Whirlaway won the 1941 Triple Crown with fabled jockey Eddie Arcaro aboard, and is considered one of the great thoroughbred horses of all time.
Before Brecheen, the last pitcher to win three World Series games was Stan Covaleskie in 1920. The Cat was the first lefty to do it.
With the win in 1946, the Cards remained undefeated in Game Sevens. This was their fourth in a row. The Redbirds would win two more, in 1964 and 1967, before finally dropping a Series decider in 1968 to Detroit. They are 2–2 since, including the 2011 Series against Texas. Eleven of St. Louis’s eighteen Series appearances have gone the full seven games.
Game Seven continued a trend of tight wins for the Cards in 1946—it was the team’s thirty-fifth one-run win of the season.
Pesky’s moment of indecision as Slaughter rounded the bases had a recent Series antecedent. In 1940, Dick Bartell of the Tigers held a relay throw a beat too long as Frank McCormick scored from second in the seventh inning of Game Seven. The play tied the game at one—moments later, Cincinnati scored again and won the game and the Series.
Chapter 40: Aftermath
Grover Cleveland Alexander won 373 games in his twenty-year career and was inducted into the Hall of Fame in the third-ever class, in 1938.
Pesky’s death in August 2012 didn’t earn him any alleviation of his crime against Red Sox Nation. Mostly, however, his “holding the ball” was acknowledged, then outweighed by his lifetime of service to the franchise. A minor controversy surrounded his funeral when it was revealed that only four members of the current Sox team attended. Many of the 2012 Red Sox were unloaded soon afterward.
There can be little doubt that if Williams played today, ESPN’s Skip Bayless would be his biggest antagonist.
Epilogue
Harry Walker’s first managing job in the bigs was in St. Louis. The man he replaced? Eddie Stanky, who had taken over for Terry Moore.
In nine years of managing three teams, Walker was 630–604. He never won a pennant at the helm. Two other managers in Ball Four were players in 1946. Ted Williams (“of the Major Fucking Leagues”) comes off well in the book. Joe Schultz, who was a catcher with the Browns and managed Bouton in Seattle before he was traded to Walker’s Houston Astros, not so much.
The 1946 World Series share was the lowest since 1918, the last time Boston and Fenway Park were involved.
The MacPhail-Durocher feud stemmed from Mac’s hiring of a pair of Durocher’s coaches, Chuck Dressen and Red Corriden, for the Yankees, and escalated from there.
The active player who supposedly lost big money in a rigged craps game run by Durocher and Raft was never officially named, but Elden Auker, in his memoir Sleeper Cars and Flannel Uniforms, said it was Tigers pitcher Dizzy Trout.
Before Durocher was suspended, he welcomed Jackie Robinson to the team. Famously, he squashed any talk of a job action by Jackie’s new Dodgers teammates, saying, “I don’t care if the guy is yellow or black, or if he has stripes like a fucking zebra. I’m the manager of this team and I say he plays.”
Perhaps that’s a bit of historical whitewashing, however, as some sources from the time claim Durocher didn’t want or like Robinson. Most signficant among them is Ed Stevens, who, it should be noted, despised Leo in turn. Most likely is that Durocher, similar to many of his contemporaries, was conditioned from youth to distrust, if not outright dislike, Negroes. But once he got a gander at Robinson’s brilliance, the cash register in his head started ringing, drowning out all other thoughts.
Clyde Sukeforth managed the first two games of Brooklyn’s 1947 season but refused to take the job full-time, opening the door for Shotton.
Besides Eddie Dyer, the other managers to win it all in their rookie season are Bucky Harris of the 1924 Senators, Ralph Houk of the 1961 Yankees, and Bob Brenly of the 2001 Diamondbacks. Six others have won the Series in their first full season at the helm, including Tris Speaker (1920 Indians), Rogers Hornsby (1926 Cardinals), Bill Terry (1933 Giants), Frankie Frisch (1934 Cardinals), Dallas Green (1980 Phillies), and Tom Kelly (1987 Twins).
Robinson was, of course, one of a trio of black players given a tryout by the Red Sox in 1945, along with Sam Jethroe of the Cleveland Buckeyes and Marvin Williams of the Philadelphia Stars. The workout, which took place on April 12, the same day FDR died, was mere window dressing—no one in the Sox organization, from Tom Yawkey on down, had any intention of signing a black player. “It’s not up to us,” Cronin told Jackie and the others lamely after the workout.
Robinson’s breakout season in 1949 was aided by batting tips from George Sisler, Dick’s father.
Jackie Robinson Jr. was diagnosed with emotional problems at an early age. He served in Vietnam and was wounded there in 1965, at just eighteen years old. Upon returning to the States, Jackie Jr. struggled with addiction, which turned his father into an outspoken antidrug advocate. Jackie Jr. had just completed treatment at a rehab facility when he was killed in an auto accident on June 17, 1971, at the age of twenty-four.
Perhaps the movie about Jackie Robinson’s debut season, 42, to be released in April 2013, will help raise his profile among a new generation, and Rachel’s museum project will be a beneficiary.
For the statistically inclined, it should be noted that Williams trails Musial in career WAR (wins above replacement), 123.4 to 119.8. They rank twelfth and thirteenth on the all-time list, respectively (Babe Ruth is first, of course, at 178.3).
Updike’s classic story from The New Yorker is entitled “Hub Fans Bid Kid Adieu.” Its famous final line is often misquoted as “Gods don’t answer letters,” and as any fan of literature or Commander Data from Star Trek: The Next Generation will tell you, contractions (and the lack of them) are vitally important.
Williams’s home run in his final at bat, his 521st, did not, contrary to memory, win the game for Boston. His solo blast pulled the Sox to within 4–3 of the Baltimore Orioles. Boston then scored two in the ninth to win 5–4, minus any heroics from Ted.
The homer was Williams’s 248th at Fenway, compared to 273 on the road, proof that his lefty swing was probably better suited to a differently configured park. He might have hit 800 at Sportsman’s Park, for example.
Musial, whose hit in his final at bat was the 3,630th of his career, went 2–3 in that final game against the Reds, a 3–2 Cards victory. Pete Rose retrieved the ball from the outfield and handed it to Musial as Stan was pulled from the game to a standing ovation.
That moment between rookie and retiree represents 7,886 hits, rapped out by the first and fourth men on the all-time list.
Musial’s final two singles gave him precisely 1,815 hits at home and 1,815 hits on the road.
Mickey Owen spent the 1953 season managing in the Class B Piedmont League, where the ever-ornery former catcher presaged Mike Tyson by allegedly biting a chunk out of an opponent’s ear during a brawl, an act that cost him $2,500 in fines.
Owen never did live down his dropped third strike in the 1941 World Series, or his self-imposed departure from the bigs, but he did give back to the game with a baseball school named for him in Missouri, his home state. Among the campers to pass through the Mickey Owen Baseball School—Michael Jordan and Charlie Sheen.
In case you were wondering, DiMaggio, Williams, Feller, and Robinson all made Richard Nixon’s all-time All-Star teams—Joe D. on the 1925–45 squad, the others on the 1945–65 team.
Of the parks in use in 1946, only Fenway and Wrigley Field still stand.
The Department of Veterans Affairs doesn’t keep track of everyone who fought in World War II. It estimates the number of vets who pass each day by actuarial tables that are based on the 1990 census.
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