Photo: New York Yankees/Getty Images

When I moved to New York City in January 2000, everyone back home in the Midwest had all sorts of recommendations on what I had to go see when I got out there. The Statue of Liberty. The Empire State Building. The World Trade Center. But without question, the place foremost in their imaginations, what popped up first when they heard the words “New York,” was Yankee Stadium. The Yankees had just won their second World Series in a row and their third of the last four seasons, and the franchise’s bold-faced names were bigger than any local celebrity’s: Jeter. Mo. Bernie. Tino. Posada. Pettitte. El Duque. Paul O’Neill (the Warrior!). George Steinbrenner was an unofficial mascot of the city via Seinfeld, an ambassador whose bluster — and championships — seemed to represent New York at its best: brash, loud, relentless, dripping with history and class, and, more than anything else, victorious. The first time I ever went to Yankee Stadium, I was flabbergasted that they lost. The Yankees are allowed to do that?

The Yanks would win the World Series again that year, over the little brother Mets, no less. But it would be nine more years — with that brutal, emotional loss in the World Series to the Diamondbacks weeks after September 11 marking the unofficial end of the Yankees dynasty — until they won another one, in 2009 … and they haven’t won one since. While this aggravates Yankees fans to no end and made their Series loss to the Dodgers last year hurt that much more, I think it’s worth noting, as MLB puts on the All-Star Game tonight, that the Yankees have lost something far more lasting in the ensuing years: They’ve lost their juice. The Yankees aren’t the signature MLB franchise anymore, the way they were for decades — nearly a century. I’m not sure they’re even going to be the signature New York franchise much longer.

The appeal of the MLB All-Star Game, held in Atlanta this year, is self-evident, right there in the name: It’s about stars, the headline names, the best the sport has to offer — and to sell. And what they are selling, increasingly, is not the Yankees.

The Yankees, who recently fell out of first place in the American League after a miserable four-game sweep at the hands of the new division leaders, the Toronto Blue Jays, had four players named to the team: Aaron Judge, Jazz Chisholm Jr., Max Fried, and Carlos Rodón. All four players are deserving, but only one of them, Judge, has ever made the All-Star team as a Yankee before, and it’s fair to say, as charismatic as Chisholm is (his name is Jazz, after all), none of them other than Judge is inspiring kids across the tristate area to pick up a bat and ball. It’s not happening around the rest of the country either. Last week, MLB released the top-20-selling jerseys so far in 2025. Judge was second, and he was the only Yankee on the list.

You know who was all over the list, though? One team that has displaced the Yankees atop the list of the most recognizable and marketable teams in baseball and one that threatens to: the Dodgers and the Mets. There are three Dodgers players — Shohei Ohtani (No. 1), Freddie Freeman (No. 3), and Mookie Betts (No. 4) — in the top five, and two Mets — Francisco Lindor (No. 6) and former Yankee Juan Soto (No. 7) — in the top six. The Dodgers now regularly outpace the Yankees in nearly every major category (television ratings, payroll, wins), and they’re catching up with them in franchise value, according to Forbes’ annual calculations. (Curiously, Forbes claims the Yankees lost $57 million last year.) The Dodgers have all the juice the Yankees used to have. When fans of lower-revenue teams claim the sport is rigged against them, it’s the Dodgers — the defending World Series champs who spent their offseason buying every major free agent; you know, the way the Yankees used to do — they see as the villain, not the Yankees.

And the next villain, increasingly, is the Mets, not the Yankees, with their owner, Steve Cohen, a replacement Boss in a way that the penny-pinching, avoid-the-luxury-tax Steinbrenner offspring have never shown much interest in being. When MLB owners installed a new luxury tax threshold for teams who spent over a certain amount — a number only the Mets reached — it became known as “the Cohen tax,” and the Mets owner responded in a Steinbrennerian way: “It’s better than a bridge being named after you,” he said. And that was before he outspent the Yankees for Soto, the sort of superstar who, under a different Yankee era, would have teamed with Judge as Yankees legends for the next decade and perhaps several decades to come. Instead, the Mets got him. Like the Dodgers got Ohtani. And Blake Snell, and Roki Sasaki, and the other top free agents this offseason. The Dodgers and Mets pulled off classic Yankees moves. Now everybody hates them for it. Which is what the Yankees’ job is supposed to be.

It’s not like the Yankees are getting the last laugh on the field either. Both the Dodgers and Mets have better records than the Yankees do, and with the recent injury to key starter Clarke Schmidt (who will miss the rest of this season and most of next), their rotation is down essentially three starters with few replacements waiting in the wings. Considering how hot the (considerably younger) Red Sox are, it’s not inconceivable that the Yankees could be in real trouble in the second half: They could end up more likely in third place than first. But even if they don’t, the Yankees, particularly with Soto gone, look more and more like Aaron Judge and a whole bunch of other guys whose names your grandmother doesn’t know. There is some exciting young talent on the Yankees — Jasson Dominguez and Ben Rice have taken big steps forward — but, well, no offense to Dominguez and Rice, but you probably shouldn’t expect either of them to show up on the jersey-sales lists anytime soon.

One should not romanticize the Steinbrenner era. The man was a tyrant and often a foolish one — and, let’s not forget, a convicted felon, back when that sort of designation left a mark on a public figure. But the one thing he made sure of all the time, for better or worse, was that the Yankees were at the center of the baseball universe. That time has passed. It’s a Dodgers world now, and maybe soon a Mets one. Aaron Judge will someday stand alongside other Yankees legends, and it’s a good thing — because now, he’s the only one they have left.

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