A brief discourse on the 1965 Yankees:
From 1949 to 1964, the Yankees missed the playoffs three times and were indisputably the greatest dynasty in baseball history. Sure, the Braves made 14 consecutive postseasons from 1991-2005 and the current Yankees have been in the playoffs in 17 of the last 18 years (dating back to 1995, the Bombers have the missed the playoffs just once, in 2008). But the Truman-Eisenhower-JFK-LBJ dynasty existed when only one team from each league made the playoffs, and the World Series was postseason enough.
So the Yanks had won 13 pennants and nine World Series titles in 16 seasons going into 1965. But the Bombers had been living on borrowed time, relying too heavily on the fading bats of Mickey Mantle and Yogi Berra** and the aging skills of Whitey Ford. By ’65, Berra was retired, Ford was relying on guile and the Mick had the knees of a 50-year-old man. Even Elston Howard was 36 and at the tail end of his career. Of the team’s top players, only ace Mel Stottlemyre was in his prime.
**Things you learn while rifling through BaseballReference.com: Yogi Berra finished in the top four in the AL MVP voting SEVEN YEARS IN A ROW. Including three firsts and two seconds! Yogi might the all-time case of a player’s outsized personality overshadowing a historically good career (though Clyde Frazier might topple him once he’s done stylin’ and profilin’).
The ’65 Yankees were weak on paper and equally weak on the field. After winning 99 games in 1964, they went a dismal 77-85 the next season, beginning a drought of 12 years between playoff appearances. The average age of the starting lineup was 30 years old, and no regular had a better line than Tom Tresh’s .279/.348/.477. I haven’t seen an inning of game footage from that year, but the numbers say that the ’65 Yankees were a formerly great team on a slow road to the bottom.
