No franchise celebrates the pursuit of immortality quite like the Yankees. To become a champion in pinstripes is to become a part of an everlasting legacy. It means a tip of the cap after a warm ovation on Old-Timers Day, a banner raised high above the iconic stadium facade, a place within the rich history of baseball’s winningest organization. Above all, it means being remembered forever.

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Nobody dared to say it out loud. But in the summer of 1994, the Yankees sensed that this destiny was within reach.

There were already murmurs about a classic World Series. In the National League, the upstart Expos proved themselves to be such a force that decades later, history would remember them as the best in baseball that season. But on the afternoon of July 24, after a stirring comeback to wrap up a remarkable road trip, the entire sport was looking up at a team in the American League. That day, the Yankees pushed their mark to 60-36, the best record in baseball.

“We were working on going somewhere and believing in ourselves,” said Don Mattingly, the team captain who had lived through the darkest days of a painful rebuild. “We were all part of that movement. It just felt good to be on a team that was unified. When you took the field, you knew you were coming to play.”

The problem was how much longer the players would take the field. That summer, labor trouble loomed. Owners wanted a salary cap; the players wouldn’t give them one. A strike date was set for Aug. 12. When the deadline arrived without an agreement between the owners and players, the game would be changed forever. A quarter-century later, the consequences remain incomprehensible.

“The strike, it was sickening,” said Buck Showalter, the manager of those Yankees. “Sickening.”

No season in the 125-year history of Major League Baseball produced more what-ifs than the strike-stricken campaign of 1994. What if Matt Williams had been allowed to keep swatting homers? Does he become the first to pass Roger Maris? What if Tony Gwynn had been allowed to continue his assault on .400? Does he join Ted Williams? What if the Expos had been granted the time to finish their conquest of the National League? Does baseball in Montreal flourish rather than falter?

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Then there were the Yankees. When the strike hit, they had been a team of developing stalwarts, wily veterans and steady role players. It had taken years to assemble. Somehow, they had come together in a bid to join the immortals. Instead, they would be overlooked by history.

“I’ve talked to people about it recently,” said Mike Stanley, one of the catchers on that team. “It’s like, ‘Oh yeah, the ’94 season, there was no World Series that year.’ Yeah, sure, but there was a team that was pretty stinkin’ good in the American League, and that was us. Everybody’s kind of forgotten that year.”

The once-proud franchise had gone 13 years since reaching the playoffs. The drought encompassed the entirety of Mattingly’s career. In that time, George Steinbrenner was at his tyrannical worst, with his most destructive instincts often going unchecked. Those mistakes ultimately forced the owner into a two-year exile from baseball. But in his absence, general manager Gene “Stick” Michael orchestrated a revival. In four years, the Yankees had gone from a bumbling laughingstock to a rising superpower. In 1994, it appeared that Mattingly at long last had secured a date with October.

“Without a doubt, I think that’s going to be one of the great years in Yankees history, one of those great teams,” said Mets first base coach Glenn Sherlock, who was a coach on that ’94 Yankees team. “That’s how that team would have been remembered. It would have been a great thing for Don Mattingly, to lead that team and see how far it could go in the postseason. It was full of competitors.“

None of that mattered when acting commissioner Bud Selig made the announcement that no one could fathom. Little more than a month after the strike had begun, the remainder of the season was canceled. There would be no pennant race. There would be no playoffs. There would be no World Series. With that declaration, a season that could have been historic had instead slipped into infamy.

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“I remember being in shock, just being dumbfounded,” said Paul O’Neill, the fiery outfielder whose best season in the big leagues was for the ’94 Yankees. “That didn’t enter my mind that the season would not finish.”

Some like O’Neill were fortunate, sticking around long enough to earn redemption as part of the next Yankees dynasty. But many others wouldn’t be as lucky.

“We had an awful lot on the line,” saidJim Abbott, the standout southpaw whose best chance at a title ended with the strike. “And to lose that, I remember being very disappointed. You just don’t know how many chances you’re going to have to do that and to play on that kind of team.”

The Expos were a star-studded collection of budding talent, featuring Larry Walker, Moises Alou and Pedro Martínez. Only a handful had reached their 30th birthday. By contrast, Stanley described the Yankees as “a bunch of ragtag guys that played hard and wanted to win.” While there might have been a disparity in talent, there was no such gap in confidence. For years, Showalter joked with his Expos counterpart Felipe Alou about which team would have prevailed. It became another bitter what-if brought on by the strike.

“You’ve got these two immovable objects so to speak,” said Showalter, whose tenure as manager would end after the following season. “That’s what’s great about the postseason. They were just two really good teams and everybody knew it, and somebody was going to lose. But I really liked our chances. I really liked our chances.”

The Yankees won the World Series in 1978 and added a pennant in 1981. The remainder of the 1980s was spent watching the playoffs from home. At first, they built competitive teams around Mattingly, though they seemed perpetually short of pitching. With every passing year, their deficiencies grew more obvious. At the direction of the impatient Steinbrenner, young talent was traded away for quick fixes. Those moves pushed them farther away from winning. As a result, Mattingly’s prime was squandered.

By the end of the decade, the franchise was a joke. When they weren’t creating tabloid headlines by squabbling over haircuts, they were getting steamrolled by the teams that they had wanted to be. The A’s were the standard-bearers of the American League, winning three straight pennants from 1988 to 1990. The Yankees didn’t belong on the same field. Sometimes, when he recalls the franchise’s darkest days, current general manager Brian Cashman still references how the A’s “kicked dirt in our faces.” The nadir came in 1990, the year Steinbrenner was banned from baseball, and the Yankees went 0-12 against the A’s. It was the first time in franchise history that they’d go winless for the season against any league opponent.

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The only ray of light was Mattingly, the team’s beating heart. He may have been physically diminished, the pain in his back sapping him of the power that helped propelled him to the MVP award in 1985. Still, this version of the captain left teammates and coaches in awe. No one worked harder. No one prepared more consistently. No one made for a better archetype. This is what Michael had decided when he was installed as general manager.

“It all started with Mattingly and Stick,” Showalter said. “They had a lot in common. They just didn’t have time for a lot of bullshit that didn’t matter. Minutiae, Stick used to call it. Is that really important? Why are we dwelling on that?”

Michael had played for the Yankees, scouted, and then managed. A lifetime of experience had readied him for the challenge of his career. Long before FanGraphs, he had intuitively grasped the importance of reaching base. He stressed working tough at-bats against starters so that weaker middle relievers could be exploited. He also understood that the culture in the clubhouse couldn’t be cleaned up without Mattingly, whose presence gained importance as the Yankees began graduating their own homegrown players.

When a fledgling Bernie Williams was getting hazed by a salty veteran, it was Mattingly who pushed back. “Mel Hall or somebody called him Bernice,” Showalter said. “Donnie jumped in their shit. So did I. He’s like, ‘This guy is going to be part of some really good baseball here. Let’s make his path easier instead of harder.’” When a young Jim Leyritz rubbed teammates the wrong way with his brashness — like the time he stormed out of the dugout because he was pinch-hit for — it was Mattingly who loudly let him know that the behavior was unacceptable. “Boys, Elvis has left the building,” Showalter said, recounting Mattingly’s retort as Leyritz left in a huff. “The whole fucking dugout just cracked up. OK, Elvis, you can leave now. He goes, ‘Who the fuck are you? Who the fuck are you?’”

In 1990, the Yankees crashed, winning just 67 games. But they’d improve those totals to 71 and 76 over the next two seasons. Progress came slow and steady. It had taken years to purge the clubhouse. But the worst of it was over.

Said Mattingly: “It was an exciting time.”

Those Yankees were not star-studded. This was not by design. In the winter of 1992, the free-agent market included Barry Bonds, Greg Maddux and David Cone. None would come to the Bronx. Slight improvement couldn’t erase the scars of the dark years. Undeterred, Michael stayed true to his vision, paying special attention to those who would shape the right culture. “Slowly,” Mattingly said, “we were getting guys.”

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In signing lefty Jimmy Key and infielder Mike Gallego, the Yankees added seasoned professionals who had won a World Series championship. Wade Boggs arrived from the Red Sox, where he’d been labeled as selfish, though the Yankees believed he’d fold into their new culture. On the trade front, Michael sent Roberto Kelly to the Reds for the volatile O’Neill. To round out the rotation, the Yankees traded for Abbott, who had been an anchor with the Angels. The lefty’s initial reaction was typical for the time. “When I first received news that I had been traded to the Yankees, the connotation wasn’t great,” Abbott said. “It was not a destination. There was a lot of drama there.”

That would change quickly. In 1993, the Yankees finished with a winning record for the first time in years. They dueled with the defending world champion Blue Jays, making it a race until the final month of the season. But the biggest shift came within the walls of the clubhouse.

“I’d been through a few of those years — kind of what we’re doing now a little bit, where you’re struggling and struggling,” said Mattingly, now the manager of the Marlins. “At some point, that thing turns. They brought in the right guys, guys who played the game right, guys who didn’t accept losing.” Mattingly described a familiar dynamic. There would always be those in it for themselves and those in it for the team. The key, he said, was swaying those in the middle. That task became easier with the likes of Gallego, Stanley and, perhaps most noticeably, O’Neill. “Here’s a guy that was so competitive, it’s almost like he tipped the scales,” Mattingly said. “When you get enough guys going the right direction, then everybody kind of gets in line.”

The Yankees knew what they were getting. O’Neill had terrorized clubhouse tunnels and Gatorade coolers all over the National League. The fire he brought was evident immediately. Upon his arrival, he was held out against lefties. Showalter insisted that it was to prevent a tough start in New York, where fans could be unforgiving. As part of his daily routine, Showalter roamed the outfield during batting practice, using the downtime to chat up his players. A fuming O’Neill would avoid the manager. “He used to call me ‘the stumpy little fuck,’” Showalter recalled. “’Why is the stumpy little fuck not playing me today?’” In his first year with the Yankees, O’Neill set career highs in average (.311), slugging (.504) and OPS (.871). And he wasn’t done making Michael look like a genius.

“Gene Michael was amazing,” Showalter said. “It was him at his best — understanding who could perform in that arena and who couldn’t.”

When Michael sought a new skipper for the 1992 season, Showalter wasn’t his first choice. But their union evolved into a flourishing partnership. In Showalter, Michael found a manager who thrived on preparation. In Michael, Showalter found a mentor, one who schooled him on how to coexist with Steinbrenner.

Decisiveness was Michael’s strength. It made him unafraid to make major decisions. It showed in everything he did, whether it was cutting a player or postponing a game because of looming weather. “It was a million-dollar call if you don’t open the gates and you don’t play the game or whatever,” Showalter said. “He would walk out the door 10 seconds later, get in his car, and drive home. He said, ‘Listen, if the sun comes out and it doesn’t rain the rest of the day, I don’t want to hear from anybody. We’re moving on to tomorrow.’ He made a decision and moved onto the next path. He never dwelled on shit.”

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Years of operating with conviction were about to pay off.

Expectations did little to sway the Yankees in 1994. Pat Kelly, Stanley and Leyritz, holdovers from the bad old days, emerged as key contributors. Williams took a big step forward, raising his OPS by 100 points. Boggs was on the way to a .342 average. Mattingly hit .304, but more importantly, he remained the team’s emotional core. The Yankees had not reached the postseason since 1981. Getting Mattingly there for the first time became the focus.

“That team fit him,” Showalter said. “That whole team was him. That ’94 team, that was a really fun team to manage because it was driven by Mattingly’s makeup and the charisma and just the aura he had around him. Everybody wanted to please him. You wanted to be accepted by him. You wanted to play the game like he played it, and the way he wanted to play it. There were a lot of people who were really starting to make their mark who went on to have great careers.”

Perhaps no one benefited more from that steadying presence than O’Neill. In those days before interleague play, Mattingly had been known to him only through reputation. Mattingly had always garnered respect. Now, he had a growing friendship with O’Neill, who was the dynamo that powered the offense.

Key would go 17-4 to front a rotation that included Mélido Pérez, Scott Kamienecki and Abbott, who logged 160 1/3 innings despite lugging a 4.55 ERA. To some, it would remain an open question whether the Yankeeswould have enough pitching to endure a marathon season. But there was no question about the direction of the franchise. In the minors, the likes of Derek Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Mariano Rivera and Jorge Posada were making their way through the system. In the Bronx, the Yankees began the season 6-6 before settling into a groove. The fans took notice.

“Something special was happening in New York, in the Bronx, and it was fun to be a part of that,” Abbott said. “It was fun to see that resurgence and the fans responding to it — the crowds, the excitement, the noise. We had some big crowds that year. You could feel the momentum starting to build.”

For years, the Yankees had struggled on the West Coast, a source of contention for their impatient owner. “Bed checks, you name it, Mr. Steinbrenner tried everything,” Showalter said. “He thought that we were out there running the streets or whatever.” July presented a test, an 11-game swing through Seattle, Oakland and Anaheim. It was grueling. Nevertheless, entering the final game of the stretch, the Yankees had lost just once. Showalter could afford to take the long view, resting a pair of critical bats with a troublesome lefty in Mark Langston going for the Angels. Mattingly and Boggs watched from the bench as Langston fanned 10, taking a 4-2 lead into the ninth. These Yankees, however, had been assembled as much for their tenacity as their skill. A rally would percolate.

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Stanley laced a one-out single. Leyritz followed with a walk. Langston would be pulled for a righty. The time had come for a decision. “I’m kind of looking around and everybody’s on the top step,” Showalter said. “And I said hell, we went for it. We started pinch-hitting.” Mattingly came off the bench first, and for the only time in his storied career, the longtime captain smashed a pinch-hit homer. The three-run shot put his team in the lead, but the Yankees wanted insurance. They would get it with a bit of trickery. Following Mattingly’s blast, Boggs entered as a pinch-hitter, got plunked, then feigned just enough pain that Showalter would come out of the dugout to check on him. This was all part of the ruse.

“How you doin’?”

“I’m all right.”

“Cry baby deke first pitch?”

“You got it.”

Even before he looked hobbled, Boggs was an unlikely threat to run, having swiped only 24 bases in 18 seasons. That’s why the Angels were caught napping when Boggs stole second, getting himself in position to score on Kelly’s single. Steve Howe closed it out. The Yankees won, 6-4. They had taken 10 of 11 games, the best West Coast swing in franchise history.

When the Yankees began their sojourn, they held a half-game lead over the Orioles in the AL East. By the end of the trip, they had opened a 5 1/2 game lead over the Orioles, which they would soon push to as many as 10. Looking back at it years later, Showalter called the flight back to New York one of the most satisfying of his long career. “That was when I looked around on the plane,” he said. “And I said, ‘You know, we’ve got something pretty good going on here.’”

Without the benefit of star power, it was incumbent on the Yankees themselves to ensure that players accepted their roles. That meant having difficult conversations. In this way, everyone played a part. Gallego recalled how Boggs liked to “say stuff out loud, not necessarily to your face, but you knew he was talking about you.” He remembered how Stanley “had a nice way of telling you that you needed to play harder, that you needed to make better pitches.” Mattingly led mostly by example. To this day, he’s referred to simply as “Cap,” and the stories of how he played through pain have become part of his legacy. But when needed, he didn’t hesitate to get vocal.

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“We were harsh,” said Gallego, the middle infielder who had been part of a dominant run with the A’s. “We weren’t afraid to speak our minds. There were a couple of guys in there who weren’t afraid to say what they really believed. We knew what our goals were. It was one team goal for the Yankees — and that was to put the Yankees back on the map. We all wanted to be a part of that.”

That camaraderie extended off the field. “You didn’t see 10-12 cabs going to dinner after a ballgame,” Gallego said. “It was 10-12 players getting in one cab going to dinner together.” It might be during card games, or in the dugout during a comeback, but nobody pushed the Yankees harder than they pushed themselves. “It was fun to travel with that team,” Abbott said. “People were having a good time. I remember landing in other cities and thinking, ‘Yeah, the Yankees are in town, and the other team’s in for a rough ride here.’ We were very confident.”

Then it all came crashing down.

The potential for labor strife had long loomed in the background, as the owners pushed for a salary cap and the players resolved to fight it. Now, the business of the game would no longer be kept from trickling onto the field. The players set a strike date. The Yankees spent the doomsday countdown going into a slide.

When the strike began, few thought it would linger. Some stayed in town, working out together. Others took off, but stayed close enough to return quickly once there was a resolution. Abbott retreated to his lakeside cabin in northern Michigan, where he stayed sharp by playing catch with his father-in-law.

“I don’t think when it happened that anybody thought the season would be over,” Abbott said. “It was unthinkable — that this would be so bad that they would just cancel everything. When everyone left the clubhouse that day, no one thought that we wouldn’t reconvene and take the fight back up.”

The ’94 Expos are remembered.

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When the strike hit, they were 74-40, owners of the best record in baseball. That distinction has been frozen in time. The memories may be tinged with heartbreak, and they may be more enduring because the franchise left for another city. But within the history of the game, that team has its own unmistakable place. This was on display in March of 2014, when the Blue Jays staged a two-game exhibition against the Mets in Montreal. Not since 2004 had big-league baseball in any form been played in the city. During that last-ever Expos home game, a sign adorning the outfield wall read in French, “1994 meilleure équipe du baseball.” The English translation appeared beneath: best team in baseball.

On a gray Saturday afternoon a decade later, fans stood shoulder-to-shoulder in the concrete concourse of the hulking Stade Olympique, eager for the pleasing warmth of nostalgia. One carried a sign that read, “1994 World Champions.” They hoped to steal glimpses of the men who’d come back to celebrate an achievement that never was. It was their first reunion as a group. One by one, the Expos jogged onto the field for a pregame ceremony, 19 of them in all. Each name provided a reminder of the talent behind the juggernaut. The outfield consisted of Moises Alou, Marquis Grissom and Larry Walker. The three would combine for 15 All-Star appearances, a World Series championship and a Most Valuable Player award. But it was the manager — Felipe Alou — who jogged out last. A crowd of 50,229 saluted him with a raucous ovation. “In our league,” Alou had said earlier that day, “we were kings.”

The ’94 Yankees are mostly forgotten.

In their league, they too were kings. At 70-43, they owned the best record in the AL, and the second in all of baseball at the time of the strike. “We were getting ready to run off,” Showalter still insists, all these years later. But in that doomed season, there would be no coronations, no conclusions, no achievements from which to build a legacy all their own. If they’re remembered at all, it’s only within the scope of something larger, as a building block toward the eventual dynasty.

There were still 49 games to the finish line when the strike began. That’s plenty of time for a charmed season to go sour. Perhaps the pitching would have been exposed, as some observers had forecast. Maybe, the Indians and their core of young stars would have proven to be superior in the playoffs.

Amongst the Yankees, there is no consensus.

“On paper, most people would think that there were bigger names in the Montreal lineup,” Gallego said. “They had Larry Walker, Moises Alou, they had some big names on that team. But who knows? It would have been a hell of a series. But I was going to take the Yankees in six to be completely honest. We had something special.”

O’Neill finished the ’94 season hitting an AL-best .359, the best campaign of his 17-year career. He’d be one of 13 players on that team to later contribute to a World Series-winning team with the Yankees, a list that includes Williams, Boggs, Key and Leyritz. O’Neill stopped short of saying that the Yankees would have ended the year at the Canyon of Heroes. “When you’re putting together a winning season, you do have a chance,” he said. “But to say, ‘Hey, this team is going to win the World Series,’ that’s very hard. You have to see what’s happening when you go into the playoffs, how you’re playing.” That team, of course, would never find out.

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Abbott pitched a decade in the major leagues. He overcame being born without a right hand. His career includes the distinction of throwing a no-hitter. Years later, he takes pride in the players standing strong. “But that brings very little solace when you think about the finite time that you have in a career,” said Abbott, whose best chance at pitching in the postseason was in 1994. “I played 10 years. Probably the best team I ever played on didn’t get a chance to make it. What would that have been like? … You don’t get that back. You never get it back. That is a tough pill to swallow.”

Mattingly had resolved in his own mind that the ’94 season would be his last. He insists that his battered back wasn’t the primary factor. Rather, the call of being with his family had grown stronger. The strike changed his plans. He returned in ’95. But in contrast to the year before, the season proved to be a grind, an endless procession of injuries. The Yankees crashed to five games under .500 on Aug. 28. With his team in need, Mattingly informed Showalter that he would let loose at the plate, his back be damned. “Every swing he took I thought would be his last one,” Showalter said. “But we got to see the old Mattingly for two weeks and it was something to watch.” The captain of the Yankees hit .321 in his final month while slugging .472 — almost 60 points better than his season mark. The Yankees won 25 of their last 31 games. For the first and only time, Mattingly reached the postseason.

The Yankees would lose a five-game classic to the Mariners in the division series. But Mattingly made his mark, homering in Game 2 at old Yankee Stadium. “It was shaking,” Showalter said. “That was one of the few times that I actually felt unsafe in a ballpark. I thought the dugout was going to cave in.” Even in defeat, the 1995 Yankees had carved out a place in history, a participant in one of the greatest playoff series of all time. But years later, Mattingly said one of his favorite teams is one that is rarely talked about, the Yankees of 1994. “You don’t really know,” he said of that team’s chances to win it all. “But we felt good about our club — just the attitude. When you have a team like that, any series you feel you’re going to win. It was just a good feeling.”

That feeling ended on Aug. 12, 1994. The Yankees had played their final game the day before beneath gloomy skies. They lost in 13 innings to the Blue Jays, who were a shell of the team that had won back-to-back championships. The Yankees hoped to be their successors. They had spent 92 days in first place. It counted for nothing.

“I’ve always said you can have good years in other cities,” O’Neill said. “But unless you win the World Series in New York, you kind of fell short. That’s the culture. That’s the tradition. To say we’re having a good year but we didn’t win a championship, sure it was a great year. And I look back at it like a great time of life. But to say you’re going to win a championship but didn’t, it’s kind of meaningless.”

The Yankees and Expos did meet in October of 1994, on the faraway sands of Kauai, in something called the Cuervo World Series of Beach Volleyball. Promoters invited two-man teams representing big-league clubs to play in a round-robin tournament. The Expos sent Cliff Floyd and Moises Alou, though the winners were ultimately the duo that represented the Yankees, Gallego and Kelly. This would be the closest anyone would get to finding out which team would have reigned supreme.

The Expos had made just one previous playoff appearance back in 1981. Their lost opportunity still resonates. By contrast, the Yankees boast a rich history of championships, and empathy comes much more grudgingly for the privileged. So it was easy to forget about what had been a lost generation of fans. These were the kids who grew up wearing Mattingly’s No. 23 on their backs — even when all they’d known of the Yankees was faded glory and failure. Sure, there would be plenty of winning to come. But for so many, 1994 was their first taste of real hope, and then heartbreak.

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Immediately, Michael knew what the strike meant for his team’s legacy. Before his death in 2017, he spoke with writer Bill Pennington for his book, “Chumps to Champs: How the Worst Teams in Yankees History Led to the ’90s Dynasty.” Upon hearing Selig’s announcement that the season was canceled, the architect of the dynasty admitted to flinging a few chairs at Yankee Stadium. “I was so hot because I knew one thing right then,” Michael told Pennington. “I knew that the ’94 Yankees would never be remembered for having won anything. And I was right.”

On the field during that lost summer, the Yankees were brilliant, a blend of veterans and kids, united by the desire to revive a fallen franchise. But they don’t make Yankeeographies about footnotes. There was no trip down the Canyon of Heroes. There have been no reunions. There probably never will be. “I hope someday that we’ll be able to put that together,” Gallego said. “I doubt it.”

The success of the dynasty eased the sting, though as Michael told Pennington, “It doesn’t erase it. The ’94 team deserved better.”

This raises yet another what-if. What would happen if that forgotten team ever got its due?

On this one count, Showalter insists there is no ambiguity.

“I’ll tell you something,” he said of a reunion. “That group of people would fight tooth and nail to get back to wherever they’d be having this. We never had the parade. We never got to the end game. But looking at this roster, I’m thinking just about every one of these guys would show up, and then they’d have the time of their life.”

(Top photo of the 1994 Yankees: Bruce Bennett Studios via Getty Images Studios / Getty Images)