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The Yankees' great season wasn't quite that neat and tidy, though. The most significant number about this ballclub, and one that more neatly gets at the sheer strangeness of the 2009 Yankees, is $84 million. That's how much the team paid Jeter, Pettitte, Mariano Rivera, Jorge Posada, Johnny Damon, and Hideki Matsui. None of them should be any good at all, and yet without them the team wouldn't have even made the playoffs.

The first four of these players, all veterans of the team's dynastic run under Joe Torre, are really, truly old. Leave their greatness aside—men their age usually can't take the field at their positions. In 2009, Posada became one of just 16 catchers ever to play 100 or more games at age 37. Jeter became one of 44 shortstops to play 100 or more games at...