4

 

Ahem. In case you weren't convinced by HAL and The Brain's abject failure to build a contender this off-season, here is proof positive that the coming campaign will be an out-and-out disaster. 

It's a "4" year.

Years ending in "4" are just one of two, numbered years that have never ended with a Yankees World Series triumph. In fact, right from the beginning of the franchise, 4 years have resulted in some of the absolute worst catastrophes in Yankees history.

To wit:

1904—The New York Highlanders/Yankees fight a season-long pennant race with the Boston Pilgrims/Red Sox right down to the final, long weekend of the season. 

It's supposed to end with 5 games at the Yanks' miserable, Hilltop Park...but the team's thoroughly corrupt owners, Big Bill Devery and Frank Farrell have rented the park out for a Columbia-Williams football game. The Yanks (or Highs) have to travel to Boston for a doubleheader, which they lose. 

Still, it all comes down to a Monday doubleheader, back in Washington Heights. The first game is started by "Happy Jack" Chesbro, pictured here, who has already won a modern-record, 41 games on the year. Chesbro, making his third start in four games, also hits a single and a triple, driving in a run. Still, thanks to 4 (there's that number again!) Yankee errors, the Sox tie the game at 2-2, and have the go-ahead run on third in the top of the ninth.

Chesbro throws what's called a wild pitch (though many felt his catcher should have had it). Yanks lose the pennant, 3-2, on 3 unearned runs. Despite a season in which he went 41-12, 1.82, with 48 complete games, Chesbro will have to spend his entire retirement on his Western Massachusetts farm, talking to reporters about how he "blew" the pennant. They didn't call him Happy Jack for nothing.

1914—Yanks are now playing in the Polo Grounds and owned by the colonels, Ruppert and Huston—but they still stink. Team finishes 70-84-3, in sixth place. Manager, "the [First] Peerless Leader," Frank Chance, the old Cub, walks off the club in disgust in September. The 23-year-old shortstop, Roger Peckinpaugh finishes off this bloody mess (get it?) of a season, as player-manager.  

Yanks hit all of 12 home runs on the year. They lead the AL in stolen bases, with 251, but run not wisely but too slow, getting caught 191 times, also first in the league.

1924—Babe Ruth wins his only batting title, and leads the AL in runs, homers, walks, OBP, and slugging, but Yanks still finish two games behind the Senators, who take their only World Series title. Lou Gehrig, who had hit .423 in a cup of coffee with the team the year before, is left up in New Haven all season, to "polish" his game. Gehrig hits .369, with 90 extra-base hits. Wally Pipp has another excellent season at first...but do you think it's possible Lou might've provided, oh, I dunno, a few key pinch-hits somewhere?

1934—The Babe's last season in New York. Gehrig wins the Triple Crown, but the Yanks finish 7 back of Detroit. The Tigers get another mondo season from the Bronx's Hank Greenberg, who was first spotted and offered a contract by NYY, but went to Motown because he figured he'd never get a chance behind The Iron Horse. Later, he played left in Detroit—which he found he quite liked. Woulda liked it in New York, too, I bet.

1944—The war years. A depleted Yankees team leads late into September, but goes 7-10 at the end, including a season-ending, five straight losses to the woeful St. Louis Browns, who take their only pennant. 1943's MVP, Spud Chandler (20-4, 1.64), had volunteered to pitch on days he's not working in a munitions plant, but Yanks had spurned Spud, saying they didn't take part-time ballplayers. 

1954—Yankees compile only 100-plus-win season under Casey Stengel...but still finish 8 behind the Indians, who in an unmatched, bottom-feeding frenzy, go a combined 75-13 against Boston, Baltimore, Philadelphia, and Washington, and finish with a then-AL-record, 111 wins.

1964—Yankees rally to win pennant and 99 games behind new skipper Yogi Berra, but lose heartbreaking World Series on terrible umpiring call, and Bobby Richardson's inexplicably awful play in the field. The Yanks cap off the season by making one of their most classless moves ever, firing Berra and replacing him with Johnny Keane. Some scientists feel that this alone may have permanently shifted the Yankees karma, or at least brought about the first, SeisMetsic Shift.

1974—Playing in Shea Stadium, a feisty, unheralded Yankees team makes a surprise September run when Boston collapses. In first place as late as Sept. 22, the Yanks play well to the end, but finish 2 out in the AL East, when a much more talented Baltimore team wins its last 9 straight.

1984—Yanks have two of the best players in baseball in Dave Winfield and Don Mattingly, who battle down to the last day of the season for the batting title. But thanks to little pitching—wha'? how can that be?—and gaping holes at other positions, the team finishes a distant third.

1994—Into August, an exciting young Yankees team is running away with the AL East and has the best record in the league. The Yanks seem headed for a World Series showdown with Pedro Martinez's Red Sox—but a players' strike stops the season dead on August 11th.

2004—Too soon.

2014—Miraculously, Joe Girardi drags this mangy dog of a team to a winning record and a second-place finish in the AL East, despite it being outscored by 31 runs. Highlight of the season is Derek Jeter driving in the winning run in his very last, Yankee Stadium plate appearance. Three days later, Jeter will single in another run in his very last at-bat, up in Fenway. 

Pretty grisly, huh? Well, that's not all the bad news. The only other numbered year in which the Yankees have failed to win a world championship? That's right: the "5" year.