Epic Yankees Flameout Seasons, Chapter 2

As we prepare for our beatdown in the Hub, and Giancarlo Stanton asks his teammates, "What is this thing they call the slider?" I attempt to assuage the JuJu gods with another offering:

Season number two: 1940.

Yankees 88-66, 3rd in an 8-team league.

This is the closest season in our series to not really being a flameout, as despite finishing third the Bombers ended up only two games behind pennant-winning Detroit. But so much more was expected...

Background:

The Yankees had just taken the last four World Series in a row, averaging over 102 wins a year, and losing only 3 of 19 Series games. They would go on to win the next three straight pennants and two more World Series, for 6 in 8 years, all-in-all the most overpowering stretch in Yankees history.

The team was so dominant that the American League had even passed a rule after 1939 forbidding anyone to trade with the previous year's champion—something especially stupid considering the fact that this Yankees team had been built almost entirely through the farm system.

What happened:

Injuries, slumps, a timid front office—and sheer bad luck.

The Yankees had had far and away the deepest pitching the league—but this year, they were devastated by sore soup bones.

Elsewhere, fill-in Babe Dahlgren was a far cry from the late, lamented Lou Gehrig at first, Bill Dickey and Red Rolfe had two of their worst seasons, and shortstop Frankie Crosetti's average slipped to an appalling .194.

So what was to be done?

Well, the Yanks' top farm teams, the Newark Bears and the Kansas City Blues, were—as always—full of major-league-ready talent, rarin' to go. This included Tommy Holmes, Johnny Lindell, Tiny Bonham, Hank Borowy, Snuffy Stirnweiss, Jerry Priddy, Aaron Robinson, Johnny Sturm—and above all, a 22-year-old shortstop at KC who hit .347 and fielded superbly. His name was Phil Rizzuto.

For once, though, the Yankees brainstrust of Ed Barrow and George Weiss spit the bit. They let most of that talent—including Rizzuto—stay where it was, relying on the fading veterans instead.

The bad luck? Well, who the Yankees could have had. The Bronx's own Hank Greenberg, for one, who had been spotted years ago by the Yanks but decided he would never get to start behind Gehrig. (Though in driving the Tigers to the pennant, Hank found that he loved playing the outfield.)

Another was a young, Mexican-American kid from San Diego, whose mother—a soldier in the Salvation Army—thought New York was too big and bad a place for her boy. Ted Williams went to Boston instead. And then there was George McQuinn, and Billy Werber...

Aw, forget it! It was just one of those years.

Bright spots:

Joe DiMaggio won his second straight batting title, though he, too, was stung by the injury bug, missing 22 games. Flash Gordon had another great year, and Charlie Keller and Tommy Henrich were up to their usual gold standard. Marius Russo and Tiny Bonham emerged as first-class pitchers.

The Yanks also had yet another of those curious characters who could never stick as a starter despite an ability to hit everywhere he went (see Benny Paschal, Chapter 1). Buster Mills, real name Colonel Buster Mills, after a relative who had served in the Civil War, and called"Bus," hit .397 in 34 games...but could not crack the starting outfield of DiMag, Old Reliable, King Kong Keller, and Twinkletoes Selkirk.

What they did next:

They brought up the kids, and went back to punching out the rest of the league, winning the World Series again in 1941. They were really only stopped by World War II, which was a tough thing not to be stopped by.