Yankees Earn Third Consecutive Walk-Off Victory
Johnny Damon’s 10th-inning home run gave the Yankees their third straight walk-off victory this afternoon. ESPN.com points out that this is the first time New York has done this since 1972.
Unfortunately that may not be the end of the parallels between these post-George Steinbrenner Yankees and the last pre-Steinbrenner iteration. The 1972 Yankees were a mediocre team (79-76, good for 4th place in the AL East), a decade removed from the last World Series championship of a legthy dynasty. They were also several years and near-complete roster turnover (and a new stadium) away from their next one; the 1976 pennant-winning team and 1977-78 World Series champs would retain only Thurman Munson, Roy White and Sparky Lyle from the 1972 team.
I guess we’ll have to wait for the next Ron Guidry to emerge from the Yankees’ farm system.
May 18th, 2009 at 12:33 am
One can only hope *this* Yankees team will also duplicate the 1972 Yankees finish of fourth place. The way the Blue Jays are playing… the Yankees (or Red Sox or Rays) might actually finish fourth - which I’m fairly confident *nobody* had coming into the season.
Now… the Blue Jays “haven’t played anybody”… fine. But they do have Roy Halladay, who’s excellent regardless of who they play. IIRC, Marcum and McGowan are coming back in a month or so, as well. Their offense seems to be clicking. The one concern may be the bullpen.
That said, I think it’s safe to ass-ume that Angelos’ Orioles are cellar dwellars again this year. Nice job, Peter - taking *that* once-proud franchise (indeed it used to be seen as *the* model organization) and running it straight into… er, under the ground.