from CNN and Sports Illustrated

And now, the debate begins.

Are these New York Yankees, after winning their record 24th World Series championship with a sweep of the San Diego Padres and finishing with an overall record of 125-50, the best team ever?

After all, they boast no true superstar, no one of the likes of Reggie or Rose or Ruth. None of them is a lock for the Hall of Fame. No pitcher is likely to win the Cy Young Award, no slugger had more than 28 home runs. Heck, not a single one was elected to start in the All-Star Game.

So how can they be considered better than Murderers' Row, the Big Red Machine or the swingin' Oakland A's?

"I think that will probably be talked about forever," Series MVP Scott Brosius said. "The comparisons will go on and on, and maybe nobody will have a definite answer for the best team of all time.

"But you can look at this year and say we had the best single season of any other team, and that's a great accomplishment."

These 1998 Yankees clearly added up to much, much more than the sum of their parts.

"The one thing I would love to have people think about is there's no one name that comes to mind, but the team itself," manager Joe Torre said.

Fitting, too, that Brosius won the MVP award after going 8-for-17 with six RBIs in four games. Steady but not flashy, the third baseman spent most of the season batting ninth -- just another player doing his job.

And in a season that brought baseball some truly huge numbers, from Mark McGwire's 70 home runs to Cal Ripken's 2,632 consecutive games to Kerry Wood's 20 strikeouts, the Yankees posted one that may remain for a long time -- 125 wins.

The Yankees' .714 winning percentage was an appropriate figure, seeing how it matched the Babe's home run total, and was the highest in the majors since the 1927 Yankees led by Ruth and Lou Gehrig.

"'27 Yankees, they may have a better club, but we had the best record," Torre said. "To me, that was the standard that I was looking to pass because the Yankees -- more important to have a Yankee record than anything else.

"You look at the Oakland A's clubs that won a few world championships in a row and the Cincinnati club in '76 that was always a standard for me, I think we have better pitching than they have. We have to take a backseat to no one in my lifetime."

New York's second title in three years even caused owner George Steinbrenner to get weepy in the clubhouse.

"There has never been a better team than this one," he said. "We created something truly special here."

Hard to imagine now that the Yankees' season began in a shaky manner in Southern California.

Expected by many to rack up a big win total in this expansion year, New York lost its first two games at Anaheim. A loss at Oakland gave the Yankees their first 0-3 start since 1985 and prompted speculation that Torre's job might be in jeopardy.

The next day, they became the last team in the majors to hit a home run in beating Oakland. And pretty much after that, the whole year became one big highlight reel.

By the end of April, they were in first place with a 17-6 record. The month brought an unexpected event -- a 500-pound expansion joint fell into the loge level at Yankee Stadium, causing two games to be rescheduled and another to be moved to Shea Stadium.

David Wells' perfect game and a wild brawl with Baltimore marked May, and Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez won his major league debut in June. In July, eventual AL batting champion Bernie Williams homered in his return after missing 31 games because of an injured knee.

The Yankees went on to become the first team ever to clinch a playoff spot in August, a month in which they set a major league record by leading in 48 straight games.

September saw them break the AL record with 114 wins and the emergence of rookie Shane Spencer, who hit three grand slams in a month.

New York began its 11-2 run through the postseason with a three-game sweep of Texas in the division series, though there was ominous news -- Darryl Strawberry had colon cancer. The slugger underwent surgery and his teammates embroidered his No. 39 on their hats.

The Yankees' only real trouble came in the AL championship series, when they trailed two games to one to Cleveland. But El Duque rescued them in Game 4, and New York never lost again.

And while the debate about the best team will rage on, and the Yankees figure out what to do with potential free agents David Cone, Williams and Brosius, there's more immediate business to take care of in New York.

"There's no better place to win it all, and I look forward to going back and going to the parade," Brosius said.