While Joe DiMaggio was the unquestioned king of the Yankees during his years with the team, Mickey Mantle shared his throne with some of the greatest players of his, or any, baseball era. Among Mantle’s teammates were the immortals Whitey Ford and Yogi Berra, as well as such shining stars as Don Larsen (whose 1956 World Series perfect game is still the only one of its kind in baseball history) and Roger Maris (whose 61 home runs in 1961 eclipsed Babe Ruth’s single season record and stood until 1998, the height of the steroid era). Then there was Casey Stengel, the colorful manager who led the team throughout the 1950s, when they won eight of ten American League pennants and six World Series titles.

Still, Mantle was the brightest in the Yankees’ galaxy of stars during the 1950s and ‘60s. He broke into the big leagues in 1951, playing right field alongside DiMaggio in center, and blew out his knee tripping over an exposed sprinkler in the 1951 World Series. It was the first of a series of injuries that prevented him from living up to Stengel’s prediction that he would be the greatest player ever. Nevertheless, he rivaled Willie Mays as the greatest player of his era, winning three Most Valuable Player awards, the 1956 Triple Crown, and hitting 536 home runs in his career—second only to Babe Ruth at the time of his retirement in 1968.



The Yankee Eras:

• Before the Babe (1901-1919)

• The Team That Babe Built (1920-1935)

• The DiMaggio Years (1936-1951)

• The Mantle Years (1951-1964)

• The Fallen Empire (1965-1974)

• The Billy Martin Years (1975-1983)

• The Donnie Baseball Years (1984-1995)

• The Joe Torre Era (1996-present)