1942: Baseball

The St. Louis Cardinals dominated the major league baseball scene in 1942. They achieved the National League pennant by a remarkable uphill fight from a position far behind the pacemaking Brooklyn Dodgers in mid-August.

By winning 41 of their last 48 games in the closing five weeks of the season they caught up with and passed the 1941 champion Dodgers, clinching the 1942 title on the final day of the league schedule. It was an accomplishment by Manager Billy Southworth and his fast young team which in many ways surpassed any previous September drive by a bygone eleventh-hour flag-winner.

World Series.

Great as this triumph was, it was eclipsed by their victory in the World Series. After losing the first game to the mighty New York Yankees, American League champions, they resumed the fiery pace that had won them the honors in their own league and proceeded to bowl over the Yanks in four successive games to become baseball's World Champions, 1942.

The fact that the series required only five games for its decision prevented the attendance from equalizing the all-time high for a whole series, but the Sunday game at Yankee Stadium set a new all-time record of 69,902 for a single game.

The Series as a whole took its place in the annals as one of the most dramatic ever played. After 8½ innings of the first game were completed, the Yanks led, 7 to 0, and the picture of Yankee domination of the baseball world was flawless. But in the 9th inning of that opening game, the Cardinals launched a last-ditch rally which changed the aspect entirely.

They scored 4 runs and had the bases filled when the third out was finally registered on them. From that point on, they had the Yankees on the run. At no time after that were the Yanks able to assert their claim to baseball supremacy.

Besides Beazley, the Cardinal stars were Whitey Kurowski, first-year third-baseman, whose home run in the last game accounted for the winning margin; the Cardinal captain, Terry Moore, one of the greatest centerfielders of all time; Enos Slaughter, whose batting, fielding and throwing were brilliant; Ernie White, young left-hand pitcher, who shut out the Yanks in the third game of the series, and many others.

The Cardinal victory in the World Series brought to an end an unbroken string of success for the New York American League club in World Series play since 1926, when they lost to the Cardinals of that year. In the interim they won eight world championships, 1927, 1928, 1932, 1936-7-8-9, and 1941.

White's shutout was the first administered to a Yankee team in a World Series game since Oct. 5, 1926, when Jess Haines, of that year's Cardinals, blanked them. They had played forty World Series games between their two shutouts.

All-Star Game.

The American League won the annual mid-season All-Star Game July 6 at the Polo Grounds, New York, 3 to 1, thus qualifying to meet a team of armed-service stars in Cleveland Municipal Stadium the following evening. They made it a clean sweep of mid-season honors, shutting out the Service team, 5 to 0.

War Funds and Donations.

These major league features, as well as the pennant races and playoffs of all the leagues of Organized Baseball, operated with a background of universal war effort in which all the clubs in all the leagues participated. The combined major league activities turned over a total of approximately $1,315,000 to various war funds, of which $362,926.65 went to the United Service Organizations out of the World Series gross receipts of $1,105,249.

The Army Emergency Relief, the Navy Relief Society and the Baseball Equipment fund were the other chief avenues of war cooperation. All the clubs in all the leagues made special arrangements for service men on their days off, free tickets, canteen refreshments, etc. Each club in its community was a leader in civilian war activities, collecting scrap metal and rubber, signing up fans as donors for blood-banks, maintaining booths in ball parks for the sale of war bonds and stamps, and volunteering use of the park for sundry war purposes.

Each of the sixteen major league clubs played a special game for Army-Navy relief, assigning a regularly scheduled championship game to the cause, in some cases double-headers. These games totalled $506,106.30 (National League, $267,901.30; American League, $238,205) for funds devoted to maintaining the families of service men. The two All-Star Games provided about $161,000, of which $100,000 went to the Baseball Equipment Fund; the remainder to the relief organizations.

The BEF (popularly called 'The Ball and Bat Fund'), baseball's distinctively 'own' link with the services, was augmented by cash subscriptions from the Baseball Writers' Association of America, the treasuries of Commissioner Landis, the two major leagues and the National Association of Professional Baseball Leagues, and All-Star Games played by the International and Pacific Coast Leagues.

With a working fund of $133,359.37 for the year, a total of 5,306 'kits' were distributed through Army-Navy headquarters to camps and bases in 43 states and to units in England, Iceland, Puerto Rico, Bermuda, Trinidad, Canal Zone, Hawaii, Alaska, Australia and Africa, with 2,300 additional 'kits' ready for distribution with the start of the 1943 playing season.

The BEF arranged with J. G. Taylor Spink, publisher of The Sporting News baseball's weekly newspaper, for its distribution in camp libraries, ships at sea and to overseas units and USO clubs (about 3,150 weekly).

Besides the bats, balls and other equipment packed in 'kits,' the two major leagues shipped about 1,000 dozen 'used' baseballs to camps and bases. These were 'foul balls,' baseballs driven into stands and bleachers and tossed back to the field of play by the fans for this purpose.

Attendance at Games.

The Associated Press survey of baseball attendance showed a drop of about 8 per cent from 1941 totals in the major leagues. The National League attendance topped the American, 4,724,961 to 4,685,614 in the AP tables. As compared to the 41 minor leagues operating in 1941, only 31 started the 1942 season, 5 of which suspended before mid-season. Though fewer in number, thus reducing the total minor league attendance figures below normalcy, some circuits showed marked increases.

The American Association (Columbus, Milwaukee, Kansas City, Louisville, Minneapolis, Toledo, Indianapolis and St. Paul), recorded 1,669,401, a 7.5 per cent bulge above 1941. The Southern Association's 743,385 was 59,717 ahead of the year before. The Canadian-American League hit a new all-time high of 344,487, topping 1941 by 16,014.

St. Louis Cardinals.

The pre-season poll of the Baseball Writers Association of America picked the Cardinals for National League champions on 46 of the 74 ballots cast, but in mid-August St. Louis was 9½ games behind the Brooklyn Dodgers, 1941 champions, who had won exactly 100 games as 1941 champions.

Brooklyn's 1942 final score showed 104 victories, an all-time high for a Brooklyn team, but the great drive of the Cardinals (41 out of 48) set their victory total at 106. Only once before in sixty-seven years of National League history did two teams reach the 100-win zone in the same season (1909: Pittsburgh 110; Chicago 104). The American League, in its forty-two years, showed only one case (1915: Boston 101; Detroit 100).

While the Cardinals thus were making history, the Yankees swept to their thirteenth American League pennant, again so decisively as to make them overwhelming favorites in the World Series. The Yanks ran true to form in the first game, winning, 7 to 4, but the rest of the way, the Cardinals' dashing attack, featuring fast and fearless base-running, spirited defensive play, sensational outfield catches, and strong courageous pitching especially by John Beazley, first-year rookie star, ruled the field of World Series championship play, the Cardinals vanquishing the Yanks four straight games to become kings of the baseball world.

Beazley, a recruit from New Orleans, of the Southern Association, was winning pitcher in the first game the Cardinals won from the Yankees. Then, by pitching and winning the final game, he rounded out the greatest first-year pitching record made in the National League since Grover Alexander won 28 and lost 13 in 1911. Beazley's record showed 21 wins against 6 defeats, plus his 2 World Series wins.

Stars of the Year.

Most-Valuable-Player awards, the top individual honors for the year, went to Morton Cooper in the National League and Joe Gordon in the American, members of the two championship teams.

Cooper was pitcher-of-the-year in the National League, leading with an Earned-Run-Average of 1.77, the best figure recorded since 1919 in either major league with the exception of Carl Hubbell's 1.66 in 1933. He likewise led his league in victories, with 22, his victory percentage being surpassed only by his junior partner, Beazley.

Cooper also reached the all-time record zone by pitching 10 shutouts. The major league record is 16, set by Alexander in 1916. This was the closest approach to the record since it was set, with (again) the exception of Hubbell, who had 10 in 1933. Of particular value to Cooper's team, however, was the fact that five of his victories were in games against Brooklyn, the team the Cardinals had to beat to achieve the championship.

Rated the greatest second-baseman in the major leagues in this era, Gordon earned his award by spark-plugging the Yankees with his bat in the early months of the season during which they established their pennant-winning lead.

Pitching laurels in the American League went to Ted Lyons, the veteran Chicago White Sox pitcher, with an ERA of 2.10, the best in the American League since 1919 with the exception of Lefty Grove's 2.05 in 1931. Tex Hughson, Boston, was top winner, with 22 against 6 defeats. Ernie Bonham, Yankees, led in percentage with 21 and 6, leading also in shutouts with 6.

Boston players captured the batting championships in both leagues and in both cases it was the man's second crown. Ernie Lombardi, 1938 National League champion as a Cincinnati player, staged a comeback as a 1942 Boston Brave. Ted Williams, the Red Sox 1941 bat-king, made it two straight years leading his league in the three major batting departments, the batting averages, home runs, and runs-batted-in. Mel Ott, National League all-time home run king, was the best homer hitter in the league to mark his first year as manager of the Giants, while the Giants' first-baseman, Johnny Mize, led the National in run-driving.

The National Association.

Champions repeating was the picture in the minor league replicas of the World Series. The Junior World Series, the Class AA playoff between the American Association and the International League, was won by the junior partners of the St. Louis Cardinals, the Columbus Red Birds, four games to two. In 1941 Columbus defeated Montreal. In 1942 Syracuse was the International representative.

For the third straight year the Nashville Vols won for the Southern Association the honors in the Dixie Series, annually played with the Texas League for Class A-1 supremacy. It made the fourth straight year in which the Vols represented the Southern, all under the management of Larry Gilbert, former New Orleans player and manager. After losing the 1939 Dixie Series to Fort Worth, Gilbert's Vols defeated Houston in 1940, Dallas in 1941 and Shreveport last year.

In only 7 of the 22 leagues which held playoff rounds among the first-division clubs did the pennant-winning team take playoff honors. Columbus and Syracuse finished third in the pennant races, while Nashville and Shreveport were second.

The pennant winners in the AA circuits were Kansas City for the American Association, Newark for the International, and Sacramento in the Pacific Coast League, the third-place Seattle Rainiers capturing playoff honors in the last-named organization. Nashville finished second to Little Rock in the playing season while Beaumont stood ahead of Shreveport in the Texas League.

The seven pennant-winners who swept their playoffs were Greensboro, in the Piedmont League; Cedar Rapids, Indiana-Illinois-Iowa League; Montgomery, Southeastern League; Pulaski, Virginia League; Bristol, Appalachian League; Jamestown, Pennsylvania-Ontario-New York League; and Sheboygan, Wisconsin State League.

In four leagues, the runner-up won the playoffs. Scranton won in the Eastern League after Albany took the pennant; Macon was playoff winner after Charleston topped the South Atlantic League race; Hagerstown won the Interstate flag, but bowed to Wilmington in the playoffs; Winnipeg took the playoff prize in the Northern League, though Eau Claire finished first in the playing season.

There were three third-place playoff winners, besides Seattle, viz.: Waycross, in the Georgia-Florida League, in which Valdosta won the pennant; Rocky Mount, Bi-State, whose pennant was won by Wilson; Thomasville became playoff king of the North Carolina State League though the bunting belonged to Concord.

Fourth place playoff winners were Oneonta in the Canadian-American League, Erie in the Middle Atlantic, and Ashland in the Mountain State, with Amsterdam, Charleston and Huntington the respective pennant-winners.

Four leagues played split-season, winners of the two halves to meet for the pennant. The Appalachian League was the only one in which the same club won both halves, Bristol not only achieving this exploit but winning the playoff round as well.

Boise, second half winner, defeated Pocatello for the Pioneer League pennant. Second half winner won in the Pennsylvania State Association, too, Butler defeating Johnstown. It was the first half winner's turn in the Western Association, Fort Smith besting Topeka.

The Western International, the only league without a playoff, crowned Vancouver its champion. The final playoff round in the Northern League was cancelled when Wausau, one of the two winners in the preliminary playoffs, disbanded and forfeited to Winnipeg.

Five leagues which started the season disbanded before the finish. The Florida East Coast League, with Orlando leading, stopped May 14. On May 30 the Evangeline League suspended, with Natchez in front. The Kentucky-Tennessee League closed its score-books June 19, with Fulton ahead. June 28 the California League terminated operations, Santa Barbara in the lead. On July 5 the West Texas-New Mexico League discontinued, with Clovis in the van.