Baseball History — As Seen From The Shadows of Cooperstown: Part IV

In the fourth of a 10-part series, the author takes an in-depth look at Major League Baseball history from 1931 to 1940.

Introduction

The thirties has always been a mysterious decade for me. I was born in 1946, and the history books, from grade school through college, never quite made it that far; at best, they skimmed thru “the Great Depression” and World War II.

For baseball, the thirties was a decade of survival. The nationwide unemployment made baseball tickets a luxury for many, and attendance dropped, from 10.1 million in 1930 to 6.3 in 1933. That figure is from Low and Outside , a book on baseball in the thirties from Redefinition in that series I recommended in # 439 .

Yet the decade produced memorable teams and moments. Babe Ruth swatted his last home runs. Lou Gehrig’s ironman streak ended. But the Yankees produced new stars, Joe DiMaggio, Bill Dickey, and Lefty Gomez. And not just the Yankees: Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Hal Trosky, Johnny Mize, Rudy York, and Dizzy Dean all debuted in the 1930s. So did night baseball. Prohibition was repealed. A brick building south of Utica , NY , opened its doors, and the Hall of Fame welcomed its first inductees. Ballplayers had come a long way indeed.

1931

The Philadelphia Athletics of 1931, to me, rank among the strongest teams of all time. They won 107 games, thirteen more than a very good Yankee team (Ruth and Gehrig both smote 46 HRs). The A’s were a team worth studying, balancing good pitching and hitting, speed and defense. Lefty Grove (31-4, 2.06) was the ace, Jimmie Foxx, Al Simmons (.390) and Mickey Cochrane, the heart of the lineup.

But in the 1931 Series, with a 4-2 Game Seven win, the St Louis Cardinals ended the A’s streak of world championships. Surly Burleigh Grimes needed help from Bill Hallahan at the end; both Cardinal hurlers won two games that October. Pepper Martin, a true Mr October (.418 lifetime in the Series), batted .500 with twelve hits, five for extra bases, and five SBs. The Cardinals were no longshot, they won 101 in a tough NL, 14 more than John McGraw’s (and Mel Ott’s) Giants. Their lineup was loaded, and although they lacked a twenty-game winner, they had six pitchers with 11 or more. This was the core of the Gas House Gang of ‘34, waiting for the Dean brothers.

1932

The Chicago Cubs had been a dynasty in the first decade of the twentieth century, but they had a very good team in the 1930s, too, winning the NL pennant in 1929, ‘32, ‘35, and ‘38, an easy-to-remember pattern. This regularity is no doubt behind the expectation of some of today’s Cub fans that they will actually win a World Series in 2008, exactly a century after their last world title.

In 1929, they ran into the A’s in October and went down without much of a protest. In 1932, they ran into the Yankees — as they would again in 1938 — and were swept both times. The best October for the Cubs would be two wins against Detroit in 1935, for a total of three wins in four Octobers.

The ‘32 Series gave baseball a memorable legend, Babe Ruth’s “Called Shot” in Game Three. I first wrote about this ‘way back in Notes # 52 (February 1994); here’s an excerpt:

The story is too good to die. Because the fantasy shows how Babe Ruth was regarded by America ’s fans: he was that good, he might have done it. He was that cocky — yeah, maybe he did call the homer . Sixty-some years (and counting) later, what happened is much less important than what was believed . And that French proverb comes into play again: for those who believe, no explanation is necessary; for those who do not believe, none is possible

I am not a believer, but as a theology major, I like the story and what it reveals about events in history that become mythic. Few stories have burned longer or hotter on the hot stove. For those interested, I revisited the Called Shot in # 206 (January 2000), which is in the Notes Archive ; so is # 52 .

Ruth hit another HR in that game, and Lou Gehrig had a pair, too, and three in the Series, batting .529 to Babe’s .333. Poor Lou, if only he had called something that October. The Yanks got to the Series by winning 107 to the A’s 94, exactly the reverse of 1931’s finish. Jimmie Foxx slugged 58 HRs — so close , and a mark that stood for righties for a long time. Foxx had a league-best 169 RBIs and a .364 average, too, but was denied the Triple Crown because Dale Alexander, of the last-place Red Sox, hit .367, in just 376 ABs, enough to qualify under 1932’s rules. Dale is a good trivia answer, too: he was a batting champ who was traded during the season (after playing 23 games for Detroit )

The Cubs won the NL flag by four over Pittsburgh , and they had a mid-season switch, too, replacing Rogers Hornsby as manager after 99 games; the Cubs won 37 of 55 under Charlie Grimm. Dizzy Dean arrived in St Louis , but the Cards slumped to 7th place, tied with the Giants. John McGraw turned over the reins after 40 games and 40 years in baseball, to Bill Terry. McGraw had the Giants on top in the NL ten times in thirty seasons. Not bad.

COMMENT:
I always thought that Charles Durning was born to play John McGraw in a movie, but he’s too old now. McGraw was one of the game’s great characters. Like Cobb, he was so ornery that you wanted him on your side, or else at a safe distance. In my “Black Sox” research, McGraw seems to have had a thick coat of teflon, he survived all sorts of nonsense, that may have brought down men with thinner hides (and less impressive records). This “Little Napoleon,” like Connie Mack, was a manager so long that his fine career as a player is eclipsed: a career .334 in 16 seasons. He died in 1934.

1933

In his first full season as the Giants’ skipper, Bill Terry led New York to the pennant, the Pirates four back again. Carl Hubbell (23-12, 1.60), Prince Hal Schumacher (19-12, 2.16), and Fat Freddy Fitzsimmons anchored the staff. Over in the AL , Washington , led by Joe Cronin, took the flag by 7 over the Yanks. So the World Series featured two managers who also played, and who had both hit over .300 that summer. In October, the Giants stayed hot, winning in five games, Terry outhit by Cronin. Hubbell won two CGs and did not yield an earned run, while Mel Ott slugged a couple HRs, including one in the tenth inning of the last game. This would be the last time that the Senators won the pennant until Joe Hardy’s apparition in the wonderful fiction, The Year the Yankees Lost the Pennant by Douglass Wallop, which is better known as the play/movie Damn Yankees .

1934

Baseball fans have always been suckers for a good nickname, and they used to add a lot of fun to following the game. Not so much these days. Many many individual players rated nicknames, and not just the famous ones. But certain teams became famous thru their nicknames, too — we’ve already covered the Hitless Wonders, the Miracle Braves, and Murderer’s Row. 1934 produced one such team — the St Louis Cardinals, the Gas House Gang.

If you look up gashouse , you end up with gasworks , a plant that produces gas. If you didn’t know better, you might wonder if the Cardinals got this tag by bragging a lot — after all, wasn’t their ace Dizzy Dean a notorious braggart? (”It ain’t braggin’ if you can do it,” Diz would say in his defense.) But the nickname came to stand for a rowdy, colorful style of baseball that the Cards played. Pepper Martin was “the Wild Hoss of the Osage,” Frankie Frisch was “the Fordham Flash,” and then there was Joe “Ducky” Medwick and Dizzy and his brother Paul, “Daffy.” “Ripper” Collins, switch-hitting, poled 35 HRs, precursing The Mick. Leo “the Lip” Durocher patrolled at shortstop. They won just 95 games and narrowly edged the Giants by 2 games to get to the Series, but they remain one of the best-known, if not best, teams of all time.

And that is partly because they finished off the season with a memorable, colorful World Series win, in seven games, over the Detroit Tigers. With Mickey Cochrane in his first season at the helm (and behind the plate), Detroit won 101 games and left the Yankees 7 behind. Ruth, in his final year in pinstripes, hit 22 HRs and knocked in 84 in just 365 AB. But the Tigers had one of those years , the team batted .300 and few were below that mark. Hank Greenberg arrived, bashing 26 HR and knocking home 139.

COMMENT:
I managed both the 1934 Cardinals and Tigers in many APBA simulations. St Louis seemed to have the edge in pitching, especially with Dizzy Dean (30-7) on the hill. But they were both a manager’s delight.

The names of winning pitchers of the first four games that October make you wish you were there: Dizzy and Paul Dean, Preacher Rowe and Elden Auker, a submariner. When Detroit beat Dizzy in Game Five, 3-1, behind Tommy Bridges, the St Louis gang appeared to be out of gas. But, playing in Detroit , Paul Dean edged Roe in Game Six, 4-3. Starting two days after that loss in Game Five, Dizzy rebounded with a shutout. The Cardinals broke it open with seven runs in the third and won, 11-0, and this is the game where Commissioner Landis ordered Ducky Medwick off the field for his own protection. Ducky had “slud” (as Dizzy would say) into third baseman Marv Owen, finishing off a triple, and the disappointed Tiger crowd pelted him when he took the field next inning. Ducky wasn’t surprised at the reaction, but wondered out loud where all the fruit and vegetables came from. Eleven more October hits for Pepper Martin.

1935

Good as the Gas Housers and the Deans were, they could not repeat in 1935. Diz won 28, but the Cards finished 4 back of the Cubs. 2B Billy Herman hit .341, 3B Smilin’ Stan Hack .311, and catcher Gabby Hartnett .344; Lon Warneke and Bill Lee both won twenty, and four other Cub hurlers won in double digits. Chicago won 21 straight games between September 3 and 27. This looked like the team to finally take the Series.

But the Tigers were back, and while the team average slumped off to .290, Greenberg was getting better — 36 HR, 170 RBI (in 151 games). Gehringer, Rogell & Owen were a solid infield, Goose Goslin, Fox and White a solid outfield, and Detroit had four starting pitchers with 16 or more wins.

The Cubs won Game One and Five, but lost the Series 4-2. The last game was tied in the ninth, when Goslin singled in the winning run against Larry French. Lon Warneke pitched two gems for the Cubs, yielding just one run. Tommy Bridges was the Tiger hero, and they were on top of the baseball world for the first time ever.

COMMENT:
It seems incredible that the Tiger teams driven by Ty Cobb, arguably the game’s greatest player, never finished on top in a Series. But such is baseball. Some of the top players never played in the post-season — Ernie Banks, of course, but also Ralph Kiner, and almost a HOF teammate of Ernie’s, Billy Williams, who played 16 seasons for the Cubs, then got to the AL Playoffs with Oakland (going 0-for-8; oh well).

On May 24, 1935, baseball tried something completely different — Larry MacPhail, the GM of the Cincinnati Reds, somehow got the OK to play a game at Crosley Field under the lights. We have to wonder how long the OK might have been in coming, if baseball was not suffering from the Depression, and in need of something new to draw fans. The May 24 game against the Phils (the Reds won, 2-1), was one of seven scheduled by Cincinnati , one against each NL opponent, who were free to object. The night games drew 130,000 and a new tradition was born. “Every day is a Sunday,” said St Louis owner Sam Breadon; baseball gradually accepted change, and (its) life went on.

Babe Ruth, playing for the Boston Braves, swatted his last six career home runs. Fittingly, the last three came in one game, at Pittsburgh’s Forbes Field, and the finale, #714, was a blast that cleared the right field grandstand — a first. Ruth would be remembered for numbers like 714 and 60, but he won America ’s heart by hitting baseballs farther than anyone else, as well as more often. No one would ever take his place.

1936-1937

The next two seasons saw baseball “return to normalcy” — the Yankees shot back on top in the AL, the Giants in the NL. Ruth and McGraw were gone, but Gehrig and DiMaggio and Joe McCarthy headed up a new juggernaut, while Bill Terry still had Master Melvin Ott, King Carl Hubbell and enough horses to overtake the Cubs. The Giants would win their pennants by five and then three games; the Yankees coasted to October by 19.5 and then 13 over Detroit . The Yankees proved the better team in both Octobers, too, winning 4-2 and 4-1.

In the 1936 Series opener, Hubbell ended the Yankees’ Series win streak at twelve, as no Giant outfielder had a putout. The Yanks tied it with an 18-4 win, the 18 being a WS record. The 1937 Series began with two 8-1 Yankee wins and was never close.

COMMENT:
I have reflected in NOTES from time to time on baseball’s dynasties. Teams that are so good, they make winning seem easy — boringly so. We tend to think of all the great Yankee teams as dynasties, and they were, but there were quite a few others in other cities. For fans of those teams, these dynastic seasons are surely recalled as the sweetest of summers. For all other fans, their best memories might be when they finally beat those dynastic teams, despite being obviously less talented. Something else produced those rare wins — the team had help, our help, our rooting did it, we are sure. When one teams stands out in a league, the others take aim, setting up their rotations to toss their strongest arms. It’s us against them. And so from time to time, all fans are either Yankee fans or Yankee-haters , Brave fans or anybody but Atlanta !

It is consoling for Pirate and Cub fans, or the fans of Philadelphia , that once upon a time, they had the dynasties. Break up the Brooklyn Dodgers! I’m not sure if the dynastic teams were more beloved than those teams that won just a single Championship — the 1960 Pirates, for example. But I think fans enjoyed watching great teams emerge, whether from great farm systems (good scouting), or clever trading, or intelligent managing, getting the most out of the roster. I don’t think the playing fields were ever perfectly level, but fans used to have the sense that they were. And if the Yankee payroll was fatter, well, it deserved to be, and it wasn’t that much fatter, was it? But the imbalance of team payrolls today is a real problem, that the luxury tax doesn’t seem to solve.

1938

Gloamin’ . It’s an obscure word, gloaming , rarely used these days, but growing up, the word summed up 1938. The Cubs, Giants, Cardinals and Pirates scrapped for the NL pennants in the 1930s, with the Giants and Cubs taking three firsts and the Cards two. The Pirates finished second three times, and no finish was more painful than 1938.

That season ended, so the legend goes, with the Pirates clinging to a lead in one of the last games of summer, the Cubs trailing in the standings, and dusk falling fast at Wrigley Field. The tie game is about to be called on account of darkness, when Cub catcher Gabby Hartnett connects and hits the homer in the gloamin’ , a genuine Twilight Zone shot, to give Chicago the win and the pennant. If Ruth’s Called Shot is a myth that Cub fans despise, the homer in the gloamin’ made up for it.

The fact is, the Cubs won the 1938 pennant with a scorching run at the end, 44-25 after Hartnett took over as manager, and 20-3 in the final weeks. The Pirates led by 7 games on September 1, but the Cubs torrid pace shrunk that to just a game and a half, with three games left — at Wrigley. The Cubs’ streak was at seven, the Pirates were struggling. A hurricane caused four games against weak opponents to be cancelled, and they would not be replayed. The Pirates lost the first game to Dizzy Dean, who signed on with the Cubs in ‘38 and went 7-1, 1.81. Then came the gloamin’ game, a 6-5 Cub win, and they took over first place. The game would have been replayed the next day in a doubleheader, had the tie stood up.

They lost to the Cubs, 10-1, the next day, and when they lost the first game of a schedule DH with the Reds the day after that, it was all over. Bucs 86-64, Cubs 89-63

As 1938 receded into the past for Pirate fans, the gloamin’ story took on added significance, as the Pirates fortunes sunk. They finished second again, with 90 wins, in 1944, a war year, but that was pretty much it for the next two decades. To make matters worse, the confidence in early September 1938, that the World Series would again be at Forbes Field, caused the team to erect a press box (for 600 reporters) and temporary bleachers in center field. The press box became a permanent reminder: gloamin’

Meanwhile, the Yankees (ho, hum) won the AL again, by 9.5 over the Red Sox. Joe Gordon replaced Tony Lazzeri, Henrich joined the outfield. Pitching always tough. The Yankees swept the red-hot Cubs — so much for momentum — outscoring them 22-9.

1939-1940

The decade ended with a new team on top in the National League — the Cincinnati Reds. They had not been there since 1919, so the back-to-back pennants in ‘39-40 must have tasted great.

When we think of these Reds, the first name that comes to mind is Johnny Vander Meer, still the only pitcher to toss back to back no-hitters. But he pulled that off in 1938, June 11 & 15, the latter being the first night game at Ebbets Field. The facts are that the Dutch Master won 15 in 1938, but just 5 and 3 in the two championship seasons that followed. He did considerably better after 1940.

I think the heart of this mini-dynasty in Cincinnati was catcher Ernie Lombardi, known for his schnozz, lack of speeed, and extremely dangerous bat; 1B Frank McCormick; the gloveman at 3B, Billy Werber; and the duo of Bucky Walters and Paul Derringer, who won 52 and 42 games between them in ‘39-40.

The 1939 Yankees made it to October a fourth straight time, and finished off the Reds with yet another sweep. The Yanks took Game One, 2-1, scoring the winning run in the home ninth. The next day, a little-known Yankee hurler named Monte Pearson took a no-hitter into the 8th (Lombardi broke it up and Pearson settled for a two-hit shutout; otherwise, his name would be linked with Larsen). Charlie Keller smacked a pair of homers in Game Three and another in the clincher, and to New Yorkers, this must have seemed like swatting planes from the Empire State Building , so he was nicknamed King Kong Keller; OK, he had bushy eyebrows, too. My point is that nicknames were still alive and well in baseball.

The Detroit Tigers broke the Yankees’ pennant streak in 1940, and then played a dandy seven-game October with the Reds. Refreshing! The Reds, behind Walters and Derringer, took the Series, winning the finale 2-1, scoring both runs in the home seventh, Derringer dueling Bobo Newsom, denying him a 3rd win.

COMMENT:
“What has been done, can be done.” It’s a simple and obvious saying, but it undergirds the rooting of many a fan. Your team is in last place in July? Remember the Miracle Braves! Trailing badly going into September? Remember the ‘38 Cubs! Someone tosses a no-hitter, remember Vander Meer, he could do it again! Among the safest of records is Vander Meer’s double no-no, because to break it, someone has to toss three straight.

The ’30s served up some cautionary tales, too. Don’t be too hasty to print up those Series tickets. And just because you won nearly every game in September, does not necessarily mean you will win any in October.

The 1930s seem to be just as colorful, now that we’ve been there, as the twenties, or the Deadball Era. The times were tough for most Americans, but baseball remained, like ice cream, an affordable treat. And a place to go where money didn’t seem to matter. The game was now everywhere, thanks to radio, and night baseball meant more folks could attend after a day in the factory — or on the bread line. And the country of baseball was really not just the eleven cities with major league teams, the minors were coast to coast, and many towns and companies had leagues, too. Franklin Roosevelt won the White House, the Yankees won the pennant, the country pulled together, and moved on.

The above is an excerpt from Issue #440 of Gene’s Notes From the Shadows of Cooperstown. To read the rest of the issue (or past issues), click here .