Because of Milwaukee's newness as a major league city (they'd been minor-league as recently as 1952), and their fans' over-exuberance, the New York newspapers called the city "Bushville." (The minor leagues had been known as "bush leagues," and lame behavior in baseball has long been called "bush.")
It was unfair: By this point, Warren Spahn was already a legend, Eddie Mathews a slugging superstar, and Hank Aaron, then just 23, a batting champion. (At that point, he seemed more likely to match Ted Williams with a .400 batting average for a season than Babe Ruth with 714 home runs in a career.) The Yankees should have taken the Braves more seriously. They didn't, and paid the price, losing a 5-0 Game 7 at Yankee Stadium.
32. 1964. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the St. Louis Cardinals. The toughest Yankee Pennant race between 1948 and 1978, and, unlike most World Series the Yankees had played to that point, they never felt like clear favorites, not even when they went up 2 games to 1.
Book about this season: October 1964, by David Halberstam, published in 1995. He had previously written Summer of '49, about the beginning of the longest Yankee Dynasty, and this was the other bookend. It also details the Cardinals, and the changes going on in baseball and in America at large.
31. 2001. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Oakland Athletics, won the ALCS over the Seattle Mariners, lost the World Series to the Arizona Diamondbacks. After everything that happened from the morning of September 11 onward, this team brought the New York Tri-State Area so much joy and relief.
But when it came (figuratively -- certainly, not literally) crashing down on the night of November 4, I had nothing left to feel. I was disappointed, but not heartbroken. When I later found out about all the steroid use by Arizona, I got angry. It bothers me a lot more now than it did then.
Given the context of September 11 to November 4, 2001, had the Yankees finished the job, as they came within 2 outs of doing, not only would Alfonso Soriano, whose 8th inning home run gave the Yankees a 2-1 lead in Game 7, been a tremendous hero, and possibly made the difference in getting him to the Hall of Fame, but this season might well rank not just in the top 28 (being 1 of 28 Yankee World Series wins), but it would almost certainly be thought of, in hindsight, as Number 1.
Book about this season: The Last Night of the Yankee Dynasty: The Game, the Team, and the Cost of Greatness, by Buster Olney, published in 2008.
30. 1921. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the New York Giants. The Yankees' 1st Pennant and 1st trip to the World Series, the loss might have hurt at the time, especially since it was to the established team in New York City.
But it could have been mitigated by the sense that this young, powerful Yankee team (led by a record 59 home runs by Babe Ruth) would be back. There was no guarantee of that, of course. But nobody could have imagined that this would begin a run of 29 Pennants in 44 years.
Book about this season: 1921: The Yankees, the Giants, and the Battle for Baseball Supremacy in New York, by Lyle Spatz and Steve Steinberg, published in 2010. Of course, the battle was hardly over, as the World Series of 1922, '23, '36, '37 and '51 would prove. And that was just Yankees vs. Giants.
29. 1955. Won the Pennant, lost the World Series to the Brooklyn Dodgers. Even the most hardcore of Yankee Fans couldn't have begrudged Dem Bums finally doing it.
28. 1976. Won the AL East, won the ALCS over the Kansas City Royals, lost the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. The ALCS was emotionally exhausting, and I don't think too many fans expected the Yankees to defeat the defending champions, the Big Red Machine. This loss was disappointing, but hardly discouraging. Given the 12-year wait just to get back into the World Series, and the nature of the opponents, it may have been the most tolerable Yankee October loss ever.
Book about this season, and the dark age that came before it: Dog Days: The New York Yankees' Fall From Grace and Return to Glory, 1964-1976, by Philip Bashe. A Yankee Fan, Bashe has mostly written about the entertainment industry, including biographies of actor and cartoon voice man Mel Blanc and early rock star Ricky Nelson, and a history of heavy metal music.
Also: Stars and Strikes: Baseball and America in the Bicentennial Summer of '76, by Dan Epstein, although it covers all of baseball in that fascinating season.
Part IV will conclude the story.
Part IV will conclude the story.
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