Looking back at the longest home winning streak in Yankees history

When Anthony Rizzo homered to win Thursday night’s game against the Rays, it extended a streak for this year’s Yankee team. The walk-off gave the Yankees their 14th straight home win, the longest such run for the franchise since 1961. They have not lost in the Bronx since May 23rd, when they dropped a game to the Orioles, of all teams.

While this is far from a regular occurrence, the “since 1961” qualifier in the previous paragraph should tell you that this is not a franchise record just yet. There’s still a couple more streaks they can surpass.

With the Yankees in Toronto this weekend and then in St. Petersburg to start next week, they’re not going to play another home game until this coming Thursday against the Astros. Should they continue their hot run against Houston, they would tie the record longest home winning streak in franchise history. Let’s dig into the history books and look at the run they will be chasing when they next take the field in the Bronx.

The franchise record belongs to the 1942 Yankees, who won 18-straight home games. On May 2nd, they lost 3-1 to the Tigers at Yankee Stadium, and they wouldn’t drop another game there until June 7th. It all started on May 3rd, when the Yankees hosted the White Sox in a doubleheader. They swept that with 6-4 and 3-1 wins, and they would soon be off to the races.

They would finish off a four-game sweep of the White Sox, including one 10-inning win that required a late rally after the Yankees had fallen behind 4-0 early. A planned series against Cleveland got shortened to just one game thanks to rain, but the Yankees picked up a 3-0 victory there.

The Washington Senators then came to town for a doubleheader, and there were two more games that could’ve ended the streak before it really started. Both games ended in walk-off wins, with the first in particular nearly ending poorly. The Yankees were down a run in the seventh, only for Charlie Keller to homer to tie the game, with Bill Dickey then winning the game in the ninth with a RBI bunt single.

The Yankees then spent the next two weeks on the road. While they didn’t keep their overall winning streak going, it was a successful road trip as they went 6-3. That meant they were ready to go when they returned home and quickly took two games against the Red Sox. After that was two wins against the A’s, with another walk-off coming on May 28th, that one courtesy of Joe Gordon.

May 29th featured their most dominant win of the stretch, as they crushed the Senators 16-1. After another win over Washington and a quick little road trip, the Yankees reeled off four more wins from June 3-6. In the first game of a doubleheader on the 7th, the Yankees jumped out to a 4-1 lead but couldn’t hang on. Cleveland rallied to tie the game and then broke it with a run in the top of the 9th. The Yankees put the tying run on in the bottom of the inning, but couldn’t bring it home, losing 5-4. After over a month and 18 consecutive wins at home, the Yankees had lost at Yankee Stadium.

In the road games over that same stretch, the Yankees went 7-4. In totality from May 3rd to June 6th, they went from four games back in the AL to 10 up. For the season, they went 58-19 at home, but then ended up losing all three home games they played to the Cardinals in a 4-1 loss in the World Series.

Four games is still a lot, especially when they’ll have to face another division leading team in the Astros. We would all love to see them get there, but even if they don’t, the past couple weeks have provided a fairly incredible run.