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The New York Yankees are a Professional Baseball Team based in the Borough of The Bronx , in New York City , New York . The Yankees are a member of the Eastern Division of Major League Baseball 's American League . From to the present, the Yankees have played in Yankee Stadium . The "Yankees" name originated as a variation of "American", after the team's league. This name is often shortened to "the Yanks". Their most prominently used Nickname is "the '''Bronx Bombers'''" or simply "the '''Bombers'''", a reference to their home and their prolific hitting. A less used nickname is "the '''Pinstripers'''", in reference to the iconic feature on their home uniforms. Critics often refer to the team and the organization as "the '''Evil Empire'''". A term from the team's tumultuous late 70's, "the '''Bronx Zoo'''", is also sometimes used by detractors, as well as "the '''Damn Yankees'''", after the Musical Of The Same Name . These have all been embraced by fans. One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Baltimore , Maryland in . Then the Baltimore Orioles (not to be confused with the current Baltimore Orioles who were the Milwaukee Brewers in 1901), the team moved to the New York City burough of Manhattan in , then becoming known as the '''New York Highlanders'''. It was not until that "Yankees" name became the team's sole name. In , the team moved across the Harlem River to the Bronx. The Yankees have been Major League Baseball's most successful franchise with 26 World Series championships and 39 American League Pennants . They are also the most successful franchise in North American professional sports history, passing the Montreal Canadiens ' 24 titles in . They are the only team represented in the National Baseball Hall Of Fame at every position. Notably, they have faced every winner of the National League pennant in the World Series except for the Houston Astros , who won their first pennant in . No other team has come close to this feat. FRANCHISE HISTORY See Also: History of the New York Yankees 1901-02: Origins At the end of the , Western League president Ban Johnson reorganized the league, adding teams in three Eastern cities, forming the American League . Plans to put a team in New York City were blocked by the National League 's New York Giants , who had enough political power to keep the AL out. Instead, a team was put in Baltimore, Maryland , a city which had been abandoned with the NL contracted from 12 to 8 teams in 1900. The team, known as the Baltimore Orioles, began playing in . In the middle of the season, the Giants gained controlling interest of the team and began raiding it for players, until the AL stepped in and took control of the team. In January , a "peace conference" was held between the two leagues to settle disputes and try to coexist. One of the results of the conference was that the NL agreed to let the "junior circuit" establish a franchise in New York. The Orioles' new owners, Frank J. Farrell and William S. Devery , found a ballpark location not blocked by the Giants, and Baltimore's team moved to New York. , home of the Highlanders]] 1903-12: The Highlanders The new ballpark for was constructed in northern Manhattan , at one of the island's highest points. Hilltop Park , (formally known as "American League Park") was much smaller than the Polo Grounds , the Giants' home just a few blocks away. The team came to be known as the New York Highlanders, a reference to the team's location and also to the noted British military unit The Gordon Highlanders , which fit as the team's president from 1903 to 1906 was Joseph Gordon. The most success the Highlanders had was finishing second in , and , 1904 being the closest they would come to winning the AL pennant. That year, they would lose the deciding game on the last day of the season to the Boston Americans , who would later become the Boston Red Sox. This had much historical significance, as the Highlanders' role in the pennant race caused the Giants to announce that they would not play the World Series against the AL pennant winner, 1904 being the last year no World Series was played until 90 years later in the Strike -truncated 1994 season. It would also be the last time Boston would beat New York in a pennant-deciding game for a full century ( 2004 ). 1913-22: New Owners, A New Home, and a New Name , home of the Yankees from 1913 to 1922]] The Polo Grounds burned down in and the Highlanders allowed the Giants to play in Hilltop Park during reconstruction. Relations between the two teams warmed, and the Highlanders would move into the newly rebuilt Polo Grounds in . Now playing on the Harlem River, a far cry from their high-altitude home, the name "Highlanders" no longer applied, and fell into disuse among the press. The media had also called the team the "Yankees" (a synonym for "Americans", the team being an American League franchise) for a number of years, so in 1913 the team became known exclusively as the New York Yankees. By the mid 1910's, owners Farrell and Devery had become estranged and were both in dire need of money. At the start of , they sold the team to Colonel Jacob Ruppert and Captain Tillinghast L'Hommedieu Huston . Ruppert inherited a brewery fortune, providing the Yankees with an owner that possessed deep pockets and a willingness to dig into them to produce a winning team. This would lead the team to more success and prestige than Ruppert could ever have envisioned. 1923-35: The Ruth and Gehrig era and the stadium In the years around 1920, the Yankees, the Red Sox, and the Chicago White Sox had a Detente . Their actions, which antagonized Ban Johnson garnered them the nickname the "Insurrectos". This detente paid off well for the Yankees as they enlarged the payroll. Most new players who would later contribute to the team's success came from the Red Sox, whose owner, Harry Frazee , was trading players to them for large sums of money. Other important newcomers in this period were manager Miller Huggins and general manager Ed Barrow . The hiring of Huggins by Ruppert would cause a break between the owners that eventually led to Ruppert buying Huston out in 1923. However, pitcher-turned-outfielder Babe Ruth was the most talented of all the acquisitions from Boston. The outcome of the trade would haunt the Red Sox for the next 86 years. They would not win a World Series after 1918 until 2004, often finding themselves eliminated from the hunt as a result of the success of the Yankees. This phenomenon eventually became known as the Curse Of The Bambino as the failure of the Red Sox and the success of the Yankees seemed almost supernatural, and all seemed to stem from that one trade. Ruth's multitude of home runs proved so popular that the Yankees began drawing more people than their landlords, the Giants. In , when the Yankees made their First World Series Appearance , which was against the Giants, the Yankees were told to move out of the Polo Grounds after the season. Giants manager John McGraw was said to have commented that the Yankees should "move to some out-of-the-way place, like Queens", but they instead broke ground for a new ballpark in the Bronx, right across the Harlem River from the Polo Grounds. In 1922, the Yankees returned to the World Series again, facing a second defeat at the hands of the Giants. In , the Yankees moved to their new home, Yankee Stadium . It was the first triple-deck venue in baseball and seated an astounding 58,000. In the first game at Yankee Stadium, Babe Ruth hit a home run, which was fitting as it was his home runs and drawing power that paid for the stadium, giving it its nickname "The House That Ruth Built". At the end of the year, the Yanks faced the Giants for the third straight year in the World Series , and finally triumphed for their first championship. Prior to that point, the Giants had been the city's iconic or dominant team. From 1923 onward, the Yankees would assume that role, and the Giants would eventually transfer out of the city. |
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