DI'S

They hit for power. They hit for average. They just hit.

Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig, a mere one-quarter of the lineup, combined for 107 home runs and 339 RBIs. Ruth hit 60 homers, Gehrig drove in 175 runs. The outfield of Ruth, Bob Meusel and Earle Combs combined for 597 hits and a .350 average. And these guys could run, too. Combs had 23 triples. Meusel stole 24 bases, Tony Lazzeri 22 and Combs 15. With them, the Yankees of '27 won 110 games and took the American League pennant by 19 games.

EARL COMBS

"I have never gone in much for liquor. Some of the boys on those Huggins (Manager Miller Huggins) clubs could not understand how a Kentuckian did not drink. One of them came to me in 1925 and said, 'Combs, if you expect to stay on this club, you had better learn to drink.'" Despite threats and peer pressure, the Yankees' lead-off hitter remained a lifelong teetotaler, nonsmoker and devoted Bible reader. A weak-armed center fielder, Combs had the misfortune of playing between Babe Ruth and Bob Meusel, the men with the best throwing arms in baseball, but the Kentucky Colonel made up for his defensive shortcomings with a .325 career batting average.

Mark Koenig

Koenig was a light-hitting shortstop who led the league in errors in 1927 but was also the man who batted just before Ruth and Gehrig in the Murderers' Row lineup. He hit .500 in the '27 World Series, leading all batters. In 1932, Koenig helped the Chicago Cubs win the pennant, whereupon he became indirectly responsible for one of the most famous moments in baseball history. The Yankees felt their ex-teammate had been poorly treated by the Cubs when they voted him only a half-share of the World Series money. The two teams' increasingly acrimonious exchanges of insults and hand gestures finally culminated in Babe Ruth's called shot, the home run he definitely did or did not predict in pantomime.

BABE RUTH

"Here you may meet baseball's greatest slugger face to face. Babe Ruth, the Superman of Swat -- most picturesque of ballplayers, the greatest slugger who ever lived." This caption appeared with Conlon's photograph when it was first published in the September 1927 issue of "Baseball Magazine." When this most picturesque of ballplayers hit 60 home runs in 1927, he easily surpassed the next-highest home-run total in the American League, the 56 home runs hit collectively by the Philadelphia Athletics.

LOU GEHRIG

Babe Ruth may have hit 60 home runs this year, but Lou Gehrig was the Yankee voted the American League Most Valuable Player in 1927. For most of the season, Gehrig had battled Ruth for the league lead in home runs and his final total of 47 was more than any batter other than Ruth had ever hit in a season. Gehrig's presence in the Yankees' lineup aided Ruth immeasurably in setting his new home-run record, since no pitcher would dare pitch around the Babe to get to Lou.

BOB MEUSEL

In 1918, his first year as an outfielder, Babe Ruth lost a fly ball in the sun. He vowed then and there never to play the sun field again. Thus, although Bob Meusel was the Yankees' left fielder at Yankee Stadium, on the road he usually traded places with right fielder Ruth in order to keep the most valuable eyes in baseball out of the sun. This meant, of course, that Meusel always played the sun field. We can see the effects of his self-sacrifice in Conlon's close-up. Meusel, who batted fifth behind Ruth and Gehrig in Murderers' Row, had the greatest arm in baseball: "He could hit a dime at 100 yards and flatten it against a wall," said teammate Joe Dugan.

TONY LAZZERI

In 1925, Lazzeri hit 60 home runs and batted in a prodigious 222 runs. He was playing for Salt Lake City in the Pacific Coast League at the time, but the discerning Yankees quickly signed him up. Like most young major leaguers in this era, the Yankee second baseman had to get a job in the off-season to make ends meet: Lazzeri worked with his father as a boilermaker in San Francisco.

JOE DUGAN

Third baseman Dugan always sat next to Babe Ruth on the Yankees bench. He won his nickname by repeatedly "jumping" (i.e., deserting) the last-place Philadelphia Athletics as a young player. When pitchers threw at him or when he got homesick, Jumpin' Joe would jump the team. Fans taunted him with cries of "I wanna go home!" and Jumpin' Joe would jump again. Remarkably, when he joined the first-place Yankees in 1923, his aberrant behavior ceased forever.

COLLINS

Babe Ruth called everybody Kid because he had difficulty remembering names, but for teammates he would make exceptions. Here is the man Ruth called Horse Nose. Collins was a substitute catcher throughout his career, but in 1927, he played in more games than any other Yankee catcher and contributed seven home runs to the Yankees' league-leading total of 158.