The New York Yankees' homegrown Core Four of the 1990s will be forever entwined in the web of baseball history. In retrospect, it's become universally trendy to add Bernie Williams into the group, morphing the Core into a five-deep motor that drove annual success. The impulse is valid; Williams deserves his flowers.
But history has left the Yankees' 1990s imports a level lower on the shelf, and while our rose-colored nostalgia glasses will always land on the Hall of Famers from the farm system first, it remains crazy how impactful the Gene Michael/Bob Watson threads were to the larger tapestry.