The New York Yankees opened October 2026 the way they have opened so many: by beating the Boston Red Sox. They swept the American League Wild Card Series in two games, closing it 9-2 at Yankee Stadium on September 30, a year after knocking Boston out in the same round.1
Behind that sweep sit 27 World Series titles and 41 American League pennants, more of both than any other club.2 That record puts the Yankees on lists far outside baseball: franchises, dynasties, logos, ballparks, films, curses. It also puts them on the one list a club would rather miss.
Twenty-seven rings put the Yankees on every list about winning, and the same rings put them on the list nobody wants to top.
Yankees vs Celtics: the greatest franchise in American sports
This ranking asks which franchise has the strongest claim across all of American sport. The Yankees share the field with the Boston Celtics, the Los Angeles Lakers, the Green Bay Packers and the Montreal Canadiens, the one Canadian club in the group.
The Yankees' case is volume and length. Their titles run from 1923 to 2009.
The Celtics have the sharpest answer. Boston holds 18 NBA championships, the record in its league, and won eleven of them in thirteen seasons under Bill Russell. Hockey fans will point at the Canadiens' 24 Stanley Cups instead, the most in NHL history.
Real Madrid vs New York Yankees: the greatest club in the world
Widen the map and the Yankees become the only baseball team in a field of football clubs, NBA franchises and Scuderia Ferrari.
Real Madrid bring 15 European Cups, the record in club football, and a support base on every continent.
The Yankees bring something football clubs rarely manage: a cap. The navy NY is worn far beyond baseball, often by people who have never watched an inning, so the brand travels further than the sport.
Five straight titles: the 1949–1953 Yankees against Jordan's Bulls
The greatest-dynasty ranking compares runs of dominance across sports and eras. The Yankees entry is Casey Stengel's team, which won the World Series every year from 1949 to 1953.2
Five in a row is still the baseball record, and the company here explains why it matters. The Montreal Canadiens won five straight Stanley Cups from 1956 to 1960, and Real Madrid took every European Cup from 1956 to 1960. Three teams, three sports, the same streak inside one decade.
Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls have the modern claim: two three-peats in eight seasons, with a two-year gap in the middle. The Bulls' supporters argue that winning in a 29-team salary-capped league is harder than winning in the eight-team American League of 1950.
The interlocking NY vs the Cowboys star
On the most-iconic-logo ranking the Yankees compete with brands, not teams: Nike's Swoosh, the Jumpman, the Olympic rings and the Dallas Cowboys star.
The interlocking NY is widely traced to a Tiffany & Co. medal made for a New York police officer, and the club has used it for more than a century.
The Swoosh is the obvious rival, a mark that belongs to no team and appears on most of them.
Yankees vs Mets: the best New York sports team
New York's own ranking sets the Yankees against fourteen local teams across five sports, from the Knicks and the Giants to the Liberty and the Cosmos.
The Mets are the Yankees' nearest neighbour and their most uneven rival. Queens has two championships, the 1969 Miracle Mets and the 1986 team, and lost the only Subway Series to the Yankees in 2000.
The rest of the city has its own peaks. The Giants won four Super Bowls, the Islanders won four straight Stanley Cups from 1980, and the Brooklyn Dodgers finally beat the Yankees in the 1955 World Series before leaving for Los Angeles.
Yankees vs Red Sox against Ali vs Frazier
The greatest-rivalry ranking lists Yankees vs Red Sox as one entry, beside Ali vs Frazier, Magic vs Bird, Federer vs Nadal and Real Madrid vs Barcelona.
The baseball rivalry has a postseason record few others can match. The clubs met for the pennant in 1999, 2003 and 2004, and the 2025 and 2026 Wild Card Series both went to the Yankees.1
Boxing has the counter-case. Ali and Frazier fought three times, and the third fight in Manila left both men close to collapse. A rivalry decided by two people in one ring is harder to dilute than one shared by thousands of players over a century.
Patriots vs Yankees: the most hated team in America
Winning that often has a cost, and this ranking measures it. The Yankees sit among thirteen teams Americans love to see lose, next to the Dallas Cowboys, the Houston Astros, Duke basketball and the New England Patriots.
The Yankees' reputation rests on money as much as titles. A Red Sox executive called them the Evil Empire, and the name stuck because the payroll kept rising to match it.
The Patriots have the strongest modern claim: six Super Bowls under Bill Belichick, plus the Spygate and Deflategate punishments. The Astros arrived later, after Major League Baseball found they had stolen signs electronically during their 2017 title season.
Yankee Stadium vs Fenway Park
The ballpark ranking turns the rivalry into architecture. Yankee Stadium opened in 2009 across 161st Street from the 1923 original, and it copies the old frieze along the roof.
Fenway Park opened in 1912 and is the oldest park in the majors. Its Green Monster and odd corners are the opposite of a modern stadium plan, and that is the appeal.
Neither park is the critics' usual favourite. Wrigley Field, PNC Park and Oracle Park tend to collect the praise for views and setting, which leaves the two rivals competing as much on history as on sightlines.
1960 vs 2001: the World Series the Yankees lost
The greatest-World-Series ranking holds sixteen Fall Classics, and some of the most remembered ones ended badly for New York.
In 1960 Bill Mazeroski hit a walk-off home run in Game 7 to win the title for Pittsburgh. In 2001 the Arizona Diamondbacks won Game 7 by 3-2 in their last at-bat, with Mariano Rivera taking the loss.3
The Yankees have happier entries here too. Don Larsen threw the only perfect game in World Series history in 1956, and Reggie Jackson hit three home runs in the 1977 clincher.
The 2004 ALCS vs Super Bowl LI: the biggest collapse
No ranking in this set is less kind to New York. The 2004 Yankees led Boston three games to none in the American League Championship Series, having won Game 3 by 19-8 at Fenway.
Boston then won four straight, two of them in extra innings, and closed the series 10-3 at Yankee Stadium.4 The Red Sox went on to their first title since 1918.
The Atlanta Falcons have the strongest rival case. They led the New England Patriots 28-3 in Super Bowl LI and lost in overtime. Greg Norman's six-shot lead at the 1996 Masters and the 2007 Mets also sit here.
Field of Dreams vs The Pride of the Yankees
Three Yankees stories made the best-baseball-movie ranking: The Pride of the Yankees, Damn Yankees and 61*, Billy Crystal's film about Roger Maris and Mickey Mantle.
The Pride of the Yankees is the oldest of them. The 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic starring Gary Cooper received 11 Academy Award nominations and won for film editing.5 It ends with Gehrig's farewell line, "Today I consider myself the luckiest man on the face of the earth."
Field of Dreams is the modern sentimental favourite, with Bull Durham, Moneyball and A League of Their Own close behind.
Bleacher Creatures Roll Call vs the Lambeau Leap
Yankee Stadium's entry on the stadium-tradition ranking belongs to its fans. After the first pitch, the Bleacher Creatures in the right-field seats chant the name of each Yankees fielder until he waves back.
MLB.com notes that the start date is disputed, but a 1998 Washington Post report dated the first roll call to May 16, 1998, the day before David Wells pitched a perfect game.6
Other sports bring their own rituals: the Lambeau Leap in Green Bay, the Terrible Towel in Pittsburgh, octopuses on the ice in Detroit and "Sweet Caroline" at Fenway.
Curse of the Bambino vs the Billy Goat
The last ranking is about luck. The Curse of the Bambino starts with a Yankees purchase: Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sold Babe Ruth to New York for $100,000, a deal agreed on December 26, 1919, and announced in January 1920.7
Boston did not win another World Series for 86 years. The Yankees won their first in 1923.
The Chicago Cubs' Curse of the Billy Goat is the obvious rival, blamed for a drought that lasted from 1908 to 2016. New York has a second entry too: the Rangers' Curse of 1940, which ended with the 1994 Stanley Cup.
Pinstripes on both kinds of list
The Yankees belong on the franchise, dynasty and logo rankings because of what they won, and on the hated, collapse and curse rankings for the same reason. A club that buys Babe Ruth and wins five titles in a row becomes the team other fan bases measure their suffering against.
Here every list is decided in head-to-head picks, meaning the Yankees must beat Real Madrid, the Bulls and the Billy Goat one by one. If your own club deserves a list like this, start one and see who it has to get past.
More rankings, more angles
- Babe Ruth Among the Greatest Baseball Players Ever: 14 Lists — the Yankee who started the curse
- Tom Brady: Greatest Quarterback of All Time? 7 Rings, 15 Lists — the Patriots dynasty from the inside
- Chicago Bulls Among the Greatest NBA Franchises: 16 Lists — six titles, then a decade without a playoff series win
Sources
- MLB.com — Yankees sweep the Red Sox in the 2026 AL Wild Card Series, 9-2 in Game 2 on September 30, after also beating Boston in the 2025 Wild Card Series: mlb.com, mlb.com (checked 2026-10-08)
- Baseball-Reference — New York Yankees franchise history: 27 World Series titles, 41 pennants, titles 1949–1953: baseball-reference.com (checked 2026-10-08)
- Baseball-Reference — 2001 World Series, Arizona over New York 4-3, Game 7 won 3-2, loss to Mariano Rivera: baseball-reference.com (checked 2026-10-08)
- Baseball-Reference — 2004 ALCS, Boston over New York 4-3, game-by-game scores: baseball-reference.com (checked 2026-10-08)
- Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences — 15th Academy Awards, The Pride of the Yankees nominations and win: oscars.org (checked 2026-10-08)
- MLB.com — "'Roll call' is a Yankee Stadium exclusive", origin date of the roll call: mlb.com (checked 2026-10-08)
- National Baseball Hall of Fame — "The deal that changed the game", the sale of Babe Ruth to the Yankees: baseballhall.org (checked 2026-10-08)