The New York Yankees are an American professional baseball team based in the New York City borough of the Bronx. The Yankees compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the American League (AL) East division. They are one of two major league clubs based in New York City, the other being the National League's (NL) New York Mets. The team was founded in 1903 when Frank Farrell and Bill Devery purchased the franchise rights to the defunct Baltimore Orioles (no relation to the current team of the same name) after it ceased operations and used them to establish the New York Highlanders. The Highlanders were officially renamed the New York Yankees in 1913.The team is owned by Yankee Global Enterprises, a limited liability company that is controlled by the family of the late George Steinbrenner, who purchased the team in 1973. Brian Cashman is the team's general manager, and Aaron Boone is the team's field manager. The team's home games were played at the original Yankee Stadium in the Bronx from 1923 to 1973 and from 1976 to 2008. In 1974 and 1975, the Yankees shared Shea Stadium with the Mets, in addition to the New York Jets and the New York Giants. In 2009, they moved into a new ballpark of the same name that was constructed adjacent to the previous facility, which was closed and demolished. The team is perennially among the leaders in MLB attendance.Arguably the most successful professional sports team in the United States and one of the most highly regarded, the Yankees have won 19 American League East Division titles, 40 American League pennants, and 27 World Series championships, all of which are MLB records. The team has won more titles than any other franchise in the four major North American sports leagues, after briefly trailing the NHL's Montreal Canadiens in the 1990s. The Yankees have had 44 players and 11 managers inducted into the National Baseball Hall of Fame, including many of the sport's most iconic figures in history such as Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Mickey Mantle, Yogi Berra, and Whitey Ford; more recent inductees include Mariano Rivera, and Derek Jeter, who both having the two highest vote percentages of all Hall of Fame members. According to Forbes, the Yankees are the second-highest valued sports franchise in both the United States and the world, after the NFL's Dallas Cowboys, with an estimated value in 2022 of approximately $6 billion. The team has garnered enormous popularity and a dedicated fanbase, as well as widespread enmity from fans of other MLB teams. The team's rivalry with the Boston Red Sox is one of the most well-known rivalries in North American sports.From 1903 through the 2021 season, the Yankees' overall winloss record is 10,5037,937 (a .570 winning percentage).

The World Series is the annual championship series of Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada, contested since 1903 between the champion teams of the American League (AL) and the National League (NL). The winner of the World Series championship is determined through a best-of-seven playoff, and the winning team is awarded the Commissioner's Trophy. As the series is played during the fall season in North America, it is also referred to as the Fall Classic. From 2017 to 2019, the event was officially known as the World Series presented by YouTube TV for sponsorship reasons.Prior to the AL and NL being split into divisions in 1969, the team with the best regular-season win–loss record in each league automatically clinched its league's pennant and advanced to the World Series, barring a tie necessitating a pennant playoff. Since then, each league has conducted a championship series (ALCS and NLCS) preceding the World Series to determine which teams will advance, while those series have in turn been preceded by division series (ALDS and NLDS) since 1995 and by wild card games in each league since 2012. The World Series has been contested 117 times as of 2021, with the AL winning 66 and the NL winning 51.

Until 2002, home-field advantage in the World Series alternated from year to year between the National League and American League. From 2003 to 2016, home-field advantage was given to the league that won that year's All-Star Game. Starting in 2017, home-field advantage was awarded to the league champion team with the better regular-season win–loss record, except in 2020, when a neutral-site ballpark hosted all games of the series.