Not Seattle, though, which makes the baseball scene about as different from the Bronx as any setting in baseball. When Robinson Cano departed the Yankees on Friday to sign a 10-year, $240 million deal with the Mariners, pending a physical, he left a franchise with 27 championships.  Yet as different as the teamsâ histories have been, the Yankees and the Mariners have been oddly intertwined for almost two decades, with Canoâs defection only the latest example.  Nearly every major figure in the teamsâ recent histories has a significant tie to each teamâs faraway rival.  The Mariners, who began play as an expansion team in 1977, did not have a winning season until 1991. In a move that evoked George Steinbrenner, they fired their manager, Jim Lefebvre, that off-season. A year later, they hired Lou Piniella.  The Marinersâ top baseball executive at the time, Woody Woodward, had worked for the Yankees and knew Piniella well. He gave him a team that included a young slugger, Jay Buhner, acquired in an infamous 1988 deal for Ken Phelps.  Piniella, a former Yankees outfielder and manager, led the Mariners to their first postseason appearance in 1995, winning a one-game playoff against the Angels. Luis Sojo â later to have a World Series-winning hit for the Yankees â broke the game open with a three-run double.  The Mariners essentially saved baseball in Seattle with a heart-pounding five-game playoff victory over the Yankees amid the rowdy din of the Kingdome. Edgar Martinez â born in New York â drove in Ken Griffey Jr. to win an epic clincher. The victory was doubly sweet for Griffey, who never forgave the boorish treatment he received as a teenager from Billy Martin when his father, Ken Griffey Sr., played for the Yankees.  Derek Jeter was inactive for the 1995 playoffs, but the Yankees took him to Seattle to soak in the charged atmosphere. Jeter had made his major league debut at the Kingdome that May, going 0 for 5 and making one of his outs against Jeff Nelson, a future teammate.  The Yankees acquired Nelson and Tino Martinez after the 1995 playoffs, exacting swift revenge on the Mariners by giving up only Sterling Hitchcock and Russ Davis in return. The Yankees held their prized young core â Jeter, Andy Pettitte, Jorge Posada and Mariano Rivera â although they nearly swapped Rivera to Seattle the next spring for shortstop Felix Fermin.  The baseball operations department â quite wisely â persuaded Steinbrenner to keep Rivera and let Jeter take over at short. The Yankees went on to win the first of four titles from 1996 through 2000, earning their last pennant in that stretch by beating Seattle in a six-game American League Championship Series.  The Mariners won 116 games the next season, tying an A.L. record, but fell again to the Yankees in the A.L.C.S., this time in five games. Their star that season, Ichiro Suzuki, stayed with the Mariners until 2012, when he was traded, at his request, to the Yankees.  By then, the Yankees had already employed two other famous ex-Mariners: Alex Rodriguez and Randy Johnson.  When he played in Seattle, Rodriguez had longed to be a star in New York. But he expected to do it with the Mets, not the Yankees, who had his good buddy, Jeter, seemingly entrenched at short. After three years on a lucrative but misguided contract in Texas, Rodriguez landed with the Yankees in 2004 to begin an eventful decade.  Johnson arrived in a trade from Arizona in January 2005, summoned to restore the luster to the Yankeesâ rotation after a catastrophic playoff loss to Boston. Johnson had been 5-0 with a 1.65 earned run average against the Yankees in the postseason, and although he won 34 games for them in two seasons, he was winless as a Yankee in the playoffs.  In 2010, the Yankees again looked to a left-hander with Seattle ties to help lead their rotation. They came tantalizingly close to a trade for the Marinersâ Cliff Lee that July, and when Seattle shipped him instead to Texas, the Yankees fumed. Feeling used, they vowed to reconsider future trade relations with the Mariners.  By January 2012, though, they were at it again, hooking up for what seemed to be a fascinating deal: The Yankees sent catcher Jesus Montero, their best prospect, to Seattle for pitcher Michael Pineda, a young All-Star. But Montero was suspended as part of the Biogenesis scandal last season, and Pineda has missed two seasons with shoulder trouble.  Even so, the Yankees received a boost in 2012 from a former and future Mariner, Raul Ibanez, who rescued them with several thrilling home runs, including one in the opener of the A.L.C.S. against Detroit. That was the game in which Jeter broke his ankle, sending the Yankees scrambling for a suitable replacement. The best they found was Brendan Ryan â who came in a trade, naturally, from Seattle.  With Cano on his way there, perhaps the Mariners will engineer a turnaround after four consecutive fourth-place seasons. If not, they could revert to their hopeless early days, when the franchise highlight was Gaylord Perryâs 300th victory in 1982. If youâre wondering which team Perry beat that night, do you really have to ask?
Even before Robinson Cano, the paths of the Yankees and Mariners have been oddly intertwined despite their geographical, and competitive, differences.