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October 14, 2019

1927 Major League Baseball: map with crests & uniforms, final standings and stats leaders; champions: New York Yankees./+ Illustrated article, 1927 MLB champions: the New York Yankees, perhaps the greatest team in MLB history.

Filed under: Baseball,Baseball-1927 MLB season,Retro maps — admin @ 7:31 am

mlb_al_nl_1927-map_w-uniforms_logos_standings_stats-leaders_1927-ws-champs_new-york-yankees_post_d_.gif
1927 Major League Baseball: map with crests & uniforms, final standings and stats leaders; champions: New York Yankees




By Bill Turianski on 14 October 2019; twitter.com/billsportsmaps.

Links…
Sources:
-Baseball-Reference.com, 1927 AL season; 1927 NL season.
-Baseball Hall of Fame’s Dressed to the Nines (uniforms illustrated by Marc Okkonen), exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/database.htm.
-US cities’ populations (1920 figures), biggestuscities.com/1920.
-Attendances. Source: baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1927-misc.shtml.
Most logos. Source: SportsLogos.net, sportslogos.net/[MLB logos].

From 1903 to 1952 (50 seasons), there were no franchise-shifts in Major League Baseball. The 16 MLB teams from this 50-year period played in only 9 American cities…New York City (3 teams), Chicago (2 teams), Philadelphia (2 teams), Detroit, Cleveland, St. Louis (2 teams), Boston (2 teams), Pittsburgh, Washington, and Cincinnati.

Below: a chart of 1920s USA city populations, with 1927 MLB teams noted…
1927_mlb_cities_populations_b_.gif.

    1927 MLB champions: the New York Yankees, perhaps the greatest team in MLB history

Many observers consider the 1927 New York Yankees to be the greatest team ever. The ’27 Yankees featured seven future Hall of Famers: pitchers Herb Pennock and Waite Hoyt, infielders Lou Gehrig (1B) and Tony Lazzeri (2B), outfielders Babe Ruth and Earle Combs, and manager Miller Huggins. After losing to the St. Louis Cardinals 4 games to 3 in the 1926 World Series, the 1927 Yankees went 110-44 (.714). Only 4 other teams have won more games than that…the 1906 Chicago Cubs and the 2001 Seattle Mariners won 116, the 1998 Yankees won 114 and the 1954 Cleveland Indians won 111. But the 1906 Cubs and the 1954 Indians and the 2001 Mariners did not win the World Series in those years. Also, the 1998 Yankees, though they did win the World Series that year, played in the era of the modern-day 162-game season [154-game season until 1960/162-game season in American League since 1961; 162-game season in National League since 1962].

The 1927 Yankees won the American League by 19 games, the most to that point in AL history. (Note: the Chicago Cubs won the National League in 1906 by 20 games.)

Let’s look at the numbers. The 1927 Yankees had a .307 BAvg, a .489 slugging percentage, and scored 975 runs, outscoring their opponents by a record 376 runs. That .489 Slugging Pct. the ’27 Yankees had – as a team – was surpassed by only 5 other individual players on all the other teams in the AL that season. Babe Ruth’s record-setting 60 homers, when added to Lou Gehrig’s 47 HR, accounted for over 25% of all HRs in the AL that season! Gehrig had a then-record 173 RBIs, while Ruth had 165 RBIs. Gehrig hit .373, Ruth hit .356. Plus Ruth drew 137 Walks, while Gehrig drew 109. Tony Lazzeri had 18 HR & 102 RBIs & and hit .309. Lead-off hitter Earle Combs hit .352. Standout pitchers were Waite Hoyt (22-7, 2.63 ERA), Herb Pennock (19-8, 3.00 ERA), and Wilcy Moore (19-7, 2.28 ERA, 19 Saves). But the thing is, once you get past the sublime accomplishments of Ruth and Gehrig that year, as well as the excellent seasons of Lazzeri, Combs, Hoyt, Pennock, and Moore, there were a lot a mediocre players on the 1927 Yankees. As Robert Creamer of Sports Illustrated pointed out, “it may cause raised eyebrows to realize that such journeymen as Gazella, Wera, Durst, Thomas, Paschal, Giard, Grabowski, Morehart and Collins made up almost 40% of that great team’s roster.” {-excerpt from the August 26, 1958 issue of Sports Illustrated, here.}

The 1927 Yankees swept the Pittsburgh Pirates in 4 games to win the ’27 World Series. It was the 24th World Series, and it was first time that an American League team swept a National League team in the competition. (Note: NL Teams had swept their AL opponents 3 times previously: the Chicago Cubs swept the Detroit Tigers in the 1907 WS; the Boston Braves swept the Philadelphia Athletics in the 1914 WS; and the New York Giants swept the Yankees in the 1923 WS.)

And then, the 1928 Yankees would go on to sweep the St. Louis Cardinals in the 1928 World Series. That was the first time a team had ever swept back-to-back World Series contests. No other MLB team has accomplished that feat of back-to-back World Series sweeps…but the New York Yankees went on to do it two more times…in 1938 & ’39, and in 1998 & ’99.

And those two Yankee teams, along with, of course, the 1927-28 Yankees, show up on many, if not all, lists of greatest-ever MLB teams…such as:
{Bleacher Report’s Official Rankings of the 50 Greatest Teams in MLB History, by Joel Reuter at BleacherReport.com, from March 2014},
{Tom Verducci’s Top 10 Teams of All Time, by Tom Verducci at si.com},
{Determining the Best Major League Baseball Team Ever From 1902-2005, from Baseball-Almanac.com},
{The Best MLB Teams Of All-Time, According To Elo, by Reuben Fischer-Baum at FiveThirtyEight.com, from May 2016}…
(For the record, the first 3 of the 4 lists above rank the 1927 Yankees as the best MLB team ever; the list at the 538.com ranks the 1927 Yankees the second-best ever, giving the nod to the Joe DiMaggio-led Yankees of 1939.)

Below: the 1927 New York Yankees & Babe Ruth’s record-setting 60 Home Run season…
1927_ny-yankees_ruth_gehrig_combs_lazzeri_ruth-hits-60-hr_yankees-sweep-pirates-in-1927-world-series_f_.gif
Photo and Image credits above – 1927 NY Yankees road jersey script logo, from mitchellandness.com. “Murderers Row”, featuring Gehrig, Ruth, Combes, Lazzeri [colorized photo from 1929], photo unattributed at flickr.com/[Willie Brown]. Babe Ruth, photo unattributed at sabr.org. Ruth crosses the plate and is congratulated by teammate Bob Meusel, after hitting the historic 60th Home Run, photo by NY Daily News at nydailynews.com. New York Daily News front page from Oct. 1 1927 [Babe Ruth hits historic 60th HR), via Baseball by B Smile [twitter.com/@bsmile]. Game 4 of the 1927 World Series, Oct. 6 1927 – NY 4, Pittsburgh 3: photo from the stands at Yankee Stadium…action from the 1st-inning, as Babe Ruth (who later hit a HR in the 5th) has just singled; Earle Combs rounds 3rd to tie the game up 1-1. The Yankees swept the Pirates in 4 games, for their second WS title. This was the first sweep of a National League team by an American League team…photo unattributed at Old Time Baseball Photos twitter.com/[@OTBaseballPhoto].

1927 MLB stats leaders…
ERA, Wilcy Moore (NYY). Wins, Charlie Root (CHC). WAR for pitchers, Tommy Thomas (CHW). BAvg, Harry Heilmann (DET). HR, Babe Ruth (NYY). RBI, Lou Gehrig (NYY). OPS, Babe Ruth (NYY). WAR, Babe Ruth (1927).


Photo and Image credits on the map page…
1927 WS champions New York Yankees…
1927 NY Yankees road jersey script logo, from mitchellandness.com. Babe Ruth [photo from 1927], photo from Getty Images via biography.com. Lou Gehrig [photo circa 1927], unattributed at fineartamerica.com. Earle Combs [photo circa 1926], unattributed at ebay.com. Tony Lazzeri [photo circa 1927], from Baseball Hall of Fame via si.com/all-time-yankees-lineup. Waite Hoyt [photo circa 1927], photo from National Baseball Hall of Fame Library via Getty Images via gettyimages.com. Wilcy Moore [colorized photo circa 1929], colorized photo unattributed at pinterest.com. Bob Meusel [photo circa 1927], unattributed at espn.com. Manager, Miller Huggins [photo circa 1924], unattributed at pinterest.com.
1927 WS G4 ticket, from pixels.com.
1927 WS press pin, from may16.hugginsandscott.com.
“Murderers Row”, featuring Gehrig, Ruth, Combes, Lazzeri [colorized photo from 1929], photo unattributed at flickr.com/[Willie Brown].
1927 MLB stats leaders…
Wilcy Moore (NYY) [photo circa 1928], unattributed at pinterest.com. Charlie Root (CHC) [photo circa 1927], unattributed at sabr.org. Harry Heilmann (DET) [photo from 1927], unattributed at quora.com. Tommy Thomas (CHW) [photo circa 1927], photo by Sporting News and Rogers Photo Archive via Getty Images via gettyimages.co.uk. Babe Ruth (NYY) [photo circa 1927], McMahon Archive at amazon.com. Lou Gehrig (NYY) [photo circa 1928], unattributed at mondoudinese.it. Babe Ruth (NYY) [photo circa 1927], from Bettman-Corbis/Getty Images via si.com.

Colorized photo of Philadelphia Athletics 1925-27 elephant-logo jersey, photo unattributed and colorized by Natalia Valiukevich/mediadrumworld.com via dailymail.co.uk/article.

___
Thanks to all at the following links…
Sources:
-Baseball-Reference.com, 1927 AL season; 1927 NL season.
-Baseball Hall of Fame’s Dressed to the Nines (uniforms illustrated by Marc Okkonen), exhibits.baseballhalloffame.org/dressed_to_the_nines/database.htm.
-US cities’ populations (1920 figures), biggestuscities.com/1920.
-Attendances. Source: baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/1927-misc.shtml.
Most logos. Source: SportsLogos.net, sportslogos.net/[MLB logos].

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