E It’s October again in New York, for many the most beautiful month of the year. The leaves in Central Park become colorful, the air is mild and clear, and people enjoy in sidewalk cafés the last beautiful days of the year. But especially baseball fans not only have the happy lines of the jazz classic “Autumn in New York” in their ears, but also the sad ones. One hums not only “why does it seem so inviting” – why does it feel so inviting? There are also gloomier words going through the mind like: “Autumn in New York is often mingled with pain. Dreamers with empty hands.”
Dreamers with empty hands, that was in last October the New York Yankees after the fifth game of the World Series against the Los Angeles Dodgers. After a complete, inexplicable collapse of the team around superstar Aaron Judge in the fifth inning, the Yankees’ dream of finally bringing the first long-awaited title back to the Bronx since 2009 was dashed.
It took a long time for the most successful team in the history of baseball to digest that day. Some believe the trauma has not yet been processed. For the Yankees are on the brink of repeating last year’s debacle. After two crushing losses to the Toronto Blue Jays, the Yankees stand only one game away from elimination in the American League Championship Series. The Yankee title dreams seem to be bursting this time before the World Series has even begun.
To grasp what this 16-year drought means for the Yankees, one must imagine FC Bayern Munich not winning a title for 16 years. In 1921 the Yankees won the championship for the first time with the legendary Babe Ruth. Since then the Yankees have brought the trophy home 27 times. They have participated in the World Series 40 times.
Success Is Harder to Buy
Especially under the long-time owner George Steinbrenner, winning became a mandatory program. Steinbrenner did not spare a single dollar to buy stars. In 2001 he paid what was then a record sum of 189 million for Derek Jeter. And he did not hesitate to immediately fire unsuccessful managers. The Yankees changed managers 23 times between 1973 and 2010, until they finally found a winner with Joe Torre. Between 1996 and 2001 the Yankees won the World Series four times.
Under Steinbrenner’s son Hal, the run of success seems to be coming to an end. More than 3 billion dollars have been spent on player salaries since then – to no avail. The Yankees stay at the top consistently, but they do not achieve the big breakthrough. Experts believe that buying success has become harder. Rather, today data and analytics reign. For example, they have begun to analyze certain gestures and a certain facial expression of a pitcher to predict how he throws the ball.
Nevertheless, many New Yorkers fans blame Aaron Judge, the team’s current superstar, for the current lack of success. He is undoubtedly one of the best hitters in the league, but in the past year as in this year he seems far from his best in the important games. In the 2024 World Series, he also made crucial mistakes, just as in the current series against Seattle.
Judge says: “I always feel that it’s my fault when we don’t win.” Perhaps this pressure, combined with his 360-million-dollar contract, contributes to him staying below his potential. If it does not work out this year, people in New York will surely question whether they have relied on Judge for too long. To admit that perhaps the era of total dominance is no longer only in New York, but in baseball as a whole – Yankees fans have not yet reached that.
