Giants end New York sports title drought

BY JIM BAUMBACH | jim.baumbach@newsday.com

2:06 PM EST, February 4, 2008

PHOENIX - If you don't count the New Jersey Devils as a New York sports team -- and, really, who among us does? -- then the Giants' Super Bowl XLII victory ended a seven-year, three-month drought since the last New York sports championship.

Amazingly, that's the longest drought in New York sports in almost 90 years.

To find out when the last time New York has undergone this long without a championship, you have to go all the way back to a stretch between 1906 and 1920, when baseball was the only sport league in existence. There were three New York teams at the time -- the New York Giants, Brooklyn Dodgers and New York Yankees -- yet they went a total of 14 years without a title.

But ever since the New York Giants won the World Series in 1921, never has New York gone this long without a title.

The last New York team prior to the Giants last night to win a championship was the Yankees in 2000 when they beat the Mets.

Since then the Giants lost to the Ravens in the Super Bowl just a few months later, the Yankees went to the World Series twice but failed to win either, the Mets came just shy of a World Series berth, the Jets had one promising run cut short by a mix of Herm Edwards' play calls and Doug Brien's right foot, and the Rangers, Islanders and Knicks haven't come that close.