The Yankees won their first American League pennant in 1921, losing the World Series to the New York Giants. The same thing happened in 1922 but then in 1923 the Yankees won their first World Championship. In 1926, the Cardinals beat the Yankees in the Series, but from 1927 through 1953, the Yankees won fifteen of the sixteen World Series in which they played. The Yankees teams were truly dominant from 1936 until 1953, the era during which they won twelve World Championships in eighteen years. The only World Series loss occurred to the 1942 Cardinals.
Yankees dominance ended, ironically, when the team won 103 games in 1954, only to finish a DISTANT eight games behind the record setting 111 wins of the Indians. Just as today, finishing second was unacceptable for the Yankees of the 1950s. Those who criticize the way today's Yankees management operates may be right but It was not very different in the past. In an attempt to improve a team that won more games than any of the teams that won five straight World Championships, Yankees' general manager George Weiss made the biggest trade in baseball history. The Yankees acquired the contracts of Baltimore Orioles pitchers Bob Turley and Don Larsen, shortstop Billy Hunter and others in return for the contracts of pitchers Harry Byrd and Jim McDonald, catchers Gus Triandos and Hal Smith, outfielder Gene Woodling, shortstop Willie Miranda and others. Eighteen players changed teams.
Turley and Larsen were the key players in the trade. They helped the Yankees win the 1956 and 1958 World Series but few remember that it was Hal Smith, one of the catchers sent to Baltimore who hit the rarely mentioned but pivotal eighth inning home run for the 1960 Pirates that turned a 7-6 Yankees lead into a 9-7 deficit in Game 7 of the World Series.
