NY Yankees: Baseball's greatest

Joe DiMaggio: Icon of the Yankees's heyday

Through the New York Yankees' decades of unparalleled success there is one thing they have struggled to win - the hearts of the American people.

To the world they are the pinstriped heroes of baseball, revered - like Brazil and the All Blacks - as one of the truly great sporting teams.

  Yankees.com all-century team

Catcher: Yogi Berra

First base: Lou Gehrig

Second base: Joe Gordon

Shortstop: Phil Rizzuto

Third base: Graig Nettles

Right field: Babe Ruth

Centre field: Mickey Mantle

Left field: Bob Meusel

Pitcher: Whitey Ford

But for much of America they are the rich and arrogant bullies of a self-obsessed city - the spoilt team the country loves to hate.

Around the nation's ballparks the cry goes up - "Damn Yankees!"

Success has bred adulation and loathing in equal measure for baseball's "team of the century" - proud owners of 25 of the last 80 World Series rings.

Baseball history sometimes seems to have been written around its legends - Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Reggie Jackson, and its biggest hero, Babe Ruth.

But outside the fishbowl of New York, a steady line of underdogs are willed to beat them, to strike a blow for the little team against the global leviathans of the sport.

Every game becomes a chance to puncture the Yankees' immense reputation.

Early failure

The Yankees were formed in 1903, but found little success in their first seasons.

All that changed in 1920, when Babe Ruth was signed from rivals the Boston Red Sox for $125,000.

Known primarily as a pitcher, Ruth dedicated himself to hitting and rewrote the record books with his prodigious home run totals.

The Red Sox never won the World Series again - the Yankees couldn't stay away.

From 1921 they reached six of the next eight World Series, with Ruth as their talisman. Their first win, in 1923, capped their debut season in now legendary Yankee Stadium.

A new team, built around Lou Gehrig and Joe DiMaggio, won four straight titles in the late 1930s, establishing the Bronx Bombers as the sport's most successful franchise.

But if baseball tired of Yankee victories, New York's finest worked up an appetite that threatened to turn the sport into a one-team showcase.

In one of the most dominant phases any team in American sport has enjoyed, the Yankees played in 14 of 16 World Series from 1949, winning nine, mostly against New York opposition.

Records were set in this period - such as Mickey Mantle's 18 career World Series home runs - that may take generations to fall.

Rise and fall

A respite of sorts over the next decade saw new superpowers from Baltimore, Oakland and Cincinnati take the game to new heights.

It took a huge bat to bring the Yankees back - one of the biggest in World Series history.

Reggie Jackson powered the Yankees back to the October classic in the long hot summer of 1977 and his achievements in that series, hitting five home runs including three in one game, have become a part of Yankee folklore.

The Yankees repeated in 1978 and baseball's natural order seemed to have been restored.

But by now the fluctuations in baseball fortunes were more severe, and after a World Series loss in the strike-shortened season of 1981, the Yankees spent 15 long years in the doldrums.

Despite huge revenues from television contracts - a benefit of playing in America's biggest market - the Yankees found the stars but not the leader to bring back the glory days.

George Steinbrenner, the Yankees' title-hungry owner and a man not averse to dumping hapless managers, brought in former All-star catcher Joe Torre to take charge of the team.

The greatest

Torre did not have impressive record in management, but he proved the right man as the Yankees regained the World Series in 1996, his first season.

In 1998 the Yankees reached the ultimate high, winning 114 games in the regular season and sweeping the World Series in what many call the greatest season yet played.

The next year Torre battled cancer, but his team did not stumble. They swept the World Series again and were crowned baseball's "team of the century".

With new stars - Derek Jeter, Bernie Williams, Mariano Rivera - the Yankees are threatening to extend their dominance of America's national pastime.

The New York greats, marked by plaques in Yankee Stadium's Monument Park, would be smiling. The rest of America can but watch and wring its hands.