You love baseball. Tim Kurkjian loves baseball. So while we await its return, every day we'll provide you with a story or two tied to this date in baseball history.
ON THIS DATE IN 1913, they became the Damn Yankees.
They were the New York Highlanders until 1913 when, on April 10, they played their first game under their new name -- the New York Yankees. They since have become the greatest, most famous team in the history of the four major professional sports in North America.
The Yankees have won 27 world championships, 16 more than any other major league team. From 1923 to 1962, they won 20 world championships. From 1936 to 1953, they won 12. The 1927 Yankees are generally considered the greatest team of all time; they went 110-44, won the American League by 19 games, swept the Pirates in the World Series and outscored their opponents by 371 runs.
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That isn't the largest run differential in history. The 1939 Yankees outscored their opponents by a staggering 411 runs. The Yankees went 39 consecutive seasons (1926-64) with a winning record. The next-longest by any team is 27, by the current Yankees. And, after that, the next longest is only 18 by the Orioles (1968-85).
These are, in my mind, the seven greatest Yankees of all time: Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Mickey Mantle, Joe DiMaggio, Yogi Berra, Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. That's the greatest front seven of any team, and they are all, in their own way, revered figures.
And the Yankees had Mickey Rivers, who once said, "[Owner] George [Steinbrenner], me and [manager] Billy [Martin], we're two of a kind.'' And Mickey, who once said a teammate was so ugly, "your clothes would wrinkle when he walked by you.'' And Mickey, who said it was so cold playing center field one night at Milwaukee's County Stadium, "Man, the wind was blowing 63 degrees. I felt like the Lost Mohican out there.''
Every great drama also must have a villain, and the Yankees have played the Evil Empire role very well since 1913; if you don't love them, you hate them. But there is no denying their impact. Every Yankee player sees this famous quote from DiMaggio on his way from the Yankee clubhouse to the field: "I want to thank the Good Lord for making me a Yankee."
Other baseball notes from April 10
In 1959, on Opening Day, Hall of Famer Nellie Fox had five hits, including a game-winning home run in the 14th inning. In the previous season, he had no homers in 623 at-bats. Nearly 30 years later, Lee Lacy, a good dude who was born on this date in 1948, asked me, "Did Nellie Fox hit 500 homers?" I said, "That was Jimmie Foxx.'' Nellie hit 35.
In 1980, the Brewers' Sixto Lezcano became the first player to hit a grand slam on two different Opening Days. Years later, when Antonio Alfonseca (he had six fingers on each hand, six toes on each foot) pitched for the Expos, Richard Griffin, the Expos' hilarious PR director, wrote in the media guide that Alfonseca's favorite player was ... Sixto Lezcano.
In 2015, the Yankees beat the Red Sox in 19 innings. The game ended at 2:13 a.m. The losing pitcher was Steven Wright, reminding us that comedian Steven Wright said he once went to an "Open 24 Hours'' store only to find it closed. He asked the store proprietor, "I thought you were open 24 hours?'' The proprietor said, "Yes, but not in a row.''
In 1982, on Opening Day, Rangers center fielder George Wright went 3-for-4 with a home run against the Indians. I asked him after the game if he'd had a good time. "Yeah,'' he said, "I've never been to a major league game before.'' The first game he ever attended, he got three hits.