New Yorkers took to the streets to honor the Yankees for the third time this decade

October 29, 1999
Web posted at: 12:28 p.m. EDT (1628 GMT)

NEW YORK (CNN) -- For the third time this decade, fans showered baseball's World Series champion New York Yankees with tons of ticker tape as the team made its way up lower Broadway along the Canyon of Heroes.

The parade, which got under way at midday Friday, was to be followed by a ceremony at City Hall. Team members were to be given the keys to the city by Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

Appearing on CNN this morning, Giuliani proudly recounted his lifelong dedication to the Yankees team, recalling how as a child in Brooklyn in the 1950s he stood out as a fan of the Bronx Bombers while everyone else cheered for the local Brooklyn Dodgers.

"Wearing this hat in the shadow of Ebbetts Field back in the early 1950s for a little kid was really tough," Giuliani said. "I used to get thrown down, yelled at, thrown in the mud. So I guess I developed a fierce spirit of rooting for the Yankees."

The Canyon of Heroes has been the site of some three dozen ticker tape parades, beginning in 1886 with a parade celebrating the dedication of the Statue of Liberty. After his solo flight across the Atlantic Ocean, Charles Lindbergh rode up the route from Wall Street to City Hall in 1936.

The Yankees were first feted on this path when they won the World Series in 1962, and they have returned again in 1978, 1996, 1998 and today.

The Yankees swept the Atlanta Braves in four straight games to win this year's title.

With 25 World Series championships in the past 76 years, New York is calling the Yankees the team of the millennium, while others, more modest perhaps, simply call it the team of the decade or team of the century.

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