Yankees and Orioles share a disputed 1903 family tree

A July 1902 walkout emptied the first Orioles

The American League began play as a major league in 1901 under Ban Johnson. He wanted a club in Manhattan, but the owners of the National League's New York Giants blocked it, so the franchise landed in Baltimore instead, according to the club's Wikipedia history). Its manager and part-owner was John McGraw, who had already managed Baltimore's National League team in 1899.

McGraw and Johnson fought constantly over discipline. On July 16, 1902, McGraw left to manage the Giants, transferred his stake in the Baltimore club to them, and took several players along. Sean Forman of Baseball-Reference names Joe McGinnity and Roger Bresnahan among them. The Orioles ran so short of bodies that they forfeited a game to the St. Louis Browns.

Hold on to that opponent. It matters later.

Five players made the trip to Hilltop Park

The league took the broken Baltimore franchise over. For 1903, Frank Farrell and Bill Devery bought the rights and put a team in New York, where it played at Hilltop Park, built on one of upper Manhattan's highest points between 165th and 168th Streets in Washington Heights. The club was called the Highlanders. Sportswriters started using "Yankees" in 1904 because it fit in a headline, and the name became official in 1913.

Here is the detail that settles it for many historians. Of the 39 players who appeared for Baltimore in 1902, only five played for New York in 1903: Jimmy Williams, Herm McFarland, Ernie Courtney, Harry Howell and Snake Wiltse. The manager was gone. The owners were new. The city was new.

Why the record books split the family in 2014

For years, Baseball-Reference counted the 1901 and 1902 Baltimore seasons as the opening chapter of Yankees history. Forman argued in February 2010 that the two were really separate franchises. On July 21, 2014, the site made the change, and Mike Lynch's announcement explains what finally forced the issue: the combined Baltimore and New York win total was approaching 10,000, and nobody wanted to celebrate a milestone built on a disputed foundation.

The case rests on how the move happened. Pete Palmer and Gary Gillette, editors of the ESPN Baseball Encyclopedia, described it plainly: the Baltimore franchise went bust during the season, the league took it over, and after the season the league sold a new franchise in New York. That is not a relocation in the usual sense. It is closer to a vacancy being filled. MLB's official historian, John Thorn, supported the split, and the Yankees themselves do not count the Orioles years.

I think the record keepers got the paperwork right. Five holdover players and a league-run sale do not make a team. Still, the looser version is the one I would tell at a ballpark, because it is simply a better story: the most famous franchise in the sport grew in ground Baltimore had just cleared.

Today's Orioles came from Milwaukee by way of St. Louis

The modern Orioles are not descendants of the 1901 club either. Their line starts with the Milwaukee Brewers of the Western League in 1894, which joined the American League in 1901. In 1902 that club moved to St. Louis and became the Browns. In 1954 the Browns moved to Baltimore and took the old Orioles name.

So the team that received that 1902 forfeit, the St. Louis Browns, is the same franchise that now plays as the Baltimore Orioles. In a sense, the modern Orioles collected a win over the old ones half a century before they ever wore the name. I checked that twice because it seemed too tidy. It holds.

The old ballpark ties the threads together too. David B. Stinson's guide to Babe Ruth sites, published by the Babe Ruth Birthplace and Museum, lists American League Park at 2840 Greenmount Avenue as the home of the 1901-02 Orioles and, later, of the minor league Orioles that Ruth joined in 1914. A McDonald's and row houses stand on the site now. Six years later Ruth was a Yankee, and the rest of his career made him the club's defining star.

What No. 52 adds to an old argument

The September 2026 meeting between the clubs closed out their regular-season series. A forecast nor'easter pushed Saturday's game into a Friday doubleheader, which moved Sabathia's ceremony up a day as well. The Associated Press reported that he became the 24th player or manager with a retired Yankees number, and the fifth member of the 2009 champions to get one.

My favorite line in that coverage was smaller. After the ceremony, Sabathia threw the first pitch to his son Carsten, a first baseman in the Milwaukee minor league system. Milwaukee, of all places, is where the Orioles' own story began in 1894. The game itself went to Baltimore, 10-2, behind Pete Alonso's American League-leading 42nd home run and a Dylan Beavers grand slam, before New York took the nightcap 6-3.

Records will say the Yankees and Orioles are strangers who happen to share a division. The fuller history is warmer and stranger. New York's team grew out of a hole Baltimore left in 1902, and a club from Milwaukee filled the hole in Baltimore in 1954 by borrowing back the old name. Every time they meet, two halves of the same accident are on the field.