Okay, so the other day, I was just kicking back, and this thought kinda just jumped into my brain: who really is the best New York Yankee of all time? No idea where it came from, just boom, there it was. It’s one of those questions, right?
And let me tell you, once you start down that rabbit hole, it’s a deep one. You immediately think of the big names. Babe Ruth, of course. Then your mind goes to Lou Gehrig. Then you got Joe DiMaggio, and then Mickey Mantle. Seriously, the list just keeps on rolling. And that’s not even touching guys from when I was growing up, like Derek Jeter or Mariano Rivera. It’s wild.
How Do You Even Pick?
I actually tried to get all scientific about it once. Thought I’d be clever. I started pulling up batting averages, home run counts, how many World Series rings they had, the whole nine yards. But honestly, it felt kinda pointless pretty quick. It’s not just about the numbers, is it? And how can you really stack up someone from the 1920s against someone from the 2000s? The game’s changed so much. It’s like trying to compare… I don’t know, a classic car to a spaceship. Both cool, but totally different things.
Plus, everyone’s got their personal favorite, and they’ll fight you tooth and nail for them. I remember my grandpa, he was a character. He’d argue with anyone that Yogi Berra was the top dog. Not just for his playing, which was amazing, but for all his sayings, you know? He’d always say, “You can observe a lot by watching,” and then he’d tell me he observed Yogi being the best. Hard to argue with that kind of passion, even if it wasn’t all stats-based.
What It Really Boils Down To For Me
Thinking about all this actually took me somewhere else. It stopped being about who had the most impressive Wikipedia page. Instead, I started remembering these afternoons with my own dad. We’d have a game on the TV, maybe an old black-and-white replay, and he’d start telling me stories about seeing Mickey Mantle play when he was a kid. He’d try to describe the sound of the bat, the way the crowd went nuts. He wasn’t trying to prove Mantle was the “best ever” with charts and graphs. He was sharing a piece of his childhood, a feeling.
I recall this one time, I was probably a teenager, trying to sound smart, rattling off some Babe Ruth stats I’d memorized. My dad just kind of smiled and said, “Yeah, the Babe was incredible. But you should have seen Mickey run those bases, even when his legs were all banged up. There was just something about him.”
And that’s pretty much where I’ve landed on this whole “best Yankee” debate. It’s not about digging through archives to find some definitive, objective champion. It’s more about what those players and those teams mean to you, personally. It’s the stories that get passed down, the memories you make watching the games.
- It’s arguing with your buddies over a couple of beers.
- It’s trying to explain to your own kids why a certain old-timer was such a legend.
- It’s that little jolt you get seeing a classic highlight.
So, who’s the absolute best? Man, I still don’t have a single name for you. But I do know that talking about it, thinking about all those amazing players, always brings a smile to my face. And that’s probably the most important part of it all, when you get right down to it.