E-Mail This Article to a Friend Those were the days Remembering a time when the Yankees were laughingstocks BY CHRISTOPHER YOUNG

There’s a whole slew of baseball fans who don’t remember a time when there was no DH in the American League, when there were just the two leagues and no divisions, there was no scoreboard in the corner of your TV screen, and when 50-home-run seasons were as rare as Halley’s Comet.

But there was also a time that is considered the "dark period" for New York Yankees fans of a certain generation when the team was not a perennial playoff contender and Fall Classic aspirant. There was actually a time before Joe Torre and Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera when the Yankees really did, well, you know. They were ordinary or worse and annually were buried in the American League standings, and even though the same blusterous man oversaw the operation — George Steinbrenner — and they had baseball’s highest payroll, it just didn’t matter. The Yankees, between the AL pennant-winning year of 1981 and the title year of 1996, actually did not win one pennant nor one divisional crown during that entire 15-year period, and instead were chronic underachievers and oftentimes the butt of jokes throughout the land.

For Red Sox fans, those are known as the golden years of the two teams’ ancient rivalry. The Sox weren’t world-beaters themselves either during that stretch, but they did capture the pennant in 1986 and divisional honors in 1988 and 1990.

But we’re not talking about Boston right here and right now; we’re looking at the team that won back-to-back world titles in 1977 and 1978 and collected additional hardware in 1996, ’98, ’99, and 2000. But not only did the Pinstripers have a title drought throughout the ’80s and early ’90s; they were the crown princes of foolishness, and even the class that the current edition often exudes still has a difficult time overshadowing some of the exploits that made the Yankees the laughingstocks of the majors way back when.

Given some of the lunk-headed moves that the Yankees made then, it is difficult to believe that George Costanza was not part of the organization, given the franchise’s front-office ineptitude. The team was still up to its old tricks even in those days regarding free agency, and no organization was more free-wheeling with its checkbook in offering big-money contracts to available players. Sure, the Yanks did harvest some home-grown talent, including the likes of Ron Guidry, Don Mattingly, and Mike Pagliarulo, but the majority of the top-flight players that littered the roster during those years were signed free agents. The list is remarkably impressive, but like now, only one major-league team was able to afford the bidding wars for these marquee players’ talents. Dave Winfield. Reggie Jackson. Catfish Hunter. Don Gullett. Goose Gossage. Tommy John. Luis Tiant. Ken Griffey. Rickey Henderson. Don Baylor. Steve Kemp. Jack Clark. Bert Camperneris. Danny Tartabull. And so on.

Some of those players produced, but many did not, and though this era confirms defensive Yankee fans’ theory — that just spending the most money does not guarantee a title — the underachievement of the big-money players was not the foundation for the Yankees’ being the object of ridicule.

For that, one had to go to the managerial merry-go-round that began in earnest in 1978 — the Yanks’ last title before the onset of the 18-year drought. In that particular season, the Yankees employed three managers during the course of the year, with (remember this name) Billy Martin getting the axe in late July despite a 52-42 record and a defending world champion on the field. (Martin had called Jackson and Steinbrenner "liars" in the days leading up to his dismissal, which was dubbed a "resignation for health reasons.") Interim manager Dick Howser lost but one game following Martin’s tenure before he too was shuttled, and recently-fired White Sox manager Bob Lemon was brought in to right the ship. Yet in a strange turn of events which was only the harbinger of things to come, the Yankees on Old-Timers’ Day four days later announced that Martin would return to manage the team in 1980 — nearly two years later.

Most New Englanders know how the ’78 season ended for both the Sox and Yanks, but Martin didn’t have to wait until the spring of ’80, because he was brought back when the Yankees fired Lemon — who had led the Pinstripers to that ’78 title — on June 18, 1979 despite a 34-30 record.

But we’re not even close to the end of this tale, folks. After New York endured the death of catcher Thurman Munson along with a fourth-place finish in ’79, Martin was again replaced by Howser in 1980 after a hotel confrontation with a marshmallow salesman, and Howser guided the team to a 103-59 record and another AL East title. But shades of Grady Little, the Yanks were swept by soon-to-be-champion Kansas City in the ALCS, and Howser was sent to a premature "retirement" by Steinbrenner & Co. His replacement? Nope, not who you think — at least not yet — but instead, it was former Yanks infielder Gene Michael. Michael led the squad to an impressive 34-22 record out of the gate, but when the players’ strike split the season into two halves, New York’s second-half record under Michael — 14-12 en route to a 25-26 mark — wasn’t quite up to snuff for you-know-who, so the former shortstop was dismissed. Back in the saddle was Lemon, and though the Hall-of-Famer led the squad back to the World Series, the Yanks’ six-game loss to the Dodgers made his days numbered (and also resulted in Steinbrenner’s outlandish "apology" to Yankee fans, which was also a veiled criticism of free-agent signee Winfield’s 1-for-22 output in the Series). Little did the team know at the time that it wouldn’t be returning to the Fall Classic for another 15 seasons, but the off-field hijinks continued, much to the delight of Yankee-haters everywhere.