It's funny watching those old clips of the past Yankee greats and yet few people know of their dirty little secret of those "glory days."

The Yanks would often buy great players and prospects from cash-strapped teams and stick them in the minors to basically rot. The Yanks never really did this to improve their team, the idea was to deprive other teams of high quality players. My grandfather used to joke and say the 3rd best catcher in all of baseball from 1925-1960 was on the Yanks farm team.

I'm sure if some more digging was done you'd find similar stories in other pro sports during the "glory days".