Damn Yankees by Edward Drobinski - HTML preview

Damn Yankees

Page 72

1953 Regular Season

The sportswriters had picked other teams to win the pennant in Stengel's first four years as Yankee manager. In 1953 they picked the Yankees, and this time they were proven correct. An 18 game winning streak in June placed them well in front, and they coasted to their fifth consecutive league championship, the first time a team had won five straight pennants. Stengel, having taken the managerial record for consecutive pennants from McGraw, 1921–1924, and McCarthy, 1936–1939, would say; "You know, John McGraw was a great man in New York and he won a lot of

pennants. But Stengel is in town now, and he's won a lot of pennants too."

For half of a century, the geographical landscape of major

league baseball stood still. Not since the replacement of the Baltimore Orioles with a New York team in 1903 had any big league franchise relocated, perished or been born. The same 16 teams representing the same 10 cities, all from the northeast quadrant of America, consistently went about their business with one another. Change, expansion or contraction was deemed unnecessary as a comfortable status quo was maintained.

But a fast track of progress in postwar America began to strain baseball’s comfort zone. Air travel, television, the automobile