The 1940s St. Louis Cardinals, The Greatest Baseball Dynasty You've Never Heard of, Part 1: 1941

 

Ever since they upset the New York Yankees in the 1926 World Series, The St. Louis Cardinals have been the most successful franchise in the National League. Their eleven World Championships are second only to the Yankees in baseball history and with the possible exception of the Dodgers, more legendary players have worn Cardinal uniforms than any other National Leage Franchise.

They have ranged from some of the greatest hitters of all time from Rogers Hornsby to Albert Pujols, some of the most incredible pitchers, including Dizzy Dean and Bob Gibson, some of the greatest defensive legends of all time such as Ozzie Smith, some of the greatest base stealers in history like Lou Brock, and some of the most brilliant managers of all time, including Whitey Herzog and Tony Larussa. Some of the greatest moments in World Series history have come when the Cardinals have been playing – from Grover Clevland Alexander striking out Tony Lazzeri in the 1926 Series to win them their first championship to Bob Gibson’s striking out a record seventeen Detroit Tigers in Game 1 of the 1968 World Series.

And ever since their first pennant in 1926, it is rare for the Cardinals to go more than a few years without a pennant or World Series. Their biggest gaps came between their 1946 World Series victory over the Red Sox to their triumph over the Yankees in 1964, that officially ended the Yankees dominance in baseball. They did not contend in the 1970s but won three pennants and a World Series in the 1980s.  And while the Braves became the most dominant team in baseball starting in 1991, with the coming of the new millennium they would win their first division title in nearly fifteen years in 2002, starting a period of dominance that would lead first to a pennant in 2004 and two subsequent World Championships. While they have not won a World Series since 2011, they have always been a postseason contender, and it is only this year that they have finally dropped out of contention for the first time in more than twenty years.

Yet for all the immense success this franchise has enjoyed, the period where they enjoyed arguably the greatest dominance over the National League and baseball has rarely gotten the credit it deserves, despite the fact that arguably the greatest player in their history was part of that same dynasty and one of the most successful managers of all time was at the helm. That said, given the context of that period, it is understandable why so many historians have chosen not to rank it as highly as the Cardinal dynasties of the 1960s and 1980s even though this team was not only more consistent but more dominant.

From 1942 to 1946, the St. Louis Cardinals won four National League Pennants and three World Championships.  Only a handful of National League Teams have enjoyed a similar level of dominance since then: the 1952-1956 Brooklyn Dodgers won four pennants and the 1972-1976 Big Red Machine won four division titles, three pennants and two World Series in that span. Yet while their have countless books written about the latter two teams of that era, very few have ever been written about the Cardinals of that period.

Of course, there’s a reason many students would hang a giant asterisk on that dynasty: during the heights of it the country was engaged in World War II, the nation was not concentrating on baseball the same way it did, and as we shall see the Cardinals had a distinct advantage during that period that few other teams in the majors had.  Still considering that between 1942-1944, the Cardinals record went 316-146, a three year record that is the fourth greatest in Major League history for that period (only the Cubs of 1906-1908, the 1929-1931 Philadelphia Athletics and the 1901-1903 Pittsburgh Pirates have better three year histories) you’d think they’d be more written about.

So in this series of articles I will give a history of the Cardinals of the 1940s, how they were built, the story of their dominance during the war years and the rivalry they had with what would be the next great dynasty in baseball: the Brooklyn Dodgers. (Some students of the game might know that they have an obvious connection.)

 

In 1934 the ‘Gashouse Gang’ managed by Hall-of-Famer Frankie Frisch, with legends like Joe Medwick, Leo Durocher and 30 game winner Dizzy Dean, upset the Detroit Tigers in seven games.  It was the fifth pennant and third World Series the Cardinals had won in eight years, another in a long line of triumphs for General manager Branch Rickey.

Ever since he had moved to St. Louis, Rickey had created the farm system, a huge network of minor league clubs designed to develop stars for the Cardinals.  At its peak in 1940, 32 minor league clubs would either be owned or affiliated with the Cardinal system. The 1934 team had been the pinnacle of the first field of those teams.

However, in 1935 after leading the National League most of the season, the Chicago Cubs went on a 21 game winning streak and won the pennant over the Cardinals by four games.  While the Cardinals didn’t exactly collapse over the next four years – they remained in contention – they never got close to winning the pennant either.

It didn’t help the Cardinals that owner Sam Breadon was a temperamental man who could not tolerate losing. In 1928, after the Cardinals in four games to the Yankees he fired Cardinal manager Bill McKechnie. He was never quite as horrendous as future owners George Steinbrenner or Charles O. Finley, but he could be just as impatient. Gabby Street, who won the World Series for the Cardinals in 1931, was gone before the 1933 season ended. Frisch lasted until the middle of 1938 when we disposed of for interim manager Mike Gonzalez.  Ray Blades got the Cardinals took second place in 1939, but when they got off to a poor start in 1940, he was fired.  Breadon eventually summoned Billy Southworth from the minors to take over.

Southworth had been a mediocre outfielder in the National League, who’d play with the 1926 Championship Cardinals.   He’d gone to the minors to manage and after McKechnie was fired, Southworth got his first chance to manage the club in 1929. He managed half a season before being replaced with McKechnie and being sent back to the minors. He managed for a bit in the minors, ended up coaching with the Giants in 1933, and was out of baseball by 1934. Rickey gave him another chance and he spent the next five seasons managing in the minors. Breadon overrode Rickey and put him in charge of the Cardinals in June of 1940.

The Cardinals were in seventh place when Southworth took over but he led them to a 69-40 finish, which landing them in third place behind the Brooklyn Dodgers and the Cincinnati Reds. The Reds had won their second consecutive N.L.  pennant and would go on to win the World Series in seven games over Detroit.

The 1940 Cardinals had many players who would be critical to St. Louis’ success for the next decade.  Mort Cooper, who would be one of the best pitchers of the 1940s, went 11-12 his first year in the rotation. Enos Slaughter hit .308 and Terry Moore considered one of the greatest defensive outfielders in history his seventeen home runs.  Marty Marion was on his way to becoming one of the greatest defensive shortstops of the decade. But the man who brought the most thrills to St. Louis was Johnny Mize, the Big Cat. That year he hit 43 home runs and drove in 137. 

Going into the 1941 season everyone thought the Cardinals were the team to beat. In addition to the talent in their lineup, Walker Cooper, Mort’s brother was brought up and expected to be the regular catcher. Johnny Hopp was in the lineup at first base and they had a superb rotation, including veteran starter Lon Warneke, rookie Howie Krist and Max Lanier.

But almost from the start of the 1941 season, the Cardinals would be plagued by a devastating series of injuries. Mize would break a finger and suffered from a sore shoulder; he would hit only seventeen home runs all season. Walker Cooper broke his collarbone and missed a few weeks. Mort Cooper was out of action for six weeks in order to have bone spurs removed from his elbow; he had to chew aspirin on the mound to deal with the pain. On August 10^th Slaughter collided with Moore in the outfield and would be out for nearly five weeks. And late that same month Moore would be struck in the head with a fastball and had to be hospitalized. Lanier would suffer from an inflamed tendon, outfielder Clyde Shoun from a sore shoulder, third baseman Jimmy Brown, a broken hand.

And yet for all that the Cardinals spent almost all of 1941 in one of the greatest pennant races of all time with the Brooklyn Dodgers, basically spending every day trading first place.

The Dodgers had spent the last three years being rebuilt by another front office genius Larry MacPhail. MacPhail had been an innovator at Cincinnati, pioneering night baseball and radio broadcasting, and building his team into a pennant winner. However in 1938, he went to Brooklyn and helped build a team that had been a joke for more than eighteen years into a contender. He named Leo Durocher as the manager in 1939. Famously the two had a relationship where MacPhail would fire Durocher, then hire him back the next day. But the two of them were smart and began trade for great players, including former Cardinals Mickey Owen and Joe Medwick, rescuing from obscurity pitchers like Kirby Higbe and Whitlow Wyatt, and claiming on waivers an outfielder named Dixie Walker. He paid $100,000 for a shortstop named Pee Wee Reese from Boston, which caused the Brooklyn shareholders to question his sanity. He got a centerfielder named Pete Reiser for $100, and Reiser would lead the National League in hitting his rookie year. The critical moment for the Dodgers in 1941 came when he traded for Billy Herman, who’d been the second baseman for the Cubs on three N.L Pennant winners in May of 1941.  The day after they acquired Herman, the Dodgers took over first place.

At the All-Star break, Brooklyn had a four game lead when St. Louis came to Brooklyn for a two-game series. They were confident they could win; Wyatt and Higbe, who would share the National League with 22 wins apiece were their starters. St. Louis won both games.

The critical game of the pennant race came on September 13 in St. Louis, in the rubber game of three game series. The Cardinals were one game out. Mort Cooper was on the mound for St. Louis, Whit Wyatt for the Dodgers.

For seven innings the game was scoreless. Cooper was throwing a no-hitter. At the top of the inning, Dixie Walker hit a double. On second base, Walker stole the sign from the St. Louis catcher Gus Mancuso. Herman hit the next pitch – a curveball – off the rightfield fence. The Dodgers were ahead 1-0. Wyatt held the lead and ended the game by striking out Enos Slaughter on three pitches. The Cardinals were two games out.

The next day the Cardinals moved to within one and a half games on a double header sweep of the Giants. That day went down in St. Louis history for another reason, because three minor league farmhands were brought up to the majors: pitcher Johnny Beazley, Whitey Kurowski and a twenty year outfielder named Stan Musial.

Musial had been signed as a left-handed pitcher in 1940, but during his 1941 season he had hit .379 with 26 homers and 94 runs with a Class C Cardinal team. He was promoted to Rochester, where he hit .326 in fifty four games before the team was eliminated from the minor league playoffs. He returned to his home town of Donora, Pennsylvania to find a telegram from Rickey telling him to report to St. Louis.

Batting against Boston Brave pitcher Jim Tobin, a knuckleballer, he popped up in his first at-bat. His second time up, he hit a double that drove in 2 runs. The Cardinals won 3-2. In his first twelve games in the majors, Musial would bat .425 with four doubles, a home run and drive in seven runs. In a double header against the Braves, he would get six hits. Casey Stengel, the Braves manager told the press that day: “You’ll be looking at (Musial) for a long time. Ten, fifteen, maybe 20 years.” Stengel was dead on in his prediction.

Musial believed with every fiber of his being if he had been brought up earlier, the Cardinals would have won the pennant.  When they saw him play, many Cardinals would think the same, particularly during August when Rickey had told them that he had no one in the minors to help the injury deprived Cardinals.

But despite the best efforts of Musial, the Cardinals could not overcome the Dodgers. They would end up winning the National League pennant by two and a half games.  Nevertheless, considering that the Cardinals had managed to win 97 games and finish this close despite all the injuries, Billy Southworth was named N.L. Manager of the Year by the Sporting News for 1941.

Two months after the Dodgers would lose to the Yankees in five games, the Japanese would bomb Pearl Harbor.  Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis told FDR that baseball ‘was yours to command.” FDR gave baseball a green light, saying that it would be the best thing for America to keep the National game going.

But he gave no exemptions for major league players from the draft. Before the 1941 season had even begun Hank Greenberg, the Detroit Tigers slugging start had been one of the first players drafted. His term ended on December 5. When the war began he reenlisted and would miss four and a half seasons of baseball. 350 major leaguers and over 3000 minor leaguers would end up being drafted. They would include some of the greatest players of all time, among them Ted Williams, Bob Feller and Warren Spahn.

However, the full effects of the war on baseball would not be felt in the 1942 season. In the next article I will deal with the 1942 pennant race, one so remarkable it makes 1941 seem like a warm-up.