Any argument as to the greatest Yankees team touches on one or all these four seasons: 1927, 1939, 1961, 1998.

The managers: Miller Huggins, Joe McCarthy, Ralph Houk, and Joe Torre, nice company kept by Houk, a Lawrence native.

Houk’s first Yankees team went 109-53, set a record with 240 home runs, and featured Roger Maris hitting 61 home runs. The ’61 Yanks defeated the Pittsburgh Pirates in five games in the World Series.

Nine seasons ago, when Torre’s Yankees went 114-48 and swept the San Diego Padres in the World Series, arguments lasted until closing time as to which team was better, ’61 or ’98.

There would be nothing to argue about as to which manager had more tolerance for Yankees owner George Steinbrenner. This is Torre’s 12th consecutive season as The Boss’ manager, the single most amazing statistic in the history of major-league managers.

Before Torre, Steinbrenner used 20 different managers, including five tries with Billy Martin, and two apiece with Dick Howser, Bob Lemon and Gene Michael.

Houk was the first, managing Steinbrenner’s 1973 Yankees. He quit after the season.

Ralph earned the nickname “Major” from his service in World War II. His first cousin, Walt Houk Sr., never made it back alive. He was killed in World War II. Walt Jr., proprietor of “Travelers,” a travel agency on Mass. Street, was 5 when his father died.

With Torre’s Yankees playing nearby in Kansas City, it seemed as good a time as any to visit with Walt Jr. about his father’s cousin.

After resigning from the Yankees, the feisty Ralph Houk managed the Detroit Tigers for five seasons and then the Boston Red Sox for four more to finish up a 20-year major-league managing career. He’s living in Pompano Beach, Fla., and knows this much: He will receive a phone call from his cousin’s son, Walt Jr., on Aug. 9. It’s Walt’s wife’s birthday, their wedding anniversary, the birthday of their oldest grandson and Ralph’s 88th birthday.

Walt used to brag annually to Ralph about the baseball skills of his son Kent, Lee Ice’s one-time double-play partner and now president of DCABA, the youth baseball league Walt helped to start. Time marches on, and these days Ralph gets Aug. 9 progress reports about the budding careers of Walt’s three grandsons, Coleman and Chase Houk and Zach Bickling.

Walt was pointing to pictures of them in his office when he looked at a plaque from the 1971 Lawrence Jets baseball team and smiled when he saw the name Darren Green.

“His hands were hanging onto the fence at the South Park diamond and he looked up at me and said, ‘Are you Mr. Houk?’ I told him I was, and he said, ‘I want to play for your team.’ He had been warming up, and I told him to pick up a ball and throw it as hard as he could,” Walt remembered. “It went clear across the street and hit the base of the community building. That was a long ways for a 9-year-old. I said, ‘You can play for me.’ He was real smooth, just like his son is.”

That would be Dorian Green, basketball and baseball star at Lawrence High for two more seasons. The decades change and the names remain the same. Houk, Ice, Green. And Joe Torre managing the Yankees.