Those Yankees boasted of Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Murderers' Row. These Yankees do not have anyone among the top 50 home-run hitters in the majors.
Those Yankees had six players eventually elected to the Hall of Fame. These Yankees did not have a single player elected to start the All-Star game.Those Yankees are considered the greatest team ever. And yet, these Yankees are the ones winning at a historic rate.
That said, is it baseball heresy to compare this club to - yikes! - the 1927 New York Yankees?
"People keep asking me how good we are and I tell them I don't know," outfielder Paul O'Neill said. "The season's not over."
No, but the race in the AL East appears to be done. At 67-22 going into the weekend, the only chase for these Yankees seems to be for records.
There's the major league mark of 116 wins set by the 1906 Chicago Cubs and the AL record of 111 by the 1954 Cleveland Indians, both accomplished in a 154-game schedule.
"Every night they step on the field, it's a new record," Indians manager Mike Hargrove said.
"What impresses me is they don't have any one person having a blowout, monster offensive year. They've got a lot of guys having very good solid years," he said. "They've got good pitching, a very good bullpen. It's a club built for consistency and the long haul."
But back to those '27 Yanks.
With a lineup led by Ruth and Gehrig, they went 110-44 and posted the best winning percentage in Yankees' history at .714.
And those numbers don't begin the tell the story because perhaps no team ever inspired such awe or carried such an aura of invincibility.
Ruth hit 60 home runs that season, more than any of the other seven AL teams. Gehrig had 47 and helped the Yankees finish with 158, dwarfing the average of 40 hit by the other AL clubs.
Bolstering their image as Bronx Bombers were second baseman Tony Lazzeri and outfielder Earle Combs, both future Hall of Famers. Waite Hoyt (22-7) and Herb Pennock (19-8) led the league's top pitching staff and also made it to Cooperstown, as did manager Miller Huggins.
Most likely, none of the current Yankees will wind up in the Hall. In fact, at least on paper or Strat-O-Matic cards, teams such as Atlanta and Seattle look stronger because of their individual talent.
But despite ranking just ninth among AL teams in home runs - and power often defines great teams, such as the Big Red Machine and the '61 Yanks of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris - these New Yorkers never seem to lose.
With a winning percentage of .753 going into the weekend, the Yankees had matched the 1902 Pittsburgh Pirates for the best 89-game record of any team this century.
Plus, they had either won or split 33 of their last 34 series and had gone more than a month without losing consecutive games.
They've done it with the top staff in the league, led by starters David Cone, Andy Pettitte, David Wells, Hideki Irabu and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez and closer Mariano Rivera.
They've done it with things that don't show up so prominently in boxscores, be it a hit-and-run single by Derek Jeter, a squeeze bunt by Joe Girardi or a walk by Chuck Knoblauch.
They've done it by overcoming injuries to Bernie Williams, Tino Martinez and Chili Davis, by holding their egos in check and by showing a daily desire that has impressed manager Joe Torre.
"We knew we'd be good in spring training," Torre said.