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1923 -1935: The First New York Yankees Golden Era
There are few teams as legendary in the annals of sports history as the New York Yankees of the Roaring ‘20s. The team that brought the world Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig not only set records left and right, they also fundamentally changed the game of baseball and became a bona fide cultural phenomenon.
For their first two decades or so, the Yankees were a decidedly lackluster ball club. They came close to earning the American League pennant only once (in 1904) but ended up finishing second in the league. While they drew a healthy number of eager sports fans to their games, the Yankees of that period trailed far behind their New York City rivals, the Giants, in both on-field success and popularity with the public. The Giants were still viewed as New York’s real baseball team and the Yankees, who were actually known popularly as the Highlanders until 1913, were the second–rate newcomers.
This all began to change dramatically when, in 1920, a young player named George Herman “Babe” Ruth was signed to the team. A rising star for the Boston Red Sox, he would go on to become, by most authorities, the most famous Yankee, if not the most famous baseball player, of all time. Ruth was joined on the Yankees roster in 1923 by another all-time great, Lou Gehrig. Together with a lineup of other legendary players, including Bob Meusel, Tony Lazzeri, Carl Mays, and Waite Hoyt, the Yankees become the single most dominant team in baseball during the 1920s and early 1930s.
Not only did the Yankees set a host of records and win the pennant an incredible six times from 1920 – 1930, but, lead by homerun phenomenon Babe Ruth, they dramatically shifted the focus of baseball. Ruth and the team’s other outstanding sluggers made hitting homeruns, which had previously been a relatively uncommon occurrence, a frequent and significant part of the game. Spectators found this hitting-centric form of baseball particularly exciting and the sport became even more popular as a result.
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