New York Yankees Tickets : The Yankees Have Achieved Widespread Popularity

The New York Yankees are a professional baseball team based in the borough of the Bronx, in New York City, New York. They belong to Major League Baseball's American League East Division.

One of the American League's eight charter franchises, the club was founded in Baltimore, Maryland in 1901 as the Baltimore Orioles and moved to New York City in 1903, becoming known as the New York Highlanders before being officially renamed the "Yankees" in 1913.

From 1923 to 2008, the Yankees' home ballpark was Yankee Stadium, The Yankees have achieved widespread popularity and a dedicated fanbase, although during the era of ownership by George Steinbrenner, they acquired a polarizing reputation from heavy spending on player salaries for the sake of recruiting top talent.

Their rivalry with the Boston Red Sox is arguably the fiercest and most historic in North American professional sports.To support the Yankees and expand their media coverage, the dedicated television channel YES Network was launched in 2002.

The Yankees have won a leading 27 World Series in 40 appearances (which, since the first World Series in 1903, currently amounts to an average appearance every 2.7 seasons and a championship every 4.0 seasons); the St. Louis Cardinals are second with 10 World Series victories. The Yankees' number of World Series losses, 13, leads in Major League Baseball.

The Brooklyn/Los Angeles Dodgers are second in total World Series appearances with eighteen; eleven of those eighteen appearances have been against the Yankees, where the Dodgers have gone 3/8 against them.

Among North American major sports, the Yankees' success is only approached by the 24 Stanley Cup championships of the Montreal Canadiens of the National Hockey League. They have played in the World Series against every National League pennant winner except the Houston Astros and the Colorado Rockies, a feat that no other team is even close to matching.

Through 2010, the Yankees have an all-time regular season winning percentage of .568 (9670/7361 record), the best of any team in baseball.

The "Yankees" name is often shortened to "the Yanks." Their most prominently used nickname is "the Bronx Bombers" or simply "the Bombers", a reference to their home and their prolific hitting. A less used nickname is "the Pinstripes", in reference to the iconic feature on their home uniforms.

Critics often refer to the team and the organization as "the Evil empire", a term applied to the Yankees by Boston Red Sox president Larry Lucchino in a 2002 interview with the New York Times.A term from the team's tumultuous late 70's, "the Bronx Zoo", is sometimes used by detractors, as well as the "Damn Yankees," after the musical of the same name. These have both been embraced by fans.

The Yankees have retired fifteen numbers for sixteen players, the most in Major League BaseballThe number 42 was retired throughout Major League Baseball in honor of Jackie Robinson on April 15, 1997, the 50th anniversary of his breaking the color barrier. The day was declared Jackie Robinson Day, and would later be observed by all of baseball, with select players from every team wearing the number 42.

Players who wore #42 at the time were allowed to continue to wear it until they left the team with which they played on April 15, 1997; Mariano Rivera, the current closer, is the last active player covered under that grandfather clause.

While other teams placed the number 42 with the rest of their retired numbers, the Yankees didn't do so at first. Ten years later, on April 17, 2007, the Yankees honored Robinson by mounting the logo of Jackie Robinson Day with a corresponding plaque alongside the rest of the retired numbers.

Because the Yankees were finishing a roadtrip in Oakland on Jackie Robinson Day, the ceremony took place two days later. When the Yankees moved to the second Yankee Stadium, they replaced the Jackie Robinson Day logo with a number 42 that resembled the other retired numbers.Billy Martin is the only Yankee to have their number retired as a player/manager combination. He wore number 1 as a player in the 1950s and as a manager in the 1970s and 1980s.