Timeline of Yankee Captains
This week, Brian Cashman commented that he doesn’t foresee any Yankee being named captain to replace Derek Jeter. After Jeter and Paul Konkero retired at the end of 2014, there is currently just one captain in Major League Baseball: David Wright of the New York Mets. The idea of having a captain in baseball has become antiquated. There never was a strong tradition for this practice like there is in hockey, and players are now so transient that teams are more likely tying their own hands with future transactions by naming a captain than they are creating good will with the player and fans.
I wanted to get a better idea of what the Yankees captaincy looked like over the years, so I created the following timeline to visualize the leadership position.
After researching this topic, I came across many different accounts of exactly how many Yankees captains there are. Even the Yankees have apparently misunderstood their own history announcing that Jeter was the 11th captain when he assumed the role in 2003. I have displayed 15 players from Wikipedia’s entry. I found three other data sets (Howard W. Rosenberg, Baseball-Reference, and Baseball Almanac), and all four conflicted with each other. Wikipedia had the most players; I erred on the side of inclusion.
Cashman’s comments aren’t the first time the Yankees have stated they feel like the captaincy should be retired. After Lou Gehrig died in 1941, there was no Yankees captain for over 30 years until after George Steinbrenner bought the team.
Looking at the rest of the graphic, little information is known from the early history of the Yankees, hence all the confusion about the number of captains. Given his stature in Yankees lore, a causal fan might think that Babe Ruth would have been the Yankee’s captain for more than five games, but he got into a fight with a fan in the stands and lost his title. For three seasons, Willie Randolph and Ron Guidry were the only co-captains for the Yankees. Derek Jeter stands out as the longest tenured captain – 12 seasons.
Considering the gaps in the timeline of Yankees captains and the current culture in baseball, it could be a long time until there is another captain if there is another one at all.
The article previously stated Jeter held the captain position for 14 years. This has been corrected to 12 seasons.
I build things here.
Jeter should probably be named captain for life. He also should go into the HOF immediately. Didn’t Jeter retire and had a huge farewell tour last season? The Yankees will be bad this year, but enough of Jeter for the love of god.
I do like your timeline graph.
The chart says 12 years for Jeter, but the article says 14.
Maybe he gets to remain captain for another 2 years out of respect?
Damn, typos. Thanks for pointing that out!
what about me
It should be noted that Mikey Mantle was named team captain by manager Ralph Houk prior to the 1961 season, although officially there were no captains during this period.
Mikey eats anything. Mickey played baseball.
Ahhh, the immortal Roger Packinpaugh
Heh, he won an MVP. No one is quite sure why….
I’m pretty sure George Steinbrenner brought back the captain position as a way of tapping into the rich tradition of the New York Yankees. His love of Yankee tradition was one of his most endearing features, especially since that kept the Yanks from wearing those ridiculous “future” uniforms. It’s unclear if his successors have the same sort of fondness. They certainly do not have the same “win at any cost” attitude that George had, which can be both good and bad. Good in the sense that the team is not trading a raft of prospects for 33-year-old starting pitchers and good in that the “Don’t Drink the Water” Yankees manager gag has not topped the 5 minute mark, but bad in that the free agent patching of the team has become far less effective. Well bad as far as Yankees fans go. Your mileage may vary.
Will there be another captain? Probably. However, there simply is not anyone on the roster right now that would be an obvious choice. All the players that have been on the team for a while are regularly injured, in serious decline, and/or not especially well liked; I posit it is not a good thing to pick a captain who is either not on the field or being booed when he is. It is generally bad form to grant the captain role to a new guy unless he’s something really special of which there are no real candidates. If Robinson Cano had stayed he might have gotten the job. If Alex Rodriguez had not burned every bridge and then stomped on the ashes and then urinated on said ashes and then force fed said ashes to the nearby livestock, he could have been in line. As of right now the best choice might be Brett Gardner.
There is a civil war joke somewhere in here that I will leave for someone else to find.
It took me 6 hours, but I finally found it.
If you take the 12th letter of the article, 59th letter, 80th letter, 84th letter, 132nd letter, 153rd letter, and the 158th letter, you spell A-B-R-A-H-A-M. One of the better and most oblique Civil War jokes I’ve ever seen.
Have to believe that Mickey Mantle and Joe DiMaggio functioned as “captains” even if they may not have been officially named to the position
Having a dominant manager takes away the need for or the power of a player captain. I cannot see a player under Leo Durocher acting as a captain named or not, while a more introverted manager leads to players stepping up to lead teams whether they are named or not.
The power of an owner likeSteinbrenner almost demands player to step up to balance things out while more hands off owners may not need a player taking a leadership role. So many little dynammics between owners, managers and players and there is no set tradition to follow.
Cano would have almost been certainly named captain if he had remained with the Yankees after Jeter retired.
Was Robbie ever that much of a leader, though? Maybe five years after Jeter retired, if he stepped up, he would have gotten the job.
I don’t think the next captain is in the organization at the moment.
Baseball should move to be more like Cricket – each team must designate a captain and the captain makes all on-field decisions while the manager has no input. Deciding who pitches (bowls), who bats, and where fielders play – all this could be decided by the captain just as it is in Cricket.
It’s kind of funny to think how different the two sports are culturally in this manner.