I have been giving a lot of thought recently to the typical Yankees' fan retort of "27 championships." As a Mets fan, it gets old. I mean, the Yanks won their first World Series in 1921, long before my grandparents were even aware of what baseball was. I get it - the Yanks are an amazing franchise, but I think as a fan, you shouldn't be able to claim championships that you were not involved in (meaning of course for fans, that they were unable to cheer for). The Yankees have 7 titles since 1970 so I think the most any Yankees fan of my generation can claim is 7 - still, way more than the Mets, but not 27.
And really, it goes even further than that. From 1901 to 1960 their were 16 total teams in the league. Based on random chance, that equates to 4 titles, already more than the Mets have in their history. All the credit to the Yanks for winning 17 titles during this span, but really the game was sooo different back then. The biggest difference was the lack of free agency - once a players signed with a club, the essentially owned that player's rights for their career. There was also no draft which meant that the teams with the most money could pay top price for the best players. So if a team had good scouting and their young talent turned out to be amazing, then they were set for the next decade. I won't suggest that signing Mantle, DiMaggio, and Gehrig were all luck, but you know the Yanks were allowed to throw around more money than say the St Louis Browns. And trading for Babe Ruth? Not exactly dumb luck, but there is no way they could have imagined what they were getting. No draft to evenly disperse incoming talent and the smaller player pool (due to the exclusion of black and Hispanic players) meant that rival clubs had no means of acquiring talent to catch the Yanks.
It seems crazy to think that the existence of free agency would have led to Joltin' Joe to take more money from another team, but it is entirely possible. In today's game, players move from team to team with ease. While there are Haves and Have Not's in terms of financial power, free agency has led to an amazing parity in terms of World Series winners. In the previous decade there were 8 different winners (6 during the 1990's and 9 during the 1980's compared to 5 in both the 1940's and 1950's). The Mets have been around since 1962 and really the first 5 years were lost because of expansion hurdles. Starting in 1969, the year that the Mets won their first title (which I don't claim as one of mine because I was not born yet), the league had 24 teams. That same year Curt Flood refused to accept a trade and became the catalyst for free agency. By 1969 the Yanks had won 20 of their titles.
If anything, I think the Mets caught a bad break of being born right on the fringe of free agency, in a league with 24 teams. The Yankees deserve credit for winning all their titles - I didn't do the exact math, but I feel confident in saying that the number was significantly higher than chance alone - but they were fortunate to play in a different era in which their stars didn't leave. Had the Mets been around since 1900, they would have 10 titles too. Less than the Yanks, but much higher.
So please, Yankees fans, please calm down with the "27 title" thing. We get it - you were lucky to be raised in a family that loved pinstripes...chances are your dad watched the team during their heyday when they won 10 titles in 16 years (1947 to 1964). That does not mean that you get to claim those titles. No, the Mick and DiMaggio belong to your dad. Jeter, Rivera and Posada belong to you. Let's agree that Mets fans will forever be allowed to talk about the best baseball team of the past 30 years, the 1986 Mets, AND that you can rub 7 titles in our face. It is the only fair way to go.
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