Looking at the Era from 1940-1960 …
One of the truly legendary baseball seasons of all time was in 1941.
While much of the world was already at war, the United States wasn’t yet directly involved in the conflict, and a mesmerizing baseball season helped keep the minds of many Americans off the possibility of our nation being drawn once again into war.
The players most responsible for keeping Americans entertained during the 1941 season were two men, on rival teams, who’d already attained superstar status as a result of their stellar play during earlier seasons.
“Yankee Clipper” Joe DiMaggio had already put together five outstanding seasons since making his Yankee debut as a 21-year-old rookie in 1936. Between 1936 and 1940, DiMaggio had never batted lower than .323, his rookie season average, and in 1939 he batted a lofty .381 while capturing his first league MVP award (of what would eventually be 3).
Ted Williams of the Boston Red Sox, meanwhile, had been in the major leagues only two years prior to the 1941 season. Even so, he had already established himself as one of the best in the game with outstanding power figures and a cumulative batting average of over .330.
In case you’ve forgotten, 1941 was the year DiMaggio and Williams set major league marks that many observers believe will never be duplicated.
Nowadays, it seems whenever a major leaguer puts together a hitting streak of 20 games, it’s big news. And it should be. Thirty games pretty much guarantees day-by-day progress reports on SportsCenter. Forty games mesmerizes much of the nation. After all, there’s been a 40-game hitting streak only three times in the past 100 years—most recently by Pete Rose in 1978.
A 50-game streak? Well, that’s happened only once ever. That was DiMaggio’s streak in 1941—and it lasted an incredible 56 games.
As great as DiMaggio’s 1941 season was, many people think Ted Williams had an even better season. That was the year Williams batted .406—and no major leaguer has batted .400 over an entire season since. George Brett (.390 in 1980) and Rod Carew (.388 in 1977) are the only two who’ve come close. With strong pitching arms nearly always coming in to finish off games, the task of putting together a .400 season has only gotten more difficult during the current era.
If we had another baseball season with the sort of competition and excellence DiMaggio and Williams exhibited in 1941, baseball might reclaim its position as America’s favorite sport. Mark McGwire and Sammy Sosa put on a great show in 1998, but as it turned out there was a major cloud hanging over both of their performances that year—and, in many minds, over their entire careers. While baseball has cleaned itself up significantly in recent years after the steroid scandals, chances are the public would react a lot more favorably to a long hitting streak or the pursuit of a .400 average than to another home run derby. If you were old enough to follow baseball during the 1941 major league season, chances are you’ve got some memories the rest of us baseball fans would love to have.
Following that legendary 1941 season …
DiMaggio and Williams played another season before leaving baseball to serve in the US war effort. After serving honorably, both returned to the major leagues in 1946 and continued to play at a high level. One can only imagine, though, what the major league record book might look like had Williams, DiMaggio, and many other leading players of their era not had their baseball careers shortened by war.
While many leading major leaguers of the 1940s had their careers shortened by service in World War Two, many other leading players lost years of major league service due to the color barrier that plagued Major League Baseball until 1947.
Baseball was a reflection of American society, and the sad fact is that African Americans were denied many opportunities based on no other reason than color. Even those who honorably served in the US World War Two effort were denied the opportunity to compete in major league baseball immediately following the war.
For decades the best African American baseball players in the country—along with some Latin Americans—toiled in the Negro Leagues. Although the exploits of players such as Satchel Paige and Josh Gibson are well known, many other former Negro League players and their records have long been forgotten.
The old separate-but-equal myth seemed to be cemented in the minds of those who could have initiated change in the early 1940s. Even the baseball commissioner of the day, Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, was a strong opponent of integrating the major leagues. While a few individual team owners are believed to have made efforts for African Americans to play on their teams, by all accounts Commissioner Landis, Major League Baseball’s first commissioner, thwarted every such attempt.
Two factors helped turn the tide a bit by 1945.
The first was Landis’s death in 1944. The second was the recognition that many Negro League players had served the war effort with honor and shouldn’t be denied their fair opportunity. Fair change didn’t come quite yet, but it was only a matter of time.
The efforts of Happy Chandler, Landis’s successor as baseball commissioner, and Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Richey ought to be recognized. In short, Richey was determined to bring an end to the major league color barrier, decided Jackie Robinson should be the first African American to play for the Dodgers, and in 1946 assigned the college-educated Robinson to the Dodgers’ minor league team in Montreal, where he was accepted by fans.
Early in 1947, with the full backing of Commissioner Chandler, Robinson appeared for the first time in a Dodgers’ game.
The color barrier was broken.
Robinson went on to be a major league star and an inspiration to the country—and Richey and Chandler are remembered for being on the right side of history.
Did You Know …
Jackie Robinson played himself in The Jackie Robinson Story? The well-regarded 1950 movie chronicles the challenges Robinson had to overcome in many areas of life including his path to the major leagues. Robinson was less than halfway through his stellar major league career when he appeared in the movie, and had just come off being named the National League MVP in 1949.
And About Those Brooklyn Dodgers …
It’s amazing that so many Brooklynites still seem to consider the Dodgers their rightful team … even though the Dodgers have been playing in Los Angeles since 1958. Taking a pro sports team away from a city can have effects that last for generations.
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Jackie Robinson, Branch Richey, and Happy Chandler can rightly be considered real baseball heroes. Who else do you consider a true baseball hero?