Review of "Yankees 1936-39, Baseball’s Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era," by Stanley Cohen

 Review of

Yankees 1936-39, Baseball’s Greatest Dynasty: Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio and the Birth of a New Era, by Stanley Cohen, ISBN 9781510720633

Five out of five stars

The most powerful dynasty in baseball history

 Arguments as to which major league baseball team was the greatest of all time continue. Yankee teams are always in the conversation, the general consensus is that the 1927 Yankees was the best team of all time. The Big Red Machine of the mid-seventies is also often mentioned. However, when the conversation goes to the greatest multi-year dynasty of all time, it is almost impossible to end up anywhere but the Yankees of 1936-39. They won four straight American League pennants by an average of nearly 15 games over the second place team and their record in the games of the World Series over that span was 16-3. In other words, they lost an average of less than one game per series. This book is a year-by-year chronicle of those four years.

 In 1936, the team had six future members of the Hall of Fame, including an aging but still formidable Lou Gehrig and the promising rookie Joe DiMaggio. The most dominant theme of the book is how the members of the Yankees simply would accept nothing less than a pennant. From the first day of Spring training, the expectation was that they would all be totally professional on the ball field and that they were always superior to the opposition.

 Although he was a rookie in 1936, DiMaggio emerged as a leader by example. He played hard every inning and pushed his teammates to do the same. Through these four years, there were many changes in personnel, Lou Gehrig rapidly declined, others were traded or otherwise moved on, yet the Yankee front office always managed to use their farm system and other means to find the right human cogs to keep their winning ways.

 This is a great story of what was without question the most sustained great team in the history of major league baseball. While these players were great, this is more than a story of skill on the field. It is about the power of a positive, professional attitude and the basic premise that the team comes first. If you believe in victory, then it is much more likely.

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