The Babe's House Closes Its Doors

They weren't even on the map before he arrived.
The New York Highlanders started with the American League in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles before relocating in 1903. They derived their name from Hilltop Park, their home from 1903 through 1912. They weren't very good. Their futility reached its nadir in that 1912 season. They finished 50-102, a whopping 55 games behind the eventual World Series Champion Boston Red Sox. In fact, prior to the Babe's arrival in 1920, the Highlanders, officially renamed the Yankees as of 1913, finished fewer than 11 games out of first only three times.
After the Polo Grounds burned in 1911, the Highlanders allowed the Giants to finish their season in Hilltop Park. That generosity led the National League team to accept their AL cousins as tennants at the new, rebuilt Polo Grounds. Relations stayed warm until the Babe showed up. John McGraw, ever the ferocious competitor, became furious that the Yankees were outdrawing his Giants, and he threw them out. That eviction led to the decision to build Yankee Stadium. The House that Ruth Built was, actually, the House that McGraw Made Necessary.
Once Harry Frazee, owner of the Red Sox, sold Babe Ruth to the Yankees (and his soul to the devil), the ultimate nightmare of John McGraw came true: the Yankees set out upon the greatest period of success in the history of professional sports.
They have won 39 American League pennants and 26 World Series championships.
The Dodgers have won 21 National League pennants, good for second place in Major League Baseball. Second in World Series titles: the St. Louis Cardinals, who won their 10th in 2006.
In case you're struggling with the math, the Yankees have almost twice as many pennants as anyone else, and almost three times the World Series titles that anyone else owns. And to play with the numbers a little more, only in the dreadful 1980's did the Yankees win fewer than three pennants in any decade since the 1920's! Only in that same decade of the 1980's did the Yankees fail to win at least two World Series; they took 5 in the 1930's, 4 in the 1940's and 6 in the 1950's. That averages to every other year for 30 years!
The names of the others are universally known: Lou, the Clipper, Whitey, the Mick, Reggie, Munson, Gator, Catfish, Jeter, Billy and The Boss are just some of the baseball immortals who have seemed a bit bigger for playing on the biggest stage.
Theirs is an amazing legacy of achievement. The Babe's House deserves all of the accolades and attention attendant upon its closing this weekend. There will never be another like it.