Summer Premium and Catalog Auction July 31 & Aug 8
This lot is closed for bidding. Bidding ended on 7/31/2015
Bronx Bomber collectors and photo collectors, rejoice! These exquisite Type I team shots have everything going for them. Let's start with 1923: 1) It's the first championship squad in franchise history; 2) It's Ruth's first Yankees title in his sole MVP season when he batted .393 and socked 3 World Series HRs; 3) It's Gehrig's true rookie season; 4) It hails from none other than the esteemed (and highly collectible) news service Underwood & Underwood; 5) It retains U&U's fully intact paper caption on the reverse. To amplify on the historical significance of 20-year-old Gehrig's presence, it's important to note that the soon-to-be "Iron Horse" debuted on June 15th and only played in 13 games so he almost never appears in any 1923 Yankees team photos. Indeed, we would go so far as to declare this the best '23 Yankees news-service photo that's ever hit the auction block. Originally published prior to the Fall Classic on September 25, 1923, the clairvoyant caption description reads, “Brand new, and excellent, group photo of Miller Huggins’s famous baseball clan, the New York Yankees who have just clinched the American League Championship pennant for 1923, for the third consecutive season. In ’21 and ’22 they won the league championship; only to lose the world’s title to the New York Giants—but this year is another story and the dope book gives the Yanks a little edge on the boys from the Polo Grounds. So, perhaps, this will be a picture of the 1923 World’s Champions within a month or so.”
Turning to '27, they are of course, quite simply, the best there ever was or ever will be. No team but no team can top the '27 Yankees for a more fabled legacy in baseball history. Ruth's record-breaking 60 HRs, Gehrig's MVP, the entire "Murderers' Row" lineup, the World Series sweep of the Pirates, the famed Bustin' Babes/Larrupin' Lous barnstorming tour that followed—all this and so much more has elevated these mere mortals to god-like mythic status. Here, the Iron Horse stands first in line, the Bambino looms two slots away, "Poosh 'Em Up Tony" Lazzeri grins fifth from the right, and Miller "Mighty Mite" Huggins sits front and center in the second row. The timing was mid-September after the Bombers captured their 5th pennant in 7 years, as noted on the reverse paper caption: “FIRST GROUP PHOTO OF NEW YORK YANKEES, CHAMPIONS OF THE AMERICAN LEAGUE FOR 1927.” Fotograms, the news service behind this photo, was a prominent issuer in the 1910s-1920s that specialized in Yankees subject matter. (In fact, a Fotograms 1927 shot of Ruth and Gehrig appears in Fogel, Oser and Yee's reference book A Portrait of Baseball Photography.)
Both team photos measure 8" x 10", feature superb image quality, and exhibit typical newsroom handling wear throughout such as creasing, crazing, surface rippling and small edge tears. Encapsulated as Type I by PSA/DNA.