1940's Baseball

[johnnydnh]

A book that I recommend is Arnold Hano's "A Day in the Bleachers" It gives detailed account of the author attending a World Series game in 1954 at the Polo Grounds. I can also second LizzieMaine's recommendation of "The Boys of Summer" My mother gave me that book in 1972 after hearing Roger Kahn being interviewed on a local radio talk show. It was the first "serious" book on baseball that I had read. Prior to that I had practically memorized Arnold Hano's "Willie Mays" -a great book written for young readers such as I was. There are so many great books written about baseball though. A few others that come to mind are Red Barber's "The Rhubarb Patch", George Higgin's "The Progress of the Seasons" and Roger Angell's "The Summer Game" All of these books should serve to illustrate the importance of baseball to Americans during the 1940's-1960's. For baseball fiction, I love W.P. Kinsella's "The Iowa Baseball Confederacy" and "Shoeless Joe". No other sport lends itself to great literature like baseball.

 

[johnnydnh]

Speaking of play-by-play men, as a Giants fan I grew up listening to Russ Hodges and Lon Simmons and later Hank Greenwald. I remember when we would go camping, we could always pick-up Vin Scully at night. I had it good! LizzieMaine is absolutely right about the "yawping gasbags" that pass for play-by-play talent today with their overly-stylized "signature calls" Nothing makes the hair stand up on the back of my neck like listening to the local "calls" from around the league on ESPN or the MLB Channel. Some of the worst offenders: "The A-Bomb from A-Rod!", "The Tex Message", "He-Gone", "Stop It!", "You Have Got to be Kidding Me!" and last but not least, "Mercy!" I'll admit that Russ Hodges "lost it" after Bobby Thomson's home run in 1951, but that was a once-in-a-lifetime watershed moment that he was calling. The modern yawping gasbags "lose it" 4 or 5 times every single game. I sure miss Curt Gowdy and Joe Garagiola and sometimes Tony Kubek, doing the Game-of-The-Week, playoffs and World Series. I have to turn off the sound nowadays during the Fox broadcasts.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's interesting to compare Hodges' call of the Thomson homer with Red Barber's description of the same moment:

"Branca pumps, delivers -- a curve -- swung on and belted, deep shot to left field -- it is -- a HOME RUN! And the New York Giants win the National League pennant and the Polo Grounds goes wild!" And then Barber was *silent* for exactly 59 seconds, to let the crowd noise tell the rest of the story.

Modern broadcasters try to make the games and the moments *their* moments. The broadcaster is and should be merely the vehicle thru which the moment is conveyed --- and sometimes they should just get the hell out of the way and let the moment speak for itself.

I cannot watch Fox baseball coverage -- I only force myself to when there's no alternative. They epitomize every possible thing that's wrong with the modern version of the game.

 

[dhermann1]

That's like Barber's coverage of Mickey Mantle's 23rd home run one year. He says something to the effect that Mickey Mantle is up, he's got 22 home runs on the season. Mantle strokes one, and Barber just says, "23".
And speaking of the classic old time announcers, how about good old PeeWee Reese and Dizzy Dean doing the CBS Game of the Week back in the 60s? It wound up being a Yankee game 3/4 of the time, which suited me just fine. But the combination of Reese's Louisville drawl, and Dean's Arkansas drawl made the whole thing perfect. Old Diz even invented his own word, slud. As in "He slud into third base. Safe!"

 

[LizzieMaine]

Best Dizzy Dean story ever --

Diz was announcing for the St. Louis Browns in 1947, and for most of the season he'd been ragging on their pitching staff, insisting that he himself, despite having been retired for six years, could at that moment pitch better than any man the Browns had. The Browns players got annoyed by this -- and their wives got even more annoyed, insisting that Dean was insulting their husbands every day on the air -- and finally the team told him to put up or shut up. He agreed to pitch the last game of the season, suited up, and pitched four shutout innings against the White Sox, leaving the game only after he pulled a hamstring running out a base hit. He then went up to the broadcast booth, sat down at the mike, and declared "I said I could do it, and I done it," thus living up to his own dictum, "It ain't braggin' if you can do it."

 

[johnnydnh]

Great story! The best part is how he hurt himself....running out a base hit.

 

[Espee]

If I remember right, Barber advised Scully, something on the order of "Don't feel you need to SAY something, unless you're sure you'll improve the silence."

 

[LizzieMaine]

Getting back to the original question -- why did baseball matter? -- I think the best possible way to truly understand would be to read, in its entirety, the link that I'll give at the end of this post.

The story of the link is this -- the night of the final game of the 2004 American League playoffs, the Red Sox had a chance to beat the Yankees for the pennant and then go on to the World Series -- which they hadn't won in 86 years, a span filled with misses, just-barely-misses, and crushing disappointments spread over four generations of fans. When it looked like they had a chance, the members of a Sox internet forum, "The Sons of Sam Horn," began posting a dedicatory thread naming people, living and no longer living, for whom they hoped the team would win. The thread became a phenomenon, and when the Sox did win the pennant, it continued on thru the World Series itself, night after night, capturing exactly why it was, and is, that we care about a ridiculous game played by overpaid jerks in baggy pants. It's impossible for any Sox fan to read this thread without tears, and it's impossible for anyone to read it without realizing, at long last, why baseball matters. It's the only internet thread ever enshrined in the Baseball Hall of Fame.

Win it For...

 

[dhermann1]

Yeah, Tony C.

 

[hatguy1]

Baseball was huge in the 30's and 40's, and it extended until the 60's sometime....I'd love to know more about why it was so popular, how it was a part of the culture, etc....

I was told by someone who was a former member of the Brooklyn Dodgers front office that baseball was so popular in that day for the following reasons; 1) No TV, 2) No AC in homes, 3) every wide spot in the road had its own farm club and since people's houses were so hot and there wasn't much else to do in town, they went to the local baseball games. And of course, they could follow the progress of the parent teams in the papers etc later.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I was told by someone who was a former member of the Brooklyn Dodgers front office that baseball was so popular in that day for the following reasons; 1) No TV, 2) No AC in homes, 3) every wide spot in the road had its own farm club and since people's houses were so hot and there wasn't much else to do in town, they went to the local baseball games. And of course, they could follow the progress of the parent teams in the papers etc later.

I wasn't born until the 60's, but much of this fits my situation exactly. I grew up in Florida, and of course at the time there were no Major League teams there. But there were lots of minor league teams, and you sort of rooted for your minor league team's big club, or if you were lucky enough to have a team train in your town, you followed them. For example, my grandparents lived in Lakeland, FL, which is where the Detroit Tigers have trained for many, many years. My grandmother lived and died with the Tigers, even though she'd never been to Detroit or ever even farther north than Virginia or farther west than Mississippi. On a side note, my other grandmother liked listening to games in Spanish, even though she didn't actually *speak* Spanish. I've never understood that one.

Also, growing up we had no A/C and no TV for much of my youth. We got mostly the Atlanta Braves on radio, but sometimes you could get a national broadcast to hear other teams. To this day, I love listening to a game on the radio. We finally got a TV when I was in about the 7th grade, and then you got a "Game of the Week" on Saturdays. That was a BIG deal to actually watch a game on TV. And when the World Series rolled around...that was the only time my Dad let me stay up past my bedtime.

 

[LizzieMaine]

It's important also to remember that baseball was the first professional sport to claim the attention of a mass audience -- it was nationally popular by the 1880s, a time when football was in its infancy and basketball hadn't even been invented. Horse racing was a sport for the high-hat crowd, but baseball was, by its very nature, the people's game.

Radio and television were important parts of the game's appeal from the 1930s forward, but baseball's status as the National Pastime was well established before the turn of the century. Interest in the game reached its first great peak between 1900 and 1915, when the rivalry between the American and National leagues was new and exciting, and some of the greatest players ever to take the field were in their primes. The generation that experienced this period inculcated their children with a love of the game -- and that generation carried it forward thru the Era.

Baseball is still unique this way among popular sports: it's very common to find fans whose interest in the game has been passed down generation by generation over a period of a century or more. I'm a Red Sox fan, fifty years ago my parents were Red Sox fans, seventy-five years ago my grandparents were Red Sox fans, and a hundred years ago my great-grandparents were Red Sox fans. In a very real sense, baseball is in our blood -- giving it a continuity unmatched in any other American sport.

 

[hatguy1]

...and a hundred years ago my great-grandparents were Red Sox fans.

Agree with all you said. Interesting trivia; during your great-grandparents day they would've probably been known as the Red Stockings - or at least they could remember people referring to them as such. And baseball changed from two words to one word around that time as well.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Agree with all you said. Interesting trivia; during your great-grandparents day they would've probably been known as the Red Stockings - or at least they could remember people referring to them as such. And baseball changed from two words to one word around that time as well.

The Red Sox were never known as the "Red Stockings". The Boston Red Stockings were the National League team, which later officially became the Boston Braves (now the Atlanta Braves). The Red Sox were sometimes called the Boston "Americans" or Boston "Pilgrims" in their first few years, but by 1908 were officially the "Red Sox".

 

[hatguy1]

Whatever. The town's team used to be named the Red Stockings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Red_Stockings

Whether that particular organization moved to Atlanta or not, the team in Boston was known as the Red Stockings. To quibble about that is picking fly poop out of black pepper.

But on a more important note, I love the way you describe your location. That's good. May I inquire where that might be - at least state-wise or perhaps country-wise?

 

[HudsonHawk]

Whatever. The town's team used to be named the Red Stockings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boston_Red_Stockings

Whether that particular organization moved to Atlanta or not, the team in Boston was known as the Red Stockings. To quibble about that is picking fly poop out of black pepper.

I doubt the good folks of Boston considered the difference between the Braves and Red Sox to be a trivial distinction anymore than folks in New York saw little difference between the Dodgers and Yankees.

But on a more important note, I love the way you describe your location. That's good. May I inquire where that might be - at least state-wise or perhaps country-wise?

It's an early 19th Century description of the United States by Europeans, but more specifically applied to Texas, which is where I currently live.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I doubt the good folks of Boston considered the difference between the Braves and Red Sox to be a trivial distinction anymore than folks in New York saw little difference between the Dodgers and Yankees.

The nineteenth-century Red Stockings were a dominant team in the early years of the National League, but by the early twentieth century they were mediocre at best, at a time when the American League team quickly became the class of the new circuit. This made them the fan favorites -- and more important, the team of the Irish Establishment in Boston. The Braves, despite their miracle season of 1914, never approached the popularity of the rival team -- in Boston proper, they were seen as the city's "other team", and remained so no matter what they did. Even in the twenties, when both teams were horrible, the Red Sox got the bulk of the attention -- and when Tom Yawkey bought the Sox in 1933 and the Braves went bankrupt in 1935, the pattern was permanently set. The situation was so bad in 1935, in fact, that the team was briefly evicted from Braves Field -- which barely escaped being turned into a dog-racing track before a new deal could be negotiated.

Not even a pennant in 1948 could make the Braves favorites again, and within four years of that pennant, they were on their way out of Boston. The irony was that as soon as they were out of Boston they became a very good team -- at a time when the Red Sox were sliding into mediocrity and Yawkey was losing interest in running them.

 

[HudsonHawk]

The nineteenth-century Red Stockings were a dominant team in the early years of the National League, but by the early twentieth century they were mediocre at best, at a time when the American League team quickly became the class of the new circuit. This made them the fan favorites -- and more important, the team of the Irish Establishment in Boston. The Braves, despite their miracle season of 1914, never approached the popularity of the rival team -- in Boston proper, they were seen as the city's "other team", and remained so no matter what they did. Even in the twenties, when both teams were horrible, the Red Sox got the bulk of the attention -- and when Tom Yawkey bought the Sox in 1933 and the Braves went bankrupt in 1935, the pattern was permanently set. The situation was so bad in 1935, in fact, that the team was briefly evicted from Braves Field -- which barely escaped being turned into a dog-racing track before a new deal could be negotiated.

Not even a pennant in 1948 could make the Braves favorites again, and within four years of that pennant, they were on their way out of Boston. The irony was that as soon as they were out of Boston they became a very good team -- at a time when the Red Sox were sliding into mediocrity and Yawkey was losing interest in running them.

I know in other cities with multiple teams, fan loyalty was often based on neighborhood geography. In Chicago it was a north side/south side pattern. In New York, the Giants were the dominant team in Manhattan, the Yankee ruled the Bronx and of course the Dodgers owned Brooklyn. Was there a similar pattern in Boston, or was it more or less the result of the miserable play of the Braves during the first years of the Sox that made the latter the more popular team?

 

[LizzieMaine]

I know in other cities with multiple teams, fan loyalty was often based on neighborhood geography. In Chicago it was a north side/south side pattern. In New York, the Giants were the dominant team in Manhattan, the Yankee ruled the Bronx and of course the Dodgers owned Brooklyn. Was there a similar pattern in Boston, or was it more or less the result of the miserable play of the Braves during the first years of the Sox that made the latter the more popular team?

Geography wasn't really an issue -- Braves Field and Fenway Park are less than a mile apart, easy walking distance between them -- but in Boston itself, at least by the 1940s, there was a social-class distinction. The Sox, as a result of Yawkey's money and their greater success on the field, had become the establishment team, the middle-class team, the lace-curtain-Irish team, the Beacon Hill team. That left the Braves for the working-class, the outsiders, the shanty-Irish, the tabloid readers, and so on. It wasn't as strong a class-driven division as you had between the Dodgers and the Giants and Yankees, but it did exist in the city itself. Outside Boston proper, though, it wasn't anywhere near so pronounced -- there, loyalty was determined more by on-field performance.

Up until 1951, both teams had equal radio exposure -- they shared one station and one announcer team, and only home games were aired live. So there was no conflict or competition there -- and the only thing that made you like one team over another was its quality. The Sox were a good, contending club for most of the forties, while the Braves struggled until 1946-49, when they suddenly got good -- only to become absolutely awful again in a very short time. They drew over a million when they won the pennant in '48 -- but barely 280,000 in 1952, while Red Sox attendance remained consistent thruout this period. The Sox have always drawn a big chunk of attendance from around greater New England -- it's an easy daytrip even from here in Maine -- and the Braves somehow never really tapped into that market.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I've been to Fenway once, sort of a pilgrimage if you will, a couple of years ago. It's amazing how small it is compared to other parks...the concourse, the seats...you're walking along a narrow street and you realize the brick wall next to you is the outfield wall. It was simply built for another time...when you'd go to the park in the middle of the day, get off the train or whathave you, walk through the turnstile, sit down for an hour and half and watch a ballgame. You then got up and went back to your job or your everyday life. It wasn't the "event" it is now. I was also amazed at the number of people who said they were life long Sox fans, who lived in the area, but were attending their first ever game at Fenway. It was a BIG deal for them to actually go to a game, something they'd been planning for months or a year. That's a different dynamic than I've ever experienced where you decide on a whim to swing by the yard that night and buy two in the outfield.