ESPN

• Your Rankings: 2009 World Series MVP | Recent World Series Champions
• World Series Vote: Will the New York Yankees win again in 2010?

There is no debate that the Yankees, love them or hate them, are baseball's signature franchise over the history of the sport. There is some debate about whether the Bronx Bombers are the team of the decade after winning their first World Series since 2000. But the 2009 Yankees as the best single-season baseball team in recent memory?

Now that's an argument.

Yankees fans were online in force after last night's win (presumably with a designated typist), so it's understandable that SportsNation's rankings of the last 25 World Series winners have the distinct flavor of Big Apple. But compare those fresh rankings with how voters sized up recent champions after the 2005, 2006 and 2008 World Series.

So would you take CC Sabathia and Mariano Rivera over Dave Stewart and Dennis Eckersley? Were Alex Rodriguez and Derek Jeter part of a batting order more potent than David Ortiz and Manny Ramirez? Even with the latest World Series on record, it's going to be a long winter, so fire up the stoves and start the arguments.