The 1940s St. Louis Cardinals Dynasty, Conclusion: Decline and Legacy

 

Even the casual baseball fan knows that in 1947 Jackie Robinson broke the color line in baseball with the Brooklyn Dodgers. When Branch Rickey began the integration of baseball, it would make the Dodgers the dominant team in the National League for the next decade. But it would be a few years before their hegemony over the league became clear.

Nearly as chaotic to Robinson’s being brought up to the majors was the fact that just prior to the season beginning Commissioner Happy Chandler banned Dodger manager Leo Durocher from baseball for a full season. For decades it was never clear why this happened; Durocher would claim in his autobiography that it was a power play by Chandler. Later histories would say that Durocher’s lewd behavior – he married starlet Larraine Day in Las Vegas wedding just a few weeks after her divorce – troubled many religious groups who claimed they would boycott baseball if action was not taken against Durocher. Durocher also made no secret of his keeping company with gamblers and mobsters. Whatever the reason Durocher was gone. In the interim Rickey hired Burt Shotton to manage the team. Shotton had managed the Philadelphia Philles and the Reds for a combined seven seasons but had not held a major league job in thirteen years.

Robinson’s difficulties winning over his teammates and throughout the league are well known, so I will briefly discuss two separate stories involving the Cardinals. Prior to the season, the Cardinals had signed a petition claiming that they would not play Brooklyn as long as Robinson was on the team. National League President Ford Frick wrote a letter to the front office telling them that if they refused to do so, the entire team would be suspended. Another story is the first time the Dodgers traveled to St. Louis that when Enos Slaughter was out by a wide margin at first base, he deliberate slid spike first and laid open Robinson’s thigh.

The Cardinals franchises and the surviving players both denied this after these stories were repeated in Ken Burns’ documentary in 1994. However, I am inclined to believe that there is a certain element of truth to both.  At the time St. Louis was not only the western terminus of baseball, but the southernmost. It would be easy to say that the Cardinal team would have little desire to play African-American. As for Slaughter, there have been incidents in his history later in his career where he was involved in brawls with African-American opponents – most notoriously when, as a member of the Yankees in 1957, he got into a brawl with Larry Doby in the midst of a beanball war that ended with his uniform being ripped to shreds.

As had been the case throughout the decade, the Cardinals and the Dodgers spent the season fighting for the National League Pennant. Aside from Robinson, the Dodgers received help from Pee Wee Reese, Dixie Walker and Pete Reiser.  Hugh Casey was one of their relief ace and Ralph Branca won 21 games at the age of 21.

The Cardinals spent much of the season within range of the Dodgers but while Stan Musial, Enos Slaughter and Whitey Kurowski were reliable in the offense, their pitching was nowhere near the level it had been the year before. Most notable was the falloff of Howie Pollet who went from 21-10 in 1946 to 9-11 in 1947. Harry Brecheen and Murry Dickson could not pick up the slack. And it did not help that for much of the season the revitalized Boston Braves, led by their old manager Billy Southworth, chased both them and the Dodgers.  Key to their success were Johnny Sain and Warren Spahn, who each one 21 games.  Tommy Holmes batting .309 and led the National League in hits. But most impressive was Bob Elliott, who hit 22 home runs and drove in 113 runs. Elliott would be named the National League’s MVP that year even as the Dodgers would win the National League Pennant by five games over St. Louis.

The next year when Durocher turned, Robinson was out of shape and the Dodgers collapsed into the second division early.  In one of the most controversial moves in the history of 20^th century baseball, the New York Giants would hire Durocher to take over for Mel Ott. His first day in the Polo Grounds Durocher was booed by the Giant fans who remembered vividly what he had said of the ‘nice guys’ on their team just two years earlier.

Shotton resumed managing the Dodgers and led them to a 48-33 finish, helping them finish in third place. But even then the Dodgers had no real chance for the National League Pennant.

The Cardinals should have been able to resume the top of the standings.  Harry Brecheen went 20-7 and led the National League in ERA. Enos Slaughter batted .321. But the year belonged to Stan Musial who in 1948 not only had his best season but one of the best any major league hitter ever had. Not only did he have his highest batting average with .376 but he led the National League in hits, doubles, triples, slugging percentages, runs scored, runs batted in, and total bases with 429.  The only major offensive category he did not lead the league in was home runs – and he did not miss by much. He hit 39 home runs, his personal best, and just one fewer than Ralph Kiner and Johnny Mize who shared the league lead.  He would win his third National League MVP in a landslide.

But even with Musial’s incredible season, the Cardinals could not catch the Boston Braves. Warren Spahn had a weak season for him – he went 15-12 with a 3.71 era – but Johnny Sain more than made up for it. He went 24-15 and pitched nine complete games in the final three weeks of the year. Bob Elliott and Tommy Holmes each had superb seasons again. Jeff Heath batting .319 and hit 20 home runs before breaking his ankle before the season ended. And the Braves brought up a shortstop named Alvin Dark, who batted .322, hit 39 doubles and was named Rookie of The Year. Billy Southworth had led to Braves to their first pennant in 34 years, and they would lose to Cleveland in a tightly fought six-game World Series.

But that would be Billy Southworth’s last hurrah as a manager. He had been struggling with alcoholism ever since his son had died in the war and he never truly recovered from it even while the Braves were doing so well.  The Braves dropped to fourth place and halfway through the season Southworth turned over the Braves to coach Johnny Cooney as a leave of absence for health reasons. The Braves finished fourth, which guaranteed the team shares of World Series money. That year, the players voted to give Southworth only a quarter of a share. In 1950, many of the rebellious players were traded. Two of them Alvin Dark and Eddie Stanky ended up going to the Giants and would be vital in the two pennants Leo Durocher would win.

The 1949 Season featured one of the greatest pennant races of all time in the American League. Joe McCarthy’s Red Sox, who had lost a one-game play off to Cleveland the year before, spent much of the season chasing new manager Casey Stengel’s Yankees. The Red Sox erased a twelve game lead before sweeping the Yankees at Yankee stadium and taking a one game lead in to the final two game series. The Yankees would win both and Casey Stengel would win the first of an incredible ten American League pennants in twelve years.

Less remembered, but just as thrilling was the National League Pennant race. The Dodgers had the model of the team that would become known as the Boys of Summer. Jackie Robinson had arguably his greatest season batting .342, driving in 124 runs and winning the National League MVP. Roy Campanella had his first full season as catcher, hit 27 home runs and drove in 87 runs. Don Newcombe was the rookie sensation, going 17-8, striking out 149 and throwing 5 shutouts, winning the Rookie of the Year award. Carl Furillo batted .322 and drove in 122 runs. Gil Hodges had his first superstar season at first base, driving in 115 runs. Duke Snider and Billy Cox played their first seasons and regulars.

The Cardinals, however, did not go away. Musial was nearly as formidable an offensive threat as Robinson that year, batting .338, hitting 36 home runs and driving in driving in 123 runs. Enos Slaughter hit .336. Howie Pollet returned to form and went 20-9, leading a Cardinal pitching staff with six winners of at least ten games. The Cardinals and Dodgers exchanged the lead for much of the season and on September 4^th had a 2 and a half game margin. With a week to go they were ahead by a game and a half. But the Cardinals would slowly collapse and the Dodgers would be ahead by one game over St. Louis on the final day of the season. 

On October 2, Stan Musial hit 2 home runs to help power the Cardinals to a 13-5 victory over Chicago. The Phillies would shell Don Newcombe and tie Brooklyn 7-7 in the ninth. In the tenth, however, the Dodgers scored 2 runs to give the game and the pennant.

That was the last time the Cardinals would get that close to a National League Pennant for nearly fourteen years. In a sense the end of the Cardinal era had happened two years earlier when Sam Breadon, who had been suffering from prostate cancer, would sell the Cardinals. Breadon was one of the most successful owners in major league history. During his ownership the Cardinals rose from a perennial doormat to a National League, power winning nine pennants and six world champions. His teams had a winning percentage of .570, the highest of any owner who has ever owned a team.  Yet perhaps because so much credit went to Branch Rickey and Breadon was such a controversial figure, Breadon has yet to be voted into the Hall of Fame.

Breadon sold the team to Fred Saigh, and Saigh’s decision to try and use a tax dodge nearly forced the Cardinals out of town in 1952.  Fortunately just as they were on the verge of moving to Houston, Gussie Busch would step in and buy the team in 1953.

But even with Busch’s money, the Cardinals did not contend seriously in the 1950s. The Cardinal farm system did not produce the way it used to, and because the Cardinals were slow to integrate, they would trail both the Dodgers and Giants in getting African-American players. Over the 1950s many of the great players associate with the Cardinal dynasty would be traded off, including Red Schoendienst, who went to Milwaukee and Enos Slaughter, who ended up with the Yankees.

 Both men would play on multiple pennant and World Series winners – Schoendienst on the Milwaukee Braves in 195 7 and 1958; Slaughter on the Yankees in 1956-1958.  Slaughter would be voted into the Hall Of Fame by the Veterans Committee in a controversial move but he did play until he was 43 and finished with a lifetime batting average of .300. Schoendienst eventually became a manager, would return to the Cardinals in 1965 and lead them to two National League Pennant and the World Series in 1967.

Stan Musial would spend the rest of his career out of the spotlight, quietly maintaining his record as the greatest of all National League hitters.  He would never win another Most Valuable Player award but he would win three consecutive batting titles from 1950 to 1952 and one last one in 1957. In 1962, he came very close to winning another one at the age of 41, finishing the year at .330. Musial spent his entire career denying  he was a home run hitter, but he could still manage to do impressive things when he chose. In May of 1954, he set a record by hitting five home runs in a doubleheader. In June of 1962, in two consecutive games against the expansion New York Mets, he hit four home runs on four consecutive at bats. He finished with 475 home runs in his career.

That pales  to some of his other achievements. When he finished his career in 1963, he was the National League’s all-time hit leader with 3,630 hits, second only to Ty Cobb. For the record, 1815 of those hits were on the road, and 1815 hits were at home.  While Pete Rose and Hank Aaron have passed him, he still ranks fourth on the all-time hit list and he ended his career with a .331 lifetime average. In the sixty years his retirement, only Tony Gwynn has a higher lifetime average than him and Gwynn was a far different (albeit just as remarkable) kind of hitter. He hit 725 doubles, scored 1949 runs and drove in 1951, and appeared in 24 all-star games as a player, more than any position player in history.

As for Billy Southworth, he attempted to resume managing in 1950 but he no longer had the spirit for it. Not long after winning his 1000^th game, he asked for his release. He was acquitted of drunk driving charges after a 1955 arrest and retired from scouting at the end of the 1956 season.  But he had an eye for talent even then: one of the players he signed as a scout was an eighteen year old Negro Leaguer named Henry Aaron.

Southworth died in 1969. Despite the fact his lifetime winning percentage as a manager was .597,  the second highest in history, he would not be voted into the Hall of Fame in his lifetime and not until 2009.  Perhaps it was because of a career in management that was not nearly as long as so many of his peers. Just as likely it had to do with so much of it being during World War II. But Southworth, like the Cardinal team he led, was one of the great managers in baseball history and like him, the team he led deserves to be recognized among the all-time dynasties.