Of the Yankees' 17 second-place finishes, their closest deficit occurred in 1904 when, after Chesbro's wild pitch, they won the meaningless nightcap of a doubleheader to end up one and a half games behind Boston.
In four other years, the Yankees finished two games out: behind the 1924 Washington Senators and Walter Johnson, despite Babe Ruth's 46 homers, 121 runs batted in and .378 average; behind the 1974 Orioles, despite 19-15 records by Pat Dobson and Doc Medich; behind the 1985 Toronto Blue Jays, despite Don Mattingly's 145 RBI and Rickey Henderson's 80 stolen bases; and behind the 1997 Orioles.
In that 1997 race, the Yankees salvaged the wild-card berth, only to be eliminated by the Cleveland Indians in a best-of-five division series that turned on catcher Sandy Alomar Jr.'s home run off Mariano Rivera.
And this weekend, depending on the outcome of the White Sox-Indians series in Cleveland, the AL wild-card race could be a subplot to what happens at Fenway Park. But until it does, the Yankees and the Red Sox are only thinking about first place.
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