Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Entertainment/2017 March 10

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March 10

Most Consecutive World Series titles (player)

Has any player won more World Series titles in a row than Yogi Berras 5 from 1949–1953? (Mobile mundo (talk) 15:14, 10 March 2017 (UTC))

Likely not. List of World Series champions notes every World Series team, and Berra's Yankees were the only team to appear in 5 straight. There may have been Teammates of Berra's who appeared in all 5 as well; you'd have to cross-reference the rosters from those 5 years. Berra does hold the all-time total series appearances with 14, a record which may be unassailable in the modern era, since over the course of a typical MLB career, no single team appears in a series more than 4-5 times anymore. --Jayron32 15:19, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

One way to narrow down the list is to look at 1949 New York Yankees season and see which players were on the Yankees during 1949 through 1953. Allie Reynolds, for example. Once you've got that list, you can check those players' World Series stats. For a more thorough analysis, check out Restrosheet. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:21, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

In addition to Berra and Reynolds, SS Phil Rizzuto, OF Hank Bauer and Ps Ed Lopat and Vic Raschi were part of all five World Series-winning Yankees teams from 1949-1953. --Xuxl (talk) 18:29, 10 March 2017 (UTC)

Thanks (Mobile mundo (talk) 00:27, 11 March 2017 (UTC))

The question did not ask about players who won consecutive World Series titles with the same team. To really be sure whether there are others with 5 or more, you would have to consider players who were traded from the team that won the Series one year to the one that won the following year. Or if there's a place you can easily download the Series rosters of all winning teams, you could do that and work from that data. But I don't know of an easy way to get that data. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 05:05, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Actually not that hard. The OP asked about more than Berra's 5, so I googled "players with 6 or more world series rings" and found this website.[1] There are only 26 such players, and only 3 of them played for anybody beside or in addition to the Yankees. So no one has more than 5 consecutive. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 06:29, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Well solved! Also note that according to that site, there are 9 players who won 6 times including 1949–1953, and Lopat is not one of them. Therefore if all sources cited are correct, there are at least 9 other Yankees tied with Berra's 5 consecutive wins. Reynolds, Rizzuto, Bauer, and Raschi make the list of 6+ time winners, and the other four are Joe Collins, Jerry Coleman, Ralph Houk, and Charlie Silvera. But according to their Wikipedia articles, Coleman and Houk are wrong. If this is correct, then Bugs's source doesn't seem so reliable. --76.71.6.254 (talk) 07:46, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Checking Houk, he got rings, but mostly as a coach. So these 26 still need to be reviewed as players vs. coaches or managers. But the list puts an upper bound on it. The best bet would be to check the individual players on Retrosheet and see which ones actually played in all the Series. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:33, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Here's something intriguing: Joe DiMaggio is one of several Yanks who played on the 1936-1939 teams that won four straight Series. Joe retired after 1951. If he had hung around for a couple more years, he could have been (if my eyes are correct) the only one to win four straight and then later win five straight. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 08:37, 11 March 2017 (UTC)

Concerning the additional players with 6 titles, Coleman for example did not play in either the 1952 or 1953 World Series. He played for the Yankees both years, but only a handful of games (11 and 8, respectively, to be precise), so it's a question of interpretation whether he has five consecutive World Series titles to his credit. Same goes for Collins, Houk and Silvera. That leaves Bauer, Berra, Lopat, Raschi, Reynolds and Rizzuto as the only six players who played on the winning side in five consecutive series, and all six were teammates with the 1949-1953 New York Yankees dynasty. No one has done this with multiple teams, as only one other team has won as many as four consecutive World Series (the 1936-39 Yankees mentioned above). There was no player who fortuitously jumped from team to team to claim a long string of World Series titles. Indeed, the list of players who played in back-to-back World Series with different teams is very short [2], never mind ending up on the winning side two years in a row. Which is why I didn't bother looking for anyone who could beat Berra that way. --Xuxl (talk) 22:26, 11 March 2017 (UTC)