The 10 Greatest Dynasties! Ever! Part I

So, in honor of the acquisition of Gerrit Cole by your New York Yankees AND the fact that Tom Brady's creaking Patriots have a big showdown today with an overmatched but plucky young Buffalo Bills team, it's time to start on our holiday list of...

The 10 Greatest North American Sports Dynasties!  Ever!

We'll leave the Honorable Mentions to the very end, so as not to give anything away.  And let us say right from the beginning that determining exactly when a dynasty begins and ends may seem a little arbitrary.  But that's sports—arbitrary!

Enough palaver.  Let's get started:

10.  Chicago Cubs, 1906-1910.  Yes, it's the Tinker-to-Evers-Chance Cubbies, with a crackerjack, deadball pitching staff headed by Mordecai "Three Finger" Brown (The other two fingers were lost in a reaper accident on the family farm.  Asked how he thought he'd do as a pitcher with the other two, Brown—who also had the nickname, "Miner"—replied, "I don't know.  I've never done it."), Ed Reulbach, and the wonderfully monikered Orval Overall.  The Cubs won four pennants and two World Series in the space of just five seasons.

More significantly, they ran up the all-time best, single-season record of any major-league team since 1900, going 116-36 .763 in 1906, AND the all-time best, five-year record of any major-league team since 1900, going 530-235 .693.  Beyond the record-setting, 1906 season, they also won 107 games in 1907, and 104 in both 1909—the one year they did NOT win the pennant—and 1910.

Ouch!  Sometimes you just have to tip your hat and call the Cubbies your daddy.

Why they're not ranked higher:  they only got into the 1908 World Series ahead of the Giants because of the single worst officiating call in all North American sports history, in the "Merkle's Boner" (don't ask) incident.

Also, they lost the 1906 Series to the Chicago White Sox, known as "The Hitless Wonders."  Hard to rank as the best dynasty ever when you lose to The Hitless Wonders.

What are the saddest of possible words?  And who was ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble?


9.  Boston Red Sox, 1912-1918.  Yes, there are a disturbing number of Boston teams on this list, which is to say, "any."

But it's impossible to overlook these Red Sox.  After winning one of the most thrilling World Series ever in 1912, behind one of the best pitching performances ever by Smoky Joe Wood (34-5, 1.91, and  3 more World Series wins), and Tris Speaker's .383 average in centerfield (and no, he did NOT win the batting title—not with Ty Cobb in the league), the Sox made over much of the team but barely lost a step, pummeling the Phillies, Dodgers, and Cubs in three more World Series.

Speaker, one of the greatest fielding centerfielders ever and a lifetime .345 hitter, was the connecting link, starring on the 1915 champions as well.  An arrogant, nasty racist who bet on ballgames and who was a member of the Ku Klux Klan—hey, he'd fit right in up in Boston today!—Speaker demanded to be traded after the 1915 season.

He got his wish, but the Red Sox already had a new superstar in place in 20-year-old Babe Ruth, who would set a World Series record with 29 2/3 consecutive scoreless innings as a pitcher, and then go on to transform the game.  He was already enough of a slugger to lead the AL in home runs in 1918.

The Sox also capitalized on the fact that Connie Mack, unable to compete with the Federal League, had begun dismantling his great Philadelphia Athletics champion.  The Sox plucked stars such as Stuffy McInnis, Jack Barry, and Herb Pennock from the dissolving A's (and got Sad Sam Jones in the Speaker trade).

But hey, that worm was about to turn...

Next time:  Numbers 8 & 7!!