5 Things You Might Not Know About the New York Yankees

The New York Yankees are sports' most storied franchise, with a history unlike any other team in professional sports. So much has been written about the Yankees that it is difficult to broach a subject that hasn't been covered. The New York Yankees dominate several pages of the Major League Baseball record books, but there are still some things that many of their very own fans do not know about them. Here are 5 things about the New York Yankees that you may not have realized.

1- The Yankees were never very fast!

Stolen bases are not a high priority with the Bronx Bombers. Their all-time leader in this category is Rickey Henderson, who stole 326 bases in only 4 ½ years with New York in the 1980s. But after Henderson, no player considered a true Yankee is anywhere near the top in the stolen base department. You have to go all the way to Hal Chase, a player with New York in the early part of the last century, to find someone in the top 100 all-time for stolen bases, at number 92. Derek Jeter is second on the Yankees' stolen base list with 264, 13 more than current Mets' skipper Willie Randolph swiped.

2. No Yankee has come close to 3,000 hits!

Amazingly, there is not a single Yankee with even 2,900 base knocks. The 4 men you would expect to have achieved this milestone all fell short. Babe Ruth had 2,873, losing all those at-bats when he was a pitcher with Boston. Lou Gehrig's premature retirement due to illness left him at 2,721, while World War II kept Joe DiMaggio from making the 3,000 hit plateau for the New York Yankees; he wound up with 2,214. Injuries were the culprit in Mickey Mantle's case, as he came up with 2,415. Jeter has an excellent shot to break this Yankee "curse", as he now stands at 2,356 at the age of 33.

3. Nobody in a Yankee uniform has hit as many as 300 home runs in the last 40 years.

Mickey Mantle was the last New York Yankee to put up an eye-opening home run total, and he retired in 1968. Since Mantle, the player with the most Yankee homers is Bernie Williams, who smashed 287. Jorge Posada's 218 rank him 9th on the Yankee list, but he is the only current Yankee on this roster and will most likely not make it to 300 before he leaves the sport for good. If you were wondering about Don Mattingly, he hit 222.

4. 5 Yankees have eclipsed 1,000 strikeouts, and 2 are active!

Mantle leads this dubious statistic with his 1,710, but you may be surprised to learn that Jeter's 1,291 have him easily in the second spot for the team. After Derek comes Bernie Williams at 1,212, then Posada with his 1,139 in just 5,679 plate appearances. In comparison, Joe DiMaggio whiffed just 369 times, or only 8 more than his home run total!

5. Wally Pipp was pretty good!

Every baseball fan that goes back a ways knows the story of how Pipp, the Yankee first baseman in 1925, had a headache and couldn't play, with Lou Gehrig replacing him in the New York lineup, forcing Pipp to the bench. In actuality, manager Miller Huggins had benched Pipp and others to stir up the lineup, but the result for Wally was the same. Gehrig was fabulous and thus began his famous consecutive game streak, so Pipp was traded to the Reds. However, Pipp was no slouch. He had 6 campaigns where he accumulated at least 90 runs batted in, with a pair over 100, had led the American League in homers twice and had been a key part of Yankee pennant winners. In fact, in 1926 he had 99 RBI with Cincinnati before retiring 2 years later, finishing his career just 2 short of 1,000.

http://www.baseball-reference.com/teams/NYY/leaders_bat.shtml