New York Yankees pennant run remains on hold

Somewhere, there is a ten year old New York Yankees fan that has never seen his favorite team reach the World Series during his lifetime.

Over the New York Yankees long and illustrious history, there have been many high points. They have won 27 World Series titles and a total of 40 American League pennants. The Yankees have been an ongoing presence in the World Series, averaging an appearance nearly once every three years.

However, on Tuesday, the Yankees will be like the rest of us – sitting home and watching the games unfold. This has been the case every year this decade, marking the first time that the franchise has not made an appearance in the World Series during a specific decade for the first time in 100 years.

It is not as though the Yankees continually had great teams. In the mid 1960s, their aging roster began to decline, leading to a miserable decade before George Steinbrenner began to use free agency as a weapon. Of course, that insistence on spending in free agency led to the Yankees rough stretch in the late 1980s and early 1990s, but I digress…

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New York certainly had their opportunities this past decade. Over the last ten years, the Yankees have had seven postseason appearances, reaching the American League Championship Series four times. However, two of those defeats came at the hands, and bats, of the Astros.

Before then, one has to go all the way back to the early days of the franchise. Instead of the juggernaut that the Yankees have been, the team was a mainstay in the second division, with just five winning seasons from 1903 through 1919. As the legend goes, the Yankees fortunes changed when Babe Ruth came to town, turning the franchise into a powerhouse.

Chances are, the Yankees will be back in the World Series sooner rather than later. The fact that they even made it that far, considering the injuries to the likes of Giancarlo Stanton, Aaron Hicks, Luis Severino, Aaron Judge, and a host of others, is remarkable. All told, the Yankees had 54 different players appear in a game, as they essentially went through their entire AAA roster to find depth.

However, for the New York Yankees, none of that matters. It has been a decade since they have reached the World Series and added another pennant. And somewhere, there is a ten year old that has never experienced the joy of a World Series appearance.