The history of the New York Yankees Major League Baseball (MLB) team spans more than a century. Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery bought the rights to an American League (AL) club in New York City after the 1902 season. The team, which became known as the Yankees in 1913, rarely contended for the AL championship before the acquisition of outfielder Babe Ruth after the 1919 season. With Ruth in the lineup, the Yankees won their first AL title in 1921, followed by their first World Series championship in 1923. Ruth and first baseman Lou Gehrig were part of the team's Murderers' Row lineup, which led the Yankees to a then-AL record 110 wins and a Series championship in 1927 under Miller Huggins. They repeated as World Series winners in 1928, and their next title came under manager Joe McCarthy in 1932.
The Yankees won the World Series every year from 1936 to 1939 with a team that featured Gehrig and outfielder Joe DiMaggio, who recorded a record hitting streak during New York's 1941 championship season. New York set a major league record by winning five consecutive championships from 1949 to 1953, and appeared in the World Series nine times from 1955 to 1964. Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford were among the players fielded by the Yankees during the era. After the 1964 season, a lack of effective replacements for aging players caused the franchise to decline on the field, and the team became a money-loser for owners CBS while playing in an aging stadium.
George Steinbrenner bought the club in 1973 and regularly invested in new talent, using free agency to acquire top players. Yankee Stadium was renovated and reopened in 1976 as the home of a more competitive Yankees team. Despite clubhouse disputes, the team reached the World Series four times between 1976 and 1981 and claimed the championship in 1977 and 1978. New York continued to pursue their strategy of signing free agents into the 1980s, but with less success, and the team eventually sank into mediocrity after 1981. In the early 1990s, the team began to improve as their roster was rebuilt around young players from their minor league system, including Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera. After earning a playoff berth in 1995, the Yankees won four of the next five World Series, and the 1998–2000 teams were the last in MLB to win three straight Series titles.
As the 2000s progressed, the Yankees' rivalry with the Boston Red Sox increased in intensity as the sides met multiple times in the American League Championship Series (ALCS), trading victories in 2003 and 2004. New York regularly reached the postseason, but were often defeated in the first two rounds. In 2009, the Yankees opened a new Yankee Stadium and won the World Series for the 27th time in team history, an MLB record. The Yankees lost in the ALCS five times from 2010 to 2022, before winning their 41st AL championship in 2024.
Pre-World War II
Background: 1901–1902 Baltimore Orioles
At the end of the 1900 baseball season, the Western League was positioned by its president, Ban Johnson, as a new major league that would compete with the established National League (NL). The league was reorganized and renamed the American League (AL), and eight cities fielded teams in the 1901 season. A Baltimore team had played in the NL through the 1899 season, after which the club was shut down by the league. Baltimore was one of three former NL cities where the AL placed teams in an effort to reach underserved fans. The new Orioles' first manager was John McGraw, who had held the same position for the previous Baltimore team in 1899; McGraw also held an ownership stake.
During the 1901 season, there were numerous disputes between Johnson and McGraw over disciplinary issues, which continued into the following year. Rumors began to spread that Johnson was interested in relocating the team to New York City, in an attempt to compete directly with the NL. McGraw left the Orioles and joined the New York Giants as their manager; he transferred his interest in the Baltimore team to the Giants as part of the deal. Several Orioles—including Roger Bresnahan and Joe McGinnity—joined the Giants after McGraw's departure, and the Giants gained a majority of the Orioles' stock. The league managed to take back control of the team from the Giants; after the Orioles forfeited a game because they lacked enough active players, Johnson ordered that the team be "restocked with players essentially given away by the other teams in order to play out the schedule", according to author Marty Appel.
The AL and NL signed an agreement after the 1902 season that ended the leagues' battles for players, which had led to increasing salaries. Johnson sought the right to locate an AL team in New York City, which was granted as part of the leagues' peace agreement. His intention was for the team to play in Manhattan, but the idea was opposed by Giants owner John T. Brush and former owner Andrew Freedman, who were connected to the city's Tammany Hall political organization. They blocked several potential stadium locations, before a pair of Tammany Hall politicians, Frank J. Farrell and William Stephen Devery, purchased the New York franchise in the AL. The pair paid for the team. This was the last change in the lineup of MLB teams for half a century.
It is not clear whether Farrell and Devery purchased the remains of the Orioles and moved them to New York, or if they received an expansion franchise. According to Appel, the Orioles seasons were included in Yankees history by many historians. Baseball-Reference.com included the 1901 and 1902 Orioles in its statistics for the Yankees until 2014, when it decided to separate the two years from the subsequent New York–based seasons. Official MLB historian John Thorn supported the change, citing the new ownership, high roster turnover, and AL takeover of the Orioles. The Yankees do not count the Orioles years as part of their history.
1903–1912: Early years
The ballpark for the New York team was constructed between 165th and 168th Streets, on Broadway in Manhattan. Formally known as American League Park, it was nicknamed Hilltop Park because of its relatively high elevation. The team did not have an official nickname; it was often called the New York Americans in reference to the AL. Another common nickname for the club was the Highlanders, a play on the last name of the team's president, Joe Gordon, and the British military unit, the Gordon Highlanders; Gordon was of Scottish descent. The team acquired players such as outfielder Willie Keeler and pitcher Jack Chesbro. The player-manager was Clark Griffith, obtained from the Chicago White Sox. On April 22, 1903, the Highlanders began their season with a 3–1 loss to the Washington Senators; eight days later, they won their first game in Hilltop Park, defeating the Senators 6–2. New York fell out of contention for the AL pennant in May, falling to seventh place after playing games away from Hilltop Park for a 24-day period while construction on the stadium concluded. With a final record of 72–62 after wins in 19 of 29 games played in September, New York finished in fourth.
Chesbro won 41 games in New York's 1904 season, still an AL record. New York contended for the AL pennant with the Boston Americans (later nicknamed the Red Sox); Johnson aided New York by helping the team acquire multiple players in trades, including Boston's Patsy Dougherty. Boston and New York faced each other in a season-ending five-game series that decided the pennant winner, and was played from October 7–10. Boston won two of the first three games, which meant that New York needed to win the two contests scheduled on October 10 to win the AL title. With the score of the first game tied 2–2 in the ninth inning, Chesbro threw a wild pitch that allowed a runner on third base to score, giving Boston a 3–2 victory that clinched the AL pennant; New York won the now-meaningless second game.
New York's performance declined in 1905, as numerous pitchers dealt with arm injuries and conditioning issues. After losing 18 of 25 games in May, the Highlanders ended the season in sixth. In its 1906 season, New York again contended for the AL championship. With 13 games left, the team held a one-game lead over the White Sox, but finished in second place three games behind Chicago. According to Appel, "What would follow would be a string of mediocre to bad seasons and not a very good attraction for baseball-crazed New York fans." Over the next three years, New York did not finish higher than fifth, and there were multiple managerial changes in the period.
New York had a second-place finish in 1910, but did not seriously contend for the pennant. Manager George Stallings and first baseman Hal Chase, the team captain, clashed towards the end of the season; facing opposition from Ban Johnson, who wanted him to resign as manager, Stallings left the position. Chase managed New York's last 14 games. The following season, New York had a sixth-place finish. Early in the season, New York allowed the Giants to play in Hilltop Park after the Giants' stadium, the Polo Grounds, burned down; the arrangement lasted until June 28, when the rebuilt Polo Grounds opened. Chase resigned as manager before New York's 1912 season; Harry Wolverton accepted the position. That year, New York had a last-place finish with a record of 50–102, the winning percentage of .329 the lowest-ever for the club.
After their first couple of seasons in New York City, team ownership infrequently invested in new players. The ownership group of Farrell and Devery spent their money on personal pursuits such as gambling, leaving them with little to put into the team. New York's star player, Chase, consorted frequently with gamblers. Author Jim Reisler dubbed him "the most crooked player to ever play the game" because of reports that he took part in game fixing. The club also had difficulty drawing fans to Hilltop Park. Appel wrote that "maybe the best thing you could say about the ballpark was that it never burned down." By the end of the 1912 season, Farrell was searching for a site to build a new stadium on.
1913–1920: New ownership and acquisition of Babe Ruth
New York started playing home games at the Polo Grounds in 1913 as tenants of the Giants. Before the 1913 season, the team gained an official nickname for the first time. Either "Yankees" or "Yanks" had been used frequently since 1904 in newspapers such as the New York Evening Journal, since "Highlanders" was hard to fit in headlines. Such unofficial nicknames were common during that era, but thereafter the official name took hold—the New York Yankees.