With their first World Series title in nine years, members of the New York Yankees should be in the running to win Sports Illustrated’s annual Sportsman of the Year award.  After all, the Yankees’ run to glory was arguably the biggest sports  story of 2009, and homegrown heroes and future Hall of Famers Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera now have five World Series  rings to their names.

But SI seems to have a thing against the Bombers. They’ve been giving out Sportsman of the Year awards since 1954, to honor  “the athlete or team whose performance that year most embodies the spirit of sportsmanship and achievement.” SI has named baseball players and teams Sportsman of the Year 13 out of 55 times. Yet a Yankee has never won the honor,  even though the team has won an incredible 10 World Series titles in that time frame, with an 11th title this year. Here’s how it breaks down:

* 1956: Mickey Mantle achieves Triple Crown honors,  and the Yankees win the World Series; SI picks Olympic track and field star Bobby Joe Morrow as their Sportsman

* 1958: Yankees beat the Milwaukee Braves in the World Series; Rafer Johnson of track and field fame wins the Sportsman honors

* 1961: Roger Maris hits 61 home runs; college basketball star Jerry Lucas wins Sportsman of the Year

* 1962: The Yankees have back-to-back World Series titles; Heisman Trophy winner Terry Baker gets the Sportsman honor

* 1977:  Reggie Jackson hits three homers on the very first pitch in Game 6 of the World Series; SI gives jockey Steve Cauthen the Sportsman award

* 1978: Bucky Dent hits one of the most memorable homers of all time, and also wins World Series MVP;  Jack Nicklaus is named Sportsman of the Year

* 1996: Yankees win their first title in 18 years; but they aren’t named Sportsmen of the Year - Tiger Woods gets it instead

* 1998: The 1998 Yankees win 125 games; Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa win Sportsmen of the Year

* 1999: Yanks win back-to-back titles: the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team are picked as SI’s Sportswomen of the Year

* 2000: Yankees win Subway Series; Tiger Woods wins Sportsman of the Year again

Notice a pattern there? No matter how memorable and deserving a Yankee’s achievements may have been - and certainly Mantle’s Triple Crown, Maris’ 61 homers, and Reggie Jackson’s three-homer game rank with some of sports’ all-time most celebrated feats - the player has not been given Sportsman of the Year honors.

Yet if a non-Yankee achieves a similar feat, like Carl Yastrzemski’s 1967 Triple Crown, or McGwire and Sosa breaking Maris’ record, or Orel Hershiser’s great pitching in the 1988 playoffs, there is a very good chance such a player will get SI’s award.

And if a player and/or his team beat the Yankees, they stand an even better chance at being named Sportsman of the Year. Look at these past winners, and what they did to win:

* 1955: Brooklyn Dodgers World Series MVP Johnny Podres - beat the Yankees in the World Series

* 2001: Arizona Diamondback pitchers Curt Schilling and Randy Johnson - beat the Yankees in the World Series

*  2004: Boston Red Sox - beat the Yankees in the ALCS

Very interesting.

Am I saying that the Yankees should have won Sportsman of the Year all eleven times they won the World Series? Of course not. But you’d think they would have won at least once or twice in that timeframe. For not a single Yankee team or player to have been given that honor in SI’s entire history is nothing short of astonishing.

This year’s Sportsman of the Year honor will be annnounced November 30. So will this be the year that a Yankee finally wins the award? The media site Gawker.com says that an anonymous tipster told them Derek Jeter is the 2009 Sportsman of the Year. If this is indeed the case, that honor is long overdue - both for Jeter, and for the Yankees.

Photo by SICovers

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