Sully Baseball discusses the Yankees dynasty that didn’t happen, the 1980s. While he focuses on the good, young players the Yankees traded away, take a look at the first picture in the post. Winfield, Randolph, Mattingly, Henderson and Righetti standing in the Yankees dugout. That’s a great core for any team. The front office of that era failed to fill in around those players, tending to go with aging veterans (“has beens,” as my father liked to call them) rather than people who could still contribute. That’s the biggest difference between the Yankees of the 1980s and 1990s. In the 1990s, they found the right players to complement the core.
As a Yankee fan, I found the 1980s much more frustrating than the early 1990s or the 00s.
In the 1980s, you had some great players who obviously weren’t going to get championships with the Yankees, because management resembled a clown show at the circus. In the ealy 1990s, the team was obviously rebuilding and actually was kind of fun to watch. In the 00s you had all those division titles, plus you really can’t complain too much if the team makes the playoffs almost every year.
I suspected that a big part of the reason for the second Steinbrenner suspension was to fix the Yankees. I can also understand what Mets fans are going through now.
Ed is absolutely right. So frustrating to be a Yankee fan back then-all those great players in their prime on the same team and we get crap moves like Jay Buhner for Ken Phelps, Al Leiter for Barfield (he was an MVP but still), etc, etc. Just a little bit of being patient with our young players and we could have won a WS then.