In Ken Burns
quintessential work on Baseball very little attention is played to the
game itself during World War II. However, as a reference to just how far down
the quality of play had become at one the narration says: “In 1944 The Browns,
the worst team in baseball before the war, won the American League pennant –
the only pennant they ever won.”
That fact is
considered by most historians as the symbol of just how little talent there was
still playing the game in the midst of the war.
It would seem a little cruel to the Browns were it not for the fact it
was thought that way by contemporaries. Indeed according to one source when
many POWs were released in the winter of 1944 and told the Browns had won the
pennant that year, they thought it was a trick and some were still in the
custody of the Germans!
The fact is, the
Browns have by far the worst postseason history of any franchise that ever exists;
in the fifty-two years they existed, they won just one pennant. And because you
can not discuss the Cardinals during the war without discussing the Browns (and
because even the most devoted students of the game probably know little about
them) a brief discussion of the Browns is in order: how they came into
existence, where they were before the War and how they managed to win the A.L
Pennant that year.
To start with when
the American League was founded in 1901 Ban Johnson put American League teams
in four cities to compete against the National Leage teams: the Chicago White
Sox, The Philadelphia Athletics, The Boston Pilgrims (who became the Red Sox)
and the St. Louis Browns. (The New York Highlanders came in 1903 after the then
Baltimore Orioles relocated.)
So from the start of the 20th
century, there were sixteen teams in baseball and that would be the case until
expansion came. By 1925 fourteen of those teams had won at least one pennant.
The two that had not yet were both from St. Louis, and indeed for the first
twenty years of the 20th century, neither team ever came close,
usually finishing in the second division.
The fortunes of both
teams began to improve in 1915 because each franchise would obtain one of the
greatest hitters in the history of baseball. For the Cardinals, it would be
Rogers Hornsby, the greatest right-handed hitter in history. For the Browns, it
would be George Sisler, a first baseman who at his peak was as great a hitter
as Hornsby.
Despite the fact that
he was among the first players ever inducted into the Hall of Fame George
Sisler has been mostly forgotten by history. In large part, this is because he
spent the majority of his career with the Browns and never made it to the World
Series. That is far from fair because it looked for a while like he might be
the greatest hitter of all time with the potential to have a higher average
than Ty Cobb.
Like Babe Ruth,
George Sisler started his career as a pitcher but his talents at the bat moved
him to the infield after his rookie year.
He hit superbly his first four years as a regular (he finished second
and third in the AL in batting in 1917 and 1919) but in 1920 when the ball
officially became livelier, his average exploded.
In 1920 when the
baseball world was riveted by Babe Ruth’s incredible 54 home run season for the
Yankees, George Sisler was having a season nearly as remarkable. He managed 257
hits setting a major league record that stood for the remainder of the 20th
century, hit .407 and actually led the major in total bases with 399 to Ruth’s
388. He was second to Ruth in home runs, runs scored and RBIs, hit 49 doubles,
19 triples and stole 42 bases.
By comparison, the
next year was a disappointment. He ‘only’ batted .371 with a ‘meager’ 216 hits
and ‘just’ 125 runs scored. But around him, the Browns were becoming stronger.
Baby Doll Jacobson and Ken Williams had impressive offensive seasons of their
own: Jacobson batted .353, Williams hit .347 with 22 home runs and 137 RBIs.
Urban Shocker led the majors with 27 wins. The Browns finished in third place
the highest they had gotten to this point in their existence.
1922 was the season
that would break Browns fans heart. Sisler topped his mark by a huge margin. He
batted .420 and had a 41 game hitting streak. Ken Williams hit 39 home runs and
drove in 155 to lead the league. Shocker won 24 games. Four of the five spots in RBI leaders was
held by members of the Browns. And with
Babe Ruth’s on and off-field behavior leading him to be suspended by the major
leagues five times, the Yankees spent much of the 1922 season chasing the Browns.
The season came to a
climax in September in a three game series in St. Louis. The Yankees one the
first game but the Browns won the second, in part to a left-hander named Hub
Pruett, who has a place in baseball history tied to the Babe Ruth legend. In
1922 this 21 year old left hander was doing something that the rest of the
American League had been unable to do for the last three years: get the Bambino
out.
When he faced him in
May, he struck him out and walked him once. One month later, he struck him out
in relief. Two days later as a starter, he struck him out three times and
walked him once. Facing him in July, Ruth made contact against Pruett for the
first time by hitting a weak grounder and then Pruett struck him out the next
three times. He then missed the next several weeks with a sore arm, but when
the Browns called on him to pitch to Ruth with the bases loaded and no one out,
he struck him out again. At this point in twelve at bats, Ruth had faced Pruett
twelve times, had walked twice, grounded out once and every other time struck
out.
In their next meeting
Pruett walked Ruth the first time but in
the third struck him out again. Then in the fifth Ruth broke the spell and hit
a massive home run. He also got a single in the eighth. Still Pruett was the
winning pitcher.
In the third game,
the Browns were ahead 2-1 in the ninth. If they won they would be in first
place. Pruett was called into relieve. However, he gave up a walk and a base
hit and outfielder Whitey Witt hit a single to drive in two runs to win the
game for the Yankees. They left St. Louis with a one and a half game lead and
the Yankees would win the pennant by two games.
The next year Sisler
suffered an eye infection and missed the entire 1923 season. He would come back
the next year but was never the same hitter. His lifetime average of .340 was
more than enough to earn him induction into the Hall of Fame in 1938, but he
never came close to matching the marks he’d set in his previous years. In a
decade of high batting average after 122, his highest mark was .345.
Perhaps not
coincidentally the Browns upswing in the standings ended with the loss of
Sisler’s effectiveness. In 1923, they would fall to fifth place and rarely get
that high again for the next twenty years while the Cardinals became the toast
of St. Louis.
Ironically the man
who turned the Cardinals from a joke to a National League powerhouse Branch
Rickey had spent much of his initial career in baseball as a part of the
Browns. He had been one of their scouts,
manager and had been appointed to general manager in 1917. But his
revolutionary plans for baseball were scorned by members of the Browns staff –
then manager Miller Huggins would say “I don’t go for this theory stuff’ – and
when owner Sam Breadon offered him more money and a percentage of the profits in
1919, he switched teams.
The Browns resumed
their position as the chump of baseball which is putting it mildly. In 1936 the
Browns home attendance for the season was 80,632. Things had gotten so
bad that by the end of the 1941 season owner Dan Barnes was hoping to move the
nearly bankrupt franchise to Los Angeles. The owners were scheduled to vote on
it on December 9, 1941. Permission was denied. (All things considered that may
have been the best thing for baseball; the transportation system of America was
such in the 1940s, it's hard to imagine that it would have been practical.
The war did not do
anything to improve St. Louis’ opinion of the Browns; the Cardinals owned the
city in 1942 and 1943. The Browns in those years finished third and sixth
respectively and few thought that there was much of a chance they’d improve in
1944, even at the height of the manpower drain. Certainly their new manager
Luke Sewell didn’t think so when he took the job. It didn’t help matters that
in addition to all the other struggles wartime teams were dealing with, the
Browns were populated with heavy drinkers.
One of the heaviest
was Sig Jakucki, who had pitched one season for St. Louis in 1936 with an 0-3
record. He ended up pitching for the Los Angeles Angels of the Pacific Coast
and his reputation for being a hotheaded, arrogant, half-drunk, bush-league
jackass followed him. When the Browns were desperate for pitching they tracked
him down in a semi-pro team in Texas. He was the most unpopular man in the
league, but somehow he managed a 13-9 record even though he drank before, after
and sometimes during starts.
Another part of their
rotation was Denny Galehouse. Galehouse was working six days a week at a rubber
factory in Akron when the Browns tracked him down and asked him he would be
interested in pitching only on his day off.
Galehouse would spend the 1944 season hopping a train after his Saturday
shift, pitching the first game of a doubleheader, and left the ballpark
immediately afterwards. He was 9-10 with a 3.12 era but this was purely
planning.
Nelson Potter was
thirty two with two bad knees with no talent until Sewell, a former catcher,
taught him how to throw a screwball. He managed to win nineteen games that
year, ten in the last two months of the season.
Their infield was
famously called the ‘all 4-F infield’. George McQuinn at first base was 34 with
a bad back. Third baseman Mark Christman had signed with Detroit in 1935 and
was only back in baseball because of the war. Don Gutteridge at second base was
thirty two and was Sewell’s right hand man. But the star of the Browns was
their shortstop Vern Stephens.
Stephens would be one
of the few wartime players to have a career after the war and with good reason.
Without question he was the best position player in the war and he was a hell
of a hitter. At 23, he hit 20 home runs and drove in 109 runs, superb numbers
that were simply unheard of in an era where shortstops were fundamentally a defensive
position with nothing expected from them when it came to offense. Stephens made
35 errors at short that year, but his bat more than made up for it.
The Browns somehow
managed to contend the entire season with their major rival being the Detroit
Tigers. If the Browns had the one great offensive player left in the American
League, the Tigers had by far the best pitcher. Hal Newhouser had come up with
the Tigers in 1940 and gone 9-9. He was ineligible for the war because of a heart
defect. He’d had an ability to strike batters out – he led the American League
in strikeouts in 1943 – but winning had never been easy. He went 8-17 in 1943
and considered quitting baseball. Veteran catcher Paul Richards snapped him out
of it and taught how to throw.
In 1944 he had one of
the greatest seasons any pitcher has ever had, war non-withstanding. He went 29-9
with a 2.22 ERA. He threw six shutouts, struck out 187 batters and threw 312
innings with complete games. That year he was the winner of the American League
MVP, which he would in again the following season.
Just as capable was right
hander Dizzy Trout, though that was less of a shock. In 1943 Trout had gone 20-12,
tying for the lead in victories in the A.L. He finished 1944 going 27-14 and led the American League in ERA with 2.12
leading the league with seven shutouts and 352 innings pitched.
The 1944 pennant race
came down to the final weekend with the Browns playing the Yankees in a four
game series while the Tigers finished their season against the Washington
Senators. The Yankees were in third place, technically still alive in the hunt
for their fourth straight pennant. By
this point, however, the manpower drain had hit the Yankees so hard that in
their final series of the season they were reduced to playing Paul Waner as one
of their semi-regulars.. Waner had been one of the greatest hitters in the National
League, with a lifetime average of .333. Now he was forty-one and reduced to
playing as a pinch hitter.
The Browns managed to
win the first game against the Yankees 4-1, helped by George McQuinn’s two run
homer. McQuinn had been signed with the Yankees, but with Lou Gehrig at first
he spent seven years in the minors. He relished the homer. In the second game
of the double header Hank Borowy faced off against Nelson Potter. In the first
inning, the Browns scored when Guttridge doubled, moved to third on a wild pitch
and scored on a ground out. Inning after inning Potter made than run hold up.
With two out in the
ninth and the tying run on second, Waner came up to pinch hit. Before the
double header, a National League fan asked what Waner was doing with the
Yankees.
Waner laughed and
gave an honest answer: “Because Joe DiMaggio’s in the Army.” Waner hit a blooper
towards short right center that Gutteridge caught. It was the last time Waner
ever came to bat again.
The Yankees were
eliminated and the Browns were tied with Detroit. They had split their
doubleheader against the Senators with Trout losing 9-2 in the second game.
On Saturday Newhouser
beat the Senators 7-3. The Browns defeated the Yankees 2-0 on Galehouse’s 2-0
shutout. Everything came down to the last game of the season. Sig Jakuki
started for St. Louis. Trout would start on one day’s rest for Detroit.
That morning the
proposed Senator starter received an anonymous call in which someone offered
him $20,000 if he ‘didn’t have a good day.” Leonard hung up and told his manager
what happened. The Senators manager trusted him. His knuckleball danced passed
the Tigers and Washington backed him up a 4-1 win.
Now everything depended
on what happened at Yankee Stadium, The night before the game Coach Zach Taylor
had spotted Jakucki with a brown bag. Taylor tried to take it away from him. Jakucki
threatened trouble if he did and promised not to take a drink that night.
When Jakucki got to
the clubhouse the next day, the trainer smelled the whiskey on his breath and
confronted him. “I kept my promise,” he told the trainer. “I didn’t promise I
wouldn’t take a drink this morning,
The game started with
the Yankees scoring two unearned runs. Then in the fourth inning outfielder
Chet Laabs hit a two-run home run to tie the game. He did it again in the fifth.
Prior to that game, Laabs had hit three home runs. To the first sellout crowd
for the Browns in twenty years, Jakucki closed out the game 5-2 and the Browns
had their pennant.
The Cardinals were
waiting for them. Had been for a long time, actually. They had won 105 games for
the third straight year. Mort Cooper had gone 22-7 with seven shutouts but in
one of the most questionable choices for MVP of all time, shortstop Marty
Marion ended up winning, the first shortstop to win in either league. Marion
had batted .267 and had hit only six home runs, but he was considered one of
the most brilliant defensive shortstops of his era. Mort Cooper finished ninth in the voting,
behind brother Walker who finished eighth.
Stan Musial had yet another good season, batting .347 and finishing
second in the National League in batting. However, he finished fourth in the MVP
race. Fellow outfielders Johnny Hopp and
Ray Sanders were potent in the offense as well: Hopp hit .336 and Sanders drove
in 102 runs,
Southworth and Sewell
were friends and their relationship went beyond that. During the 1944 season,
both men and their wives shared an apartment.
This worked out well because due to the scheduling of both leagues,
neither one of them was in St. Louis at the same time. This relationship fell
apart in October, so the Southworth’s moved into a vacant apartment for the
World Series which for one of the few times in history was played entirely in
the same park: Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis.
In Game 1, Cooper
threw a 2-hitter but still lost to Denny Galehouse 2-1 on George McQuinn’s two
run homer in the fourth. Game 2 went eleven innings and reliever Bix Donnelly
was the hero for the Cardinals as he through four innings in relief and struck
out seven while the Cardinals. In the eleventh Ken O’Dea hit a pitch single
with 2 on to give the Cardinals a 3-2 win.
In Game 3, with two
out in the third the Browns managed five straight singles which combined with a
walk and a wild pitch, gave them four runs. They would win 5-2 and take a two
game to one lead.
That would be the
high mark for the Browns in the series. In Game 4 Harry Brecheen would throw a
complete game and Stan Musial’s three hits, including a home run, gave the Cardinals
a 5-1 victory. Cooper and Galehouse faced off again in Game 5. Both were
superb: Galehouse struck out 10, Cooper 12, but Cooper threw a shut out while
two of the six hits Galehouse gave up were home runs. And in Game 6 the Cardinal
would take a 3-1 lead into the sixth. When the Browns got runners on second and
third against starter Max Lanier, Wilks
entered the game and retired the last eleven batters he faced giving the Cardinals
their second championship in three years.
But Southworth’s
triumph would become ashes in just a few months. His son Billy Junior had been
part of the Cardinal farm system. When the war began he enlisted in the Army
and became a bomber pilot. He survived twenty-five missions over Europe. But on
February 15th 1945, his B-29 overshot LaGuardia Field while
attempting an emergency landing in Flushing Bay. It broke apart, exploded and
sank. Five airmen were rescued but Billy Junior and four more were killed.
Billy Senior was
never the same. He became a heavy drinker and though it would not effect his
managing for a long time, the zest he’d had for baseball never returned. The Cardinals
made a noble attempt to win their fourth straight pennant that year but ended
up losing to the Cubs by three games. (That 1945 pennant, of course, was the
last one the Cubs would win until their World Championship in 2016.) Southworth’s
managing career was not yet over, however, as we shall see in the next article.
As for the Browns
1944 was as good as it got. The next year, they dropped to third place. That
season, they became famous for playing Pete Gray, a man with one-arm in their
outfield. The fact that Gray ended up
playing for the Browns in 1945 is often pointed to far more as a symptom of
wartime baseball than their pennant the year before. The Browns resumed their place in the
American League cellar soon after and in 1953 left St. Louis for Baltimore,
where they became the Orioles. Their life in baseball has been far happier than
anything the Browns accomplished in their half-century in St. Louis.
In the last full
article in the series I will deal with the 1946 Cardinals who after the end of
the war, proved that they still had enough to talent for one more World Championship.
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