Fans of the New York Yankees, who entered 2025 with every expectation that their team would blaze a path straight back to the World Series, after getting there for the record 41st time in franchise history last season.
The Yankees lost the 2024 World Series to the Los Angeles Dodgers. It was only the fourth time the Yankees had fallen to a Dodgers team in the Fall Classic in 12 meetings â also a record for the most times any two teams have squared off for MLB’s championship. The two iconic franchises first faced each other in the 1941 World Series. At that time, it was a “subway series,” because the Dodgers were still located in Brooklyn.
The Yankees and Brooklyn Dodgers would meet again in 1947, 1949, 1952 and 1953 before the Dodgers finally took their first win over their American League crosstown rivals in the 1955 World Series, in a series that went seven games. The Yankees and Dodgers were right back at it a year later, but in another seven-game affair in 1956, the Bronx Bombers prevailed over Brooklyn’s “Bums,” as the team was affectionate known in those days. And then, two years later, the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles.
Yankees No Longer Expected to Return to Series
The move out west went a long way to changing the Dodgers’ fortunes. When they next met the Yankees in 1963, the Dodgers wielded a one-two punch of intimidating right-hander Don Drysdale and fireballing lefty Sandy Koufax, sweeping the Yankees in four straight. They met again in 1977 and 1978, with the Yankees taking both series. But the strike-shortened 1981 season brought the 11th Dodgers-Yankees World Series and this time â led by manager Tommy Lasorda, famous for coining the phrase “bleed Dodger blue” â the Dodgers won another one.
The Dodgers certainly appear poised to make another trip the World Series in 2025, but Yankees fans are coming-out of Spring Training with a much more dire attitude than they had coming in. Losing No. 1 starter Gerrit Cole, No. 3 starter Luis Gil, and now even No. 5 starter Clarke Schmidt â as well as power-hitting DH Giancarlo Stanton â to injuries, the outlook is grim.
And it has been made grimmer by the fact that chairman and managing general partner Hal Steinbrenner â son of legendary owner George Steinbrenner â has been reluctant to open up his checkbook to sign new players. That’s a trend that Yankees fans have complained about for several years now, as they wonder why the Dodgers boast a payroll $104 million higher than New York’s even though the Yankees franchise is values at $7.6 billion, $2.2 billion more than the Dodgers, according to Forbes.
Steinbrenner Blames Banks and Lenders
New York sportswriter Ian O’Connor, author of The Captain, a biography of Yankees Hall of Famer Derek Jeter, says he has an answer to the question of why the younger Steinbrenner has been slower to spend on players than his iconic father.
“One thing that’s different now,” O’Connor said, speaking on The Colin Cowherd Podcast earlier this week, “three years ago I believe it was in spring training, (Hal) talked to some beat writers and they question him about the payroll and and some money that wasn’t being spent on talent. He said that, “There are banks and partners and and lenders that I have to deal with and I have to answer to.”
O’Connor, who covered the Yankees of George Steinbrenner’s era extensively, was having none of that explanation from tiger younger Steinbrenner.
“I can tell you this,” he continued. “I had a lot of conversations with George Steinbrenner over the years. I never heard him talk about a bank a lender a bond holder a partner. He did not care. I don’t even know if he cared about turning a profit â he just wanted to win and win at all costs.”
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