The Gashouse Gang: How Dizzy Dean, Leo Durocher, Branch Rickey, Pepper Martin, and Their Colorful, Come-from-Behind Ball Club Won the World Series—and America’s Heart—During the Great Depression (review)

The 1934 St. Louis Cardinals may have been the most colorful club in the history of baseball. At least John Heidenry wants to make that case in his book on Dizzy Dean, Pepper Martin, Leo Durocher, Ducky Medwick, Branch Rickey, and the rest of the team that swept through the National League and defeated the Detroit Tigers in the 1934 World Series. Heidenry presents a fairly straightforward chronological reading of the 1934 season and the Cardinals’ early struggles; the superb pitching of Dizzy Dean and his brother Paul; the late charge to catch the Giants and win the pennant, in spite of the Dean brothers’ strike late in the season; and finally the taming of the American League champion Tigers.

In many respects, 1934 was an extraordinary year. The Great Depression had bottomed out, and the economy was beginning to show signs of recovery under the presidency of Franklin D. Roosevelt. Branch Rickey continued to perfect the concept of the baseball farm system and expand the Cardinals’ hold on hundreds of baseball prospects. The system was beginning to pay off with the rise of players such as Pepper Martin, Ducky Medwick, and Dizzy Dean. The acquisition of player-manager Frankie Frisch a few years earlier and shortstop Leo Durocher provided additional pieces in the quest for another National League pennant. As Heidenry points out in his preface, the great players of the first golden age of baseball were gone, and Babe Ruth would be playing his last season in 1934. It seemed like the pieces were falling in place for a new type of team.

Unquestionably, the leader of this new type of team was Dizzy Dean. Dean had the confidence to back up his braggadocio and the ability to make it all work. For this one season, he dominated batters like few before him and took on an incredible workload as the season progressed. Without Dizzy Dean, there would have been no Gashouse Gang. His pitching skills made up for whatever shortcomings the team had—and, according to Heidenry, the team had very few. Heidenry points out that the Cardinals were well-stocked at virtually every position, from catcher to center field.

Some of the book’s highlights include the story of Dizzy Dean and Branch Rickey’s first meeting and Dean’s insistence on calling Mr. Rickey “Branch.” Another concerns Bill Terry’s famous line about the Brooklyn Dodgers—“Is Brooklyn still in the league?” (66)—sparking Casey Stengel and the Dodgers’ revenge upon the Giants at the end of the season. This book is loaded with vignettes about the various characters of the Gashouse Gang, but the star is clearly Dizzy Dean. One of the turning points in the season surrounds the trip that Dizzy and Paul never made to Detroit for an exhibition game. In Heidenry’s account, Frisch’s fining of the Deans, the Deans’ decision to walk out on the team in the middle of the pennant race, Dizzy’s staged destruction of his uniform, and the brothers’ ultimate reinstatement represent a turning point for the team that ultimately led them to a World Series championship.

One of the key ingredients in Heidenry’s story is the liberal, but not overly intrusive, use of quotations. As most of them are from secondary sources, often newspapers, their veracity cannot be totally trusted, but in the context of this book they work to liven up an already lively story and provide a sense of “being there” for the reader.

Heidenry has mined nearly every major secondary source, as well as the Sporting News and newspapers from St. Louis, Detroit, New York, and Brooklyn. The result is a well-written and well-researched...