Ranking the Yankees' Seasons: Part IV, #'s 27 to 1

27. 1937. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the New York Giants. If it is possible for the Yankees to have a "least meaningful World Series-winning season," this could be it. The previous year's win over the Giants was tougher and more meaningful. (More on that later.) This whole season seemed to be a bit too easy. And except for Tommy Henrich, it wasn't the 1st title for any notable Yankees, nor was it the last for any.

26. 1950. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. The Pennant race wasn't very interesting, and the Series, although close in the 1st 3 games, wasn't especially interesting, either. Nor were the Phillies a team with whom they had any history.

25. 1999. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Texas Rangers, won the ALCS over the Boston Red Sox, won the World Series over the Atlanta Braves. Beating the Red Sox was great. Taking the "Team of the Decade" title away from the Braves was nice. Cementing the "Team of the Century" title had already been done, probably with the 1977 and '78 titles. Confirming the 1995 Star Trek: Deep Space Nine prediction that the '99 Yankees would be in the conversation for the title of "greatest team ever" was fun.

But, after the epic story of 1996 and the domination of 1998, this one was kind of anti-climactic. Aside from the ALCS battle with the Red Sox, this season wasn't even all that interesting, and it certainly wasn't as important as 1996 (getting back to the top) or 2000 (beating the Mets).

24. 1938. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Chicago Cubs. No real race for the Pennant, and a 4-game sweep. Unlike the one with the Cubs 6 years earlier, this one didn't even have an interesting subplot. (More on that in a moment.) It was Lou Gehrig's last title, and Game 2 involved a pitching performance by Dizzy Dean that amounted to a "last stand" for the former Cardinal star, but the most notable thing about this Series is that it was the 1st time any team had won 3 straight.

23. 1932. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Chicago Cubs. Winning 107 games and ending the Philadelphia Athletics' 3-year Pennant run was kind of a foregone conclusion. So was beating the Cubs, if not sweeping them.

The drama over how the Cubs treated former Yankee Mark Koenig, which sparked the Yankees' hitting onslaught, including Babe Ruth's "called shot" in Game 3, was the only real story for this one. Though it should be noted that this was the 1st Pennant the Yankees had won without Miller Huggins as manager. (Joe McCarthy took charge in 1931.)

Book about this season: The 1932 New York Yankees: The Story of a Legendary Team, a Remarkable Season, and a Wild World Series, by Ronald A. Mayer, published in 2018.

22. 1928. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals. A tough Pennant race with the rising A's was followed by a bit of an anti-climax. Sure, it was good to get revenge over the Cards for '26, and it was good to see Ruth hit 3 home runs in St. Louis in Game 4, as he had in '26, only this time it was the clincher. Ruth batted .625, while Gehrig had an on-base percentage of .706 and a slugging percentage of 1.727, and all remain Series records 91 years later.

If the 1927 Yankees were "Murderers' Row" and "the greatest team ever," the 1928 Yankees put the exclamation point on it, and turned the team into "the Dynasty" and "the lordly Yankees," 2 phrases that would be used often through 1964.

Book about this team: The 1928 New York Yankees: The Return of Murderers' Row, by Charlie Gentile, published in 2014.

21. 1962. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the San Francisco Giants. The Yankees have played the Giants in 7 World Series, but only this one since the Jints caught the last train for the Coast in 1957. There have been close calls (both teams making the Playoffs) in 1997, 2000, 2002, 2003, 2010 and 2012. But, with the exception of Willie Mays, there were few connections to the Polo Grounds years, so this one didn't mean as much.

20. 1939. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Cincinnati Reds. Losing Gehrig early in the season didn't seem to stop the Yankees. Indeed, it seemed to motivate them: They had never before won a Pennant with neither Ruth nor Gehrig, and they seemed to want to make a statement. They did, becoming the 1st team ever to win 4 straight World Series. To this day, no other franchise has even done 3, except the 1972-74 A's.

Bill Dickey, Gehrig's best friend on the team, became the unofficial Captain. DiMaggio won his 1st batting title (.381) and his 1st MVP, while Charlie Keller batted .334. Between them, DiMaggio, Dickey, Joe Gordon and George Selkirk drove in 443 runs. The Reds were a good team, winning the Series over Detroit the next year, but, this time, the Yankees swept them. (This would be reversed in 1976-77, with the Yankees getting swept by the Reds before beating someone else the next year.)

Book about this season:  A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939, by Richard J. Tofel, published in 2003. So much has been made of the Yankee titlists of 1927, 1941, 1961, 1977-78 and 1996-2000, that the 1936-39 Dynasty kind of gets lost in the historical shuffle. With this book, Tofel wanted to make the point that the 1939 team, the one in which DiMaggio took over the team headlines and (to use the phrase of Nuke LaLoosh in Bull Durham) announced his presence with authority, was the real beginning of "the lordly Yankees."

19. 1947. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. This was the last gasp of the Dodgers that won the National League Pennant in 1941, and nearly won them in '42 and '46. It was the rookie season of Jackie Robinson, Duke Snider and Ralph Branca -- the last survivor of this team, he won 21 games at age 21, so he should be remembered for more than 1 pitch he threw to Bobby Thomson 4 years later -- but it was still the team of Pete Reiser, Dixie Walker, Cookie Lavagetto and Joe Hatten. The other "Boys of Summer" were yet to come.

Likewise, this was the 1st of the 2 seasons that Bucky Harris managed the Yankees, but it was still Joe McCarthy's team, the team that had won in 7 Pennants in 8 years from 1936 to 1943. Harris would manage them to a close 3rd place in '48, and was fired. Casey Stengel was hired, and, while Yogi Berra, Vic Raschi and Allie Reynolds were already there in '47, '49 was when McCarthy's Yankees began to get phased out: DiMaggio, Keller, Tommy Henrich, Spud Chandler. (The McCarthy guys, including Phil Rizzuto, who hung on until 1956, never liked Stengel much.)

The Series was dramatic, and DiMaggio would call it "the most exciting ever." It was heightened by Robinson's presence and the dramatic moments of Lavagetto breaking up Bill Bevens' no-hitter on the last play in Game 4 and Al Giofriddo's catch robbing DiMaggio in Game 6. But the season was not: There was no Division Series or LCS in those days, and a 19-game winning streak, then tied with the 1906 White Sox for the longest in AL history (until the 2002 A's won 20 straight), removed all suspense from the AL race.

Book about this season: Electric October: Seven World Series Games, Six Lives, Five Minutes of Fame That Lasted Forever, by Kevin Cook, 2007. The title refers to the fact that this was the 1st World Series to be broadcast on television, by NBC. The 6 lives were those of the opposing managers, the Yankees' Harris and the Dodgers' Burt Shotton; pitching almost-hero Bevens; hitting hero Lavagetto; fielding hero Gionfriddo; and Yankee 2nd baseman George "Snuffy" Stirnweiss, who had won the AL batting title in 1945, but heard criticism that he had become a baseball hero only because of World War II's manpower drain, and proved otherwise.

18. 1943. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the St. Louis Cardinals. With World War II on, and the outcome by no means certain, this title isn't particularly cherished. But it was revenge for the preceding season.

17. 1951. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the New York Giants. After the Bobby Thomson Game, even winning would have been anticlimactic for the Jints. And they had their chances, going up 2-1. But Game 4 featured DiMaggio's last home run and strong pitching by Reynolds, and Game 5 featured a grand slam by Gil McDougald and brilliant pitching by Eddie Lopat. Game 6 was tough, but the Yankees finished it off, and DiMaggio retired.

16. 1952. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. The 1st title without DiMaggio, with Rizzuto and Berra the veteran presences (although Yogi was only 27) and Mantle the 20-year-old budding star. This season had a tough Pennant race with Cleveland, and possibly the best World Series ever, with the Yankees needing to win Games 6 and 7 at Ebbets Field to take the title, and they did.

15. 1958. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Milwaukee Braves. Bob Turley became the 1st Yankee to win the Cy Young Award, and the Yanks came from 3 games to 1 down (it had only been done once before) to gain revenge over the Braves for 1957.

14. 1978. Won the AL East, won the ALCS over the Kansas City Royals, won the World Series over the Los Angeles Dodgers. Although this title didn't mean as much to the New York Tri-State Area as the previous year's did, it is, in many ways, the quintessential Yankee story.

Once again, there were intrasquad feuds. There was an injury crisis that put the Yankees 14 games behind Boston on July 20. And manager Billy Martin finally pushed his luck too far, resulting in his resignation one step ahead of George Steinbrenner's law. His replacement, Bob Lemon, calmed everybody down, and they surged, with the "Boston Massacre" series at Fenway Park in early September bringing them from 4 games back to a tie with the Red Sox.

It wasn't over, of course. The teams ended up tied, and home runs by Bucky Dent and Reggie Jackson gave the Yankees victory in the Playoff. They once again beat the Royals and the Dodgers, although they needed to come from 2-0 down to win the World Series.

Book about this season: October Men: Reggie Jackson, George Steinbrenner, Billy Martin, and the Yankees' Miraculous Finish in 1978. Roger Kahn, former New York Herald Tribune baseball writer and author of the Brooklyn Dodger memoir The Boys of Summer, published this book in 2003, on the 25th Anniversary.

13. 1956. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Mickey Mantle batted .353, hit 52 home runs, and had 130 runs batted in. Not only did he join Lou Gehrig as the only Yankees ever to win the Triple Crown, but he remains the last player to have led both Leagues in all 3 categories.

Then came the World Series, and the perfect game by Don Larsen in Game 5, followed by the 9-0 barrage over the Dodgers at Ebbets Field, including a shutout by Johnny Kucks. It was revenge for 1955, and the last Subway Series except for 2000. The season's association with Mantle's Triple Crown and Larsen producing the greatest single-game pitching performance ever is what makes this Yankee season iconic.

Book about this season: My Favorite Summer 1956, by Mickey Mantle as told to Phil Pepe. I realize that the Mick was frequently what they call an unreliable narrator, and this was published in 1991, before he quit drinking. Between quitting and it having fully caught up with him, in 1994, Mickey published one last memoir, about his 12 Pennant-winning seasons, All My Octobers. Larsen wrote a memoir as well: The Perfect Yankee: The Incredible Story of the Greatest Miracle in Baseball History, published in 1996.

12. 1949. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. One of the most-discussed Yankee Pennant races, taking Boston down to the wire, including Joe DiMaggio being out until late June, then coming back with a vengeance. The Series was a little anticlimactic, but it was still a Subway Series.

Book about this season: Summer of '49, by David Halberstam, 1989. Most of the Yankees and Red Sox from this season were still alive, and Halberstam was able to interview most of them, but he didn't get to talk to Joe, only to his brother, Boston center field Dom DiMaggio, who would have been the greatest athlete in almost any other family.

11. 1941. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. On May 15, the Yankees were a game under .500, in 4th place, 6 1/2 games out of 1st. On July 16, the Yankees were 28 games over .500, in 1st place by 6 games. In between, they played 56 games, winning 41, and DiMaggio had gotten a hit in all 56. The Yankees clinched on September 3, the earliest Pennant-clinching in AL history.

The Dodgers clinched their Pennant on September 25, and both the players and their fans were chirping about how they were going to beat the Yankees and take over New York. Sound familiar? The Yankees ended up beating them in 5 games, clinching on their field. Yeah, that sounds like 2000 as well.

Books about this season, and about DiMaggio's streak in general, a common. But Baseball and Other Matters in 1941, Robert Creamer's 2000 book (originally titled Baseball in '41), remains the definitive tale of the '41 Yanks, the streak, Ted Williams' .406 season, the Dodgers winning their 1st Pennant in 21 years, and the way baseball helped people get through the last year of the Great Depression, the last year without having to think about America being at war..

10. 1936. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the New York Giants. The Yankees had won only 1 Pennant in 8 years, but ran away with this Pennant. (To be fair, the main reason the Detroit Tigers, winners of the 2 previous Pennants, finished 19 1/2 games back is that Hank Greenberg suffered an early injury.)

There were 5 regulars with at least 107 RBIs, including Lou Gehrig topping out at 152, plus 49 home runs. There were 6 regulars batting at least .300, led by Bill Dickey at .362 and Gehrig at .354. And there was one of the greatest rookie seasons ever, by Joe DiMaggi: .323, 29 homers and 125 RBIs, despite missing April with an injury.

It was the fact that they beat the Giants that really shook things up: The Jints had won the Series in 1933. But this was the Yankees' 5th, tying them with the Giants, Red Sox and A's for the most all-time. They have never trailed again, as this was the start of 4 straight titles. What's more, it made the Yankees, definitively, New York's greatest baseball team, something they would remain, depending on how you define that, either until this day or until 1969 when the Mets won their 1st title.

Book about the dynasty that this season started: Yankees 1936-39, Baseball's Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era, by Stanley Cohen, published in 2018.

9. 2009. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Minnesota Twins, won the ALCS over the Los Angeles Angels, won the World Series over the Philadelphia Phillies. This was the official handoff of control from the dying George Steinbrenner to his son Hal. This was the opening of George's dream, the new Yankee Stadium. And this was the Year of the Walkoffs -- making it also, thanks to new pitching acquisition A.J. Burnett, the Year of Pie.

It was the Yankee debut of Burnett, pitcher CC Sabathia, 1st baseman Mark Teixeira and right fielder Nick Swisher. It was a year of (temporary) redemption for Alex Rodriguez. And it was the year Derek Jeter became the 1st Yankee ever to be named Sports Illustrated magazine's Sportsperson of the Year.

Winning the Division by sweeping the Red Sox, especially after failing to win it the preceding 2 years and the Sox' tainted 2004 and 2007 titles, was nice. Beating the Angels in the Playoffs, after the other way around happened in 2002 and 2005, was good. Defeating the Phillies, the defending World Champions, was impressive. The fact that we won Games 2 and 6 by defeating former Sox nemesis Pedro Martinez made it sweeter. And what a clinching game, and what a Yankee farewell, for Hideki Matsui in Game 6.

It was the Yankees' 40th Pennant and 27th World Championship. In each case, it remains their most recent. It was the 5th World Series win for Jeter, Mariano Rivera and Andy Pettitte, and the 4th (he was barely there for the 1996 title) for Jorge Posada -- "The Core Four."

Book about this season: Mission 27: A New Boss, A New Ballpark, and One Last Ring for the Yankees' Core Four, by longtime Yankee beat writers Mark Feinsand of the MLB Network and Bryan Hoch of MLB.com, with a foreword by Swisher, published this year on the 10th Anniversary.

8. 1927. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Pittsburgh Pirates. The Yankees' 1st 4 Pennants (1921, '22, '23 and '26) were all close races. This was their 1st runaway win, featuring 110 regular-season wins, a total that has only been topped 4 times in MLB history. This was the team that became known as Murderers' Row and "The Greatest Team of All Time." That title is now disputed by many, but it set the standard for Yankee teams until 1961 -- 1998 at the latest.

Legend has it that Ruth, Gehrig and company put on such at show in batting practice before Game 1 at Forbes Field in Pittsburgh that the Pirates were completely intimidated and folded. But the players who lived long enough to be interviewed later by nostalgia merchants such as Lawrence Ritter denied that. The fact somewhat back that up, as both Game 1 and Game 4 were 1-run games, and none of the games was truly beyond doubt after 6 innings. Nevertheless, the Yankees did sweep the Series.

The most recent book about this team: Five O'Clock Lightning: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and the Greatest Baseball Team in History, The 1927 New York Yankees, by Harvey Frommer. The great travel writer was a big Yankee Fan, and published this book in 2007. The title refers to the fact that Yankee home games in those days started at 3:00, so a late winning hit would come at around 5:00.

7. 1953. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Brooklyn Dodgers. Aside from Mickey Mantle "inventing" "the tape-measure home run" with tremendous blasts in Washington, Philadelphia and St. Louis, all in the 1st 2 weeks of the season, this season wasn't especially memorable. There wasn't really a Pennant race, as the Yankees finished 8 1/2 games ahead of the Cleveland Indians.

But it was the capper of the only time in history a team won 5 straight World Series. Afterward, owners Dan Topping and Del Webb gave the players World Series rings with a 5 in them, and a single diamond inside the curve of the 5. Whitey Ford, who came back that season after 2 years in the U.S. Army for the Korean War, says it's his favorite World Series ring.

Book about the dynasty that this season concluded: The October Twelve: Five Years of Yankee Glory 1949-1953, by Phil Rizzuto. In this book, published in 1994, the year he was finally, rightfully, elected to the Baseball Hall of Fame, the Scooter focused on 12 players who were on all 5 teams, including himself, Yogi Berra, and the starting pitching triad of Allie Reynolds, Eddie Lopat and Vic Raschi -- but not DiMaggio, who retired after 1951, and not Mantle, who arrived in '51. They're both in the book, to be sure, but not part of the focus.

6. 2000. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Oakland Athletics, won the ALCS over the Seattle Mariners, won the World Series over the New York Mets. At first, this didn't look like a special season. And when they lost 15 of 18 to close the regular season, nearly blowing the Division title in the process, it looked bad. They couldn't even really celebrate the clincher, since it came during a rain delay in a loss in Baltimore, when Tampa Bay lost.

But they got off the deck in time to squeeze out a tough 5-game win over the A's, then avenged the '95 ALDS loss by beating the M's in 6. Then came the 1st Subway Series since 1956. All 5 games were close, but the Yankees beat the Mets, and clinched at Shea Stadium. That made it special.

As Yankee Fan Paul Louis put it, the win meant that "The Yankees have scoreboard over the Mets for all time." He was right, especially when you consider the alternative: Given that there are a lot more Met fans we have to face, face-to-face, every day than Red Sox fans, losing the 2000 World Series would have been 10 times worse than what actually happened in 2004.

Book about this season: Next year, on April 7, 2020, in commemoration of the 20th Anniversary, a book by Jerry Beach will be published: The Subway Series: Baseball's Big Apple Battles And The Yankees-Mets 2000 World Series Classic. It will also look at earlier matchups between the Yankees, Mets, Giants and Dodgers, including regular-season Interleague games, regular-season intraleague Dodger-Giant games, the Dodgers' and Giants' 1960s returns to face the Mets, and the Spring Training and Mayor's Trophy Games between the Yankees and the Mets.

5. 1961. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the Cincinnati Reds. Why '61 over '27? It's not because the M&M Boys hit 115 home runs between them -- Mickey Mantle with 54 and Roger Maris with a new record of 61, breaking the 2-teammates record of 107 set in '27 by Ruth and Gehrig, and still standing.

It wasn't because of the pitching, although it's close, with Whitey Ford and Ralph Terry going 41-7 between them, and Luis Arroyo going 15-5 with what was then a record 29 saves. It wasn't even the defense: Not only were Mantle and Maris both very good fielders, but the "Wall-to-Wall Infield" of Moose Skowron, Bobby Richardson, Tony Kubek and Clete Boyer was probably the best-fielding infield the American League had yet seen. (Fans of the 1970s Baltimore Orioles would come to dispute that.)

The '27 Yankees were weakest at, ironically, the most important position: Catcher. In contrast, the '61 Yankees had Yogi Berra and Elston Howard trading off between catcher and left field, and Johnny Blanchard as a 3rd string catcher and 5th outfielder. Between them, they had 64 home runs and 192 RBIs.

The '27 Yankees won 110 games and outpaced the A's, a team on the rise but not yet there, by 19 games, as they won 91. The '61 Tigers won 101 games, and the Yankees won 109 to top them by 8, so they faced tougher competition. (The Orioles finished 3rd with 95 wins. Nobody outside Maryland remembers that.) The Yankees didn't sweep the Reds, but won the last 2 games (in Cincinnati, mind you) by a combined 20-5. The '27 Pirates won 94, the '61 Reds 93, so the level of competition there was about the same.

Book about this season: Sixty-One: The Team, the Record, the Men, by Kubek, with help from Cleveland sports columnist Terry Pluto. This was published in 1986, on the 25th Anniversary, so most of the players involved were still alive, except for, with some irony, Maris himself. (Howard had also died.)

In 2011, the 50th Anniversary, Phil Pepe published 1961*: The Inside Story of the Maris-Mantle Home Run Chase. By this point, most of the major players on the Yankees were dead (and Pepe himself has since died), but Pepe was able to add the context of the players who surpassed 61 home runs in a season (Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Barry Bonds), and the conditions under which they did (including their cheating and how they, as compared to Maris, were treated by the media).

4. 1977. Won the AL East, won the ALCS over the Kansas City Royals, won the World Series over the Los Angeles Dodgers. The Yankees were close to the AL East lead all season long, but Boston and Baltimore wouldn't give in. And everybody seemed to be arguing with somebody, especially manager Billy Martin and newly-acquired slugger Reggie Jackson with each other. Billy would bat Reggie 3rd in the lineup, 5th or 6th, but never 4th, in the traditional "cleanup" spot.

Then, on August 10, owner George Steinbrenner gave Billy an ultimatum: "Billy, Bat Reggie 4th, or you're fired." Billy did so, and the Yankees ended up winning the Division by 2 1/2 games. They came from 1-0 and 2-1 deficits to Kansas City to win in 5, and capped the season with Reggie's 3-homer performance in Game 6 of the World Series.

This was the team's 1st title in 15 years, and came at a time when the City really needed it, following a 20-year period that began with the Dodgers and Giants being moved out of town, and included a crime wave that seemed like it would never stop, systemic municipal racism, and the City's near-bankruptcy in 1975.

Book about this season: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Bronx Is Burning: 1977, Baseball, Politics, and the Battle for the Soul of a City, by Jonathan Mahler. The book also looked at the City's cultural status of the time, and the year's nasty Mayoral race, which saw incumbent Mayor Abe Beame go down, and, ultimately, Congressman Ed Koch triumph over eventual Governor Mario Cuomo. It was published in 2006, and the following year saw it made into an 8-hour ESPN miniseries, The Bronx Is Burning.

3. 1923. Won the Pennant, won the World Series over the New York Giants. This was the 2nd time an American League team had won 3 straight Pennants, following the 1907-09 Detroit Tigers. (The Philadelphia Athletics won 4 in 5 years, 1910-14. The Boston Red Sox won 4 in 7 years, 1912-18.) But it was the 1st time the Yankees won the World Series, beating the intracity Giants, and it was the year the original Yankee Stadium opened.

Book about this season: The House that Ruth Built: A New Stadium, the First Yankees Championship, and the Redemption of 1923, by Robert Weintraub, published in 2011. Both the team in general and Ruth in particular needed redemption after the '21 Series and the '22 season in general.

2. 1996. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Texas Rangers, won the ALCS over the Baltimore Orioles, won the World Series over the Atlanta Braves. The Yankees went into this season not having won the Division or the Pennant in 15 years, and not having won the World Series in 18 years. It was also the 1st season in 15 years without Don Mattingly in uniform, and, following the previous season's Playoff collapse, few people expected the Yankees to make a serious run at a 23rd World Championship.

They fooled everybody. Derek Jeter, forced by injury to become the starting shortstop at age 21, became the AL Rookie of the Year. Bernie Williams matured into a star in center field, and Andy Pettitte did so on the mound. David Cone came back from what was feared to be a career- maybe even life-threatening shoulder condition, and was his old self again. Former Mets Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden got their grooves back.

The bullpen pretty much made any game against the Yankees a 6-inning proposition: If you didn't have the lead in the 6th inning, you were not going to get one against the emerging Mariano Rivera in the 7th or the 8th, or against John Wetteland in the 9th.

Overseeing it all was Joe Torre, a Brooklyn native who had played 18 seasons in the major leagues, and managed 15, but had only reached the postseason once. Team owner George Steinbrenner, front office boss Gene Michael, and general manager Bob Watson showed faith in him, and he calmly guided the team to 92 wins, enough to win the Division.

They dropped Game 1 of the ALDS, but won the next 3. They won Game 1 of the ALCS in controversial fashion, then dropped Game 2, but took 3 straight in Baltimore to win the Pennant. Then they got embarrassed at home in Games 1 and 2 of the World Series, but took 3 straight in Atlanta and then the clincher at home.

Along the way, something amazing happened. The whole City seemed to unite behind them. Maybe it was the presence of former Mets Torre, Strawberry and Gooden. Maybe it was the lack of egos, the kind that the Yankees seemed to have in 1977 and '78. Maybe it was the appearance that the City had, thanks to President Bill Clinton's crime bill and Mayor Rudy Giuliani's crackdowns (the former made the latter viable), finally come out of a 30-year crime wave, and it was okay to feel good about New York again. But even people who would normally be Met fans seemed to stand with these Yankees. (That wouldn't last, of course.) But it made the '96 Yanks the most popular team in the franchise's history.

As broadcaster John Sterling -- whose closing call of "Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeeee Yankees win!" became familiar that season -- put it, "They're not a great team, but they're a team that plays great together. That would change in 1998.

Book about this season: Birth of a Dynasty: Behind the Pinstripes with the 1996 Yankees, by Joel Sherman and David Cone. Sherman covered them for the New York Post, and Cone gave the inside story.

1. 1998. Won the AL East, won the ALDS over the Texas Rangers, won the ALCS over the Cleveland Indians, won the World Series over the San Diego Padres. Losing the previous year's ALDS to the Indians stung, but not as much as it would have without the title the year before.

So the Yankees overcame a 1-4 start to go 114-48, setting a new AL record for wins in a season (though broken 3 years later). The season included a perfect game as part of an 18-4 season by David Wells, a 20-7 season by David Cone, the arrival of Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez, Mariano Rivera stamping himself as the greatest reliever in baseball, Bernie Williams winning the batting title at .339, the emergence of Jorge Posada, and a surprisingly good season from new 3rd base acquisition Scott Brosius.

The only real moment of doubt came when the Yankees fell 2-1 behind in the ALCS, but they didn't lose another game until the next April. The Rangers, the Indians and the Padres may have each had the most talented team in their respective franchises' histories, and the Yankees went 11-2 against them to take Title 24. The 1998 Yankees might not have been the greatest team in baseball history, but at 125-50 counting the postseason, they had the best season of any team in baseball history.

Book about this season: This Championship Season: The Incredible Story of the 1998 New York Yankees, by Howard Blatt. A "quickie book," published right after the season, and it reads like one: One reviewer said it seemed to be aimed at kids. But while other books have been written about the 1998 season -- including The Perfect Season: Why 1998 Was Baseball's Greatest Year, by catcher-turned-broadcaster Tim McCarver -- this seems to be the only one written about the Yankees in that season.