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How Baseball Explains America
By Hal Bodley Triumph Books
Copyright © 2014 Hal Bodley
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-62368-807-3
CHAPTER 1
The Greatest Decade
Tom Brokaw's superb award-winning 1998 book The Greatest Generation talks about the stories of a generation, about what "this generation of Americans meant to history."
He said, "It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."
I grew up in that generation and some 65 years later as I look back, Tom's assessment couldn't be more accurate. That generation's greatest time of struggle and triumph was the 1940s, and there is no decade that explains modern baseball in America better than the 1940s. It is the birthplace of the game — and much of the society — we see today.
In 2012 the venerable Baseball Digest — the oldest, continuously published baseball magazine in the United States — celebrated its 70th anniversary. It honored that occasion by commissioning a group of national baseball writers to chronicle the events of seven decades, each defined by historic events in the sport.
In the 1950s, after the color barrier was broken in 1947, integration opened the door for great players. The 1960s brought historic moments, including Bill Mazeroski's World Series–winning homer and Roger Maris passing Babe Ruth's fabled home run record of 60. The designated hitter "experiment" came in the 1970s. Pete Rose shattered Ty Cobb's career hits record in the 1980s. Baseball returned from the devastating 1994–95 strike and Cal Ripken Jr. surpassed Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record in the 1990s. And sadly, steroids, which helped inflate long-standing records, dominated the 2000s.
No period, however, equaled the 1940s.
During an unsettled decade when America was at war, baseball was a desperately needed antidote.
"What's so remarkable is that the players who were part of the Greatest Generation fought in World War II and before and after gave us baseball's greatest decade," Brokaw told me.
In our country's darkest moments, baseball has been an escape, preserving and helping us get through difficult times.
The events of this decade, with so many players going off to war, are firmly etched in the fabric of the greatest game ever invented. You cannot tell about baseball without the 1940s.
A sampling:
• The closest anyone has come to Joe DiMaggio's enduring 56-game hitting streak was Pete Rose in 1978, who was stopped after 44 games.
• Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, the last player to hit .400 or better during a season.
• The Yankees won five American League pennants and four World Series during the decade.
• The St. Louis Cardinals won four National League pennants and three World Series. They were the last NL team to play in three consecutive (1942–44) World Series.
• Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's first commissioner, died on November 25, 1944.
• On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, starting for the Brooklyn Dodgers.
• Babe Ruth died on August 16, 1948.
Players the likes of Williams, DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Jerry Coleman, et al, all went off to World War II. Regardless, baseball was, yes, our national pastime — America's game — in that decade.
"The war was interspersed with all of this," Jerry Coleman told me before his death in January 2014. Coleman's entrance into professional baseball was delayed because of World War II. When he finally made it to the Yankees he became Rookie of the Year in 1949.
"Yes, it was a decade that had enormous impact on the game," said Coleman, who was a Marine Corps aviator and after serving in the Korean War became the only major league player to have seen combat in two wars.
Nicknamed "The Colonel," Jerry flew in 120 combat missions and received many honors, including two Distinguished Flying Crosses.
"So much happened in that decade," he said. "When you went to Spring Training with the Yankees, they gave you a number. If you were over 38 you were in the minor leagues. I didn't think I was going to make the club in 1949 because they gave me 42.
"The late Howard Cosell introduced me once: 'Gerald Francis Coleman, number 42 — the wrong 42!' I almost punched him."
Jackie Robinson, of course, also wore No. 42, which in 1997 was retired throughout the major leagues.
I'm often reminded of moments in our home in 1941 when the old AM radio crackled each morning with news that The Streak was still alive.
DiMaggio got another hit.
My mom and dad would switch the wooden Philco on and twist the dial up and down, searching for an audible New York station that would tell us, even with all the static, if the Yankee Clipper had extended his amazing streak.
It was that way for much of June and half of July in 1941. Between May 15 and July 16, DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games.
More than 70 years have passed since an uneasy America was obsessed with this baseball feat that is yet to be surpassed.
To suggest DiMaggio's hitting streak defined the decade of the 1940s is obviously an exaggeration. But is there a better place to start? It was undoubtedly the signature achievement of DiMaggio's Hall of Fame career.
He was as much an American icon as a ballplayer.
"DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw," Ted Williams once told me.
Regardless, baseball was, yes, our national pastime — America's game — in that decade.
"Baseball's greatest decade?" John Thorn, Major League Baseball's official historian, repeated the question. "Some will say the '20s, with the Yankees of Murderers' Row. Others will pipe up for the '60s, with Mantle and Maris, Mays and McCovey, Koufax and Drysdale," he said. "But give me the 1940s, baseball's most tumultuous decade, in which so many things ended and so much began."
Thorn believes nothing during the decade was more important than Jackie Robinson opening a new era in the game while closing a long span of institutionalized bigotry.
"That's the great, enduring legacy of the 1940s," he said. "But in this time we also saw the last .400 hitter, the unchallenged 56-game hit streak, the peak of minor league baseball, the dawn of televised ballgames, and more.
"I agree that at no time in the game's history was baseball so unquestionably seen as America's Game. By that I mean in the years of struggle during World War II, and then the glorious burst of relief and optimism in the last years of the decade. American had prevailed, and with it baseball and its promise of a better tomorrow."
* * *
Dr. Bobby Brown, now 89 (turning 90 on October 25, 2014), was a third baseman for the Yankees for eight seasons beginning in 1946. He served with the U.S. Navy from July 1, 1943, through January 17, 1946.
Brown, a cardiologist for 25 years after baseball, later became president of the American League (1984–1994). He and Yogi Berra are the only living members of the Yankees who won the 1947 World Series.
"World War II ended in August of 1945 and our whole country was euphoric," Brown told me. "People were looking for some relief from all that tension. The ballplayers began to filter back who were in the service and this was so important for our country."
Brown believes about 95 percent of all major leaguers served.
"This was a unique time because everyone was ready for something like that." No decade was more important, had more impact on baseball, he added.
"Professional baseball at that time had no real competition from either football or basketball," he said. "Baseball was at the forefront. The 1940s were just great; there are so many historic memories from that decade. It was about America."
Hall of Famer Ralph Kiner believes "the late 1940s was definitely the heyday for Major League Baseball. Players were coming back from the war and it took time for them to return to their prime, but they did. They had so much to prove and it was exciting."
In a sense baseball helped America exorcise the trauma of the war.
Just a little over a month after Pearl Harbor, on January 15, 1942, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt wrote his "Green Light" letter to Commissioner Landis.
"I honestly feel it would be best for the country to keep baseball going," Roosevelt wrote.
FDR eliminated any doubt how important, what an outlet, baseball was. It became a soothing factor.
Hall of Famer Bob Feller won 25 games in 1941 and didn't pitch again for Cleveland until 1945. The day after the Sunday, December 7, 1941, bombing of Pearl Harbor he refused to use his 3-C draft deferment and enlisted in the Navy.
He thus became the first MLB player to enlist in World War II, and missed nearly four seasons of baseball at the height of his career. He returned for nine games in 1945 and won 26 the following summer with an uncanny 2.18 earned run average.
"To this day, I'm proud of that decision," he told me in 2008. "It was important to serve my country.
"But baseball interest never waned during the war," said Feller, who died on December 15, 2010, at age 92. "A lot of the players who stayed home were 4-F [physically ineligible for the draft]. Hal Newhouser had a leaky heart; Lou Boudreau had bad ankles.
"When I was at sea, which I was for 34 months as the gun captain on the battleship Alabama — we took supplies to Russia — I was in the radio shack all the time — trying to follow the games and get the scores. It was so important. And whenever I could, I played catch aboard the ship."
He was quick to add during this conversation that "baseball was strengthened by how important the game also was to those not fighting overseas. It was necessary for the people working in the factories for the games to continue. A very smart move."
The late Leonard Koppett, in his exhausting history of Major League Baseball, wrote that "of all American institutions, the two fundamental items of mass entertainment, Hollywood movies and Major League Baseball, probably changed the least during World War II."
Before Pearl Harbor, the decade was off to a rousing start.
In 1941, of course, DiMaggio hit safely in an incredible 56 consecutive games. In Cleveland's spacious Municipal Stadium he collected No. 56 on July 16, in a game in which he had a double and two singles.
The next day, with some 67,000 fans in attendance, the streak ended. He grounded out on a close play, walked, grounded out, and in the eighth inning hit a bouncer that shortstop Lou Boudreau turned into a double play. The streak was over.
After it ended, Joe D. hit in each of the next 16 games, thus hitting safely in 72 of 73.
The Yankees, who would go on to win the World Series over Brooklyn in five games, won three out of every four games played during DiMaggio's streak. He had 91 hits in the 56 games, batted .408, hit 15 homers, and drove in 55 runs.
And there was Williams' .406 batting average.
On the final day of the season Williams' average was .3995. Teammates and friends tried to talk him into sitting out the game because the final average would have been rounded out to .400.
Williams wouldn't have any of that. He played both games of a doubleheader against the Philadelphia A's, went 6-for-8 and finished with the .406 average.
In the ballot for the MVP that year it was DiMaggio who won the award.
When it was announced, Ted said, "Yeah, awright, but it took the Big Guy to beat me."
So this is how it was on the eve of Pearl Harbor.
During a long sit-down interview with Williams in the early 1990s, he talked to me about the years he lost (1943–45) during World War II. (He also lost most of two seasons, 1952–53, when he was called back by the Marine Corps to be a fighter pilot.)
After Pearl Harbor was attacked, he tried to get a draft deferment, but in May 1942 enlisted in the air arm of the Marine Corps, hoping not to be called up right away. He completed the '42 season, winning the AL batting title with a .356 average, the home run title (36), and the RBI crown (137) to take the Triple Crown.
After three years, he came back in 1946 and hit .342, with 38 homers and 123 RBI. He led the Boston Red Sox to their first AL pennant in 28 years.
Feller, Hank Greenberg, et al, were already in the service in 1942, but DiMaggio, because he was a married father with a child, received a deferment and played in '42. His brother, Dom, had already signed up.
Joe was reluctant to enter the service. There was pressure from his wife, Dorothy, for him to sign up. Finally, he entered the Army Air Corps in 1943. He basically spent three years playing baseball on the base team, first in California near Los Angeles, then in Hawaii. He spent time in and out of hospitals where he was treated for ulcers. Some speculate his ulcers may have been a result of going through a divorce from Dorothy.
"The war years never seemed to move at all," he once said. "I thought they would never end."
Even though DiMaggio was discharged from the Army Air Corps early, he sat out the 1945 season, recovering from the ulcers and stomach problems. He returned in 1946, but struggled, even though he hit .290, with 95 RBI and 25 homers.
Red Sox Hall of Famer Bobby Doerr a nine-time All-Star, was typical.
He spent the 1945 season in the military, but when he returned in 1946 he led the Red Sox to the AL pennant with 18 homers and 116 runs batted in. He hit .409 and drove in three more runs in Boston's World Series loss to the Cardinals.
Joe Garagiola spent parts of three seasons (1944–46) in military service.
He'd spent three seasons in the minors, but when he returned to the St. Louis Cardinals on May 20, 1946, he became the starting catcher on a team that would go on to win the National League pennant and beat the Boston Red Sox in the World Series.
Garagiola, who later became a Hall of Fame broadcaster, hit .316 in the seven-game World Series.
"There was a lot of outstanding baseball played after the war," Garagiola told me in an interview for the Baseball Digest story.
"The big thing was there were only eight teams in each league. A lot of the guys had things to prove to themselves. There weren't any guaranteed contracts then."
In 1946, the Cardinals and Dodgers tied for the NL pennant, causing a best-of-three playoff for the first time in the history of baseball. Both the Cardinals and Dodgers won 96 games.
The nucleus of the Cardinals consisted of outfielder Stan Musial — he was switched to first base on June 7 — second baseman Red Schoendienst, outfielder Enos "Country" Slaughter, pitcher Howie Pollet and, of course, Garagiola.
"We had a big rivalry with the Dodgers," Garagiola said. "The last day of the season we were doing a lot of scoreboard watching, but we both ended in a firstplace tie."
"I remember Dodgers manager Leo Durocher [who had the choice] decided to open the playoff series in St. Louis so they could clinch it in Brooklyn," Garagiola said with a chuckle. "It didn't work out that way. We won the game in St. Louis 4–2, and in Brooklyn 8–4.
"We were also underdogs in the World Series, but won it all over Boston in seven games."
Garagiola played in just 77 games in 1947 and was sent to the minors after 24 games in 1948. He made it back to the Cardinals in 1949, batting .261, and then hit .318 in 34 games in 1950, but a severe shoulder separation ended his season.
"The 1940s was a good decade to play in, especially now — when you can talk about it," he said. "There were some great players. Broadcasting was different. We had none of that interviewing players or managers during the game, no mascots.
"In the 1940s guys didn't fool around on the mound as they do now. There were no 100-pitch limits. The bullpen was a place where guys went to pitch themselves back into the rotation. I don't remember any closers or holders or anything like that. When pitchers went out they wanted to finish the game. They never looked at the bullpen. A hundred pitches didn't mean anything then. In those days, because there were just eight teams, every ballclub had three good pitchers."
Joe was on a roll now, looking back with fascination in his voice.
"I don't want to sound like an old player, but it was very intense in those days," he said. "Unlike today, they didn't bring this guy up for two games, then send him back or anything like that. They didn't rent players; they went with what they had.
"The other thing I miss a lot watching the games," he bubbled. "Guys would talk it up a little bit, not screaming at each other. But there was more chatter in the infield. Now, it's like walking across a cemetery at midnight. You don't hear anything.
"And this: Did you ever think you'd see a hitter strike out in a game, then run right into the clubhouse and look at video to see what he did wrong?"
* * *
By 1947 television was beginning its huge media impact on baseball. Of the 16 teams, only the Pittsburgh Pirates hadn't negotiated a local TV deal to carry home games. Road games weren't televised then because the cost of cables was too high.
But as our national pastime recovered from World War II and prepared for a new decade, nothing had the immediate and forever impact of Jackie Robinson becoming the first black player in the major leagues on April 15, 1947.
Famed black journalist Doc Young of the Cleveland Call and Post wrote: "Rickey planned Robinson's entrance as carefully as a man would build a house with match sticks."
(Continues...)
Excerpted from How Baseball Explains America by Hal Bodley. Copyright © 2014 Hal Bodley. Excerpted by permission of Triumph Books.
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