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Introduction
- University of Nebraska Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
On October 6, 1941, the New York Yankees concluded the Major League Baseball season by defeating the Brooklyn Dodgers 3–1 in the final game of that year’s World Series. It was a Fall Classic short on offense —both teams combined for only twenty-eight runs in five games—but certainly not short on drama. With the Dodgers trailing in the series two games to one, Brooklyn catcher Mickey Owen committed one of the most infamous gaffes in big league history during the pivotal fourth game. Owen dropped what should have been the third strike and final out of the game in the ninth inning with the Dodgers leading 4–3. The Yankees proceeded to take advantage of their good fortune, scoring four runs and eventually winning the game for an insurmountable three games to one lead in the series. Just two months later, with the World Series a distant memory, the attack on Pearl Harbor brought the United States directly into a war that had been raging around the globe for several years. The 1941 World Series capped what had been a truly amazing baseball season filled with outstanding individual performances and records that stand even today. Most notably, Yankees centerfielder Joe DiMaggio embarked on a hitting spree that spanned more than a third of the season and eventually reached an astonishing fifty-six games. Across the nation, Americans became captivated by the feats of the Yankee Clipper as the number of consecutive contests in which he hit safely rose above thirty, forty, and eventually fifty. Even individuals not normally interested in the sport of baseball asked, “Did DiMaggio get a hit today?” While baseball fans focused on DiMaggio during the heart of the summer, by the final weeks of the season attention had turned to Boston, where arguably the best pure hitter to ever play the game was flirting with the magical .400 barrier. In a tale that has become part of baseball lore, before the final day of the 1941 season Red Sox left fielder Ted Williams had compiled an average that rounded ix Introduction off to exactly .400. Red Sox manager Joe Cronin, not wanting to see his young star miss an opportunity for such an achievement, suggested to Williams that he sit out a season-ending double header. Never one to evade a challenge, Williams refused to take the day off and promptly tallied six hits in eight at-bats to finish the year with a .406 batting average —the last time the .400 barrier has been broken in the Major Leagues. In stark contrast to the magical 1941 baseball season, Hitler’s Germany had overrun most of continental Europe the year before, and militaristic Japan was threatening Asia and the South Pacific in an ever-increasing global war. Although the United States did not officially enter the conflict until December 1941, the specter of American involvement had long haunted most citizens’ minds, especially when it became evident that Germany and Japan were bent on world domination . When the United States finally did join the fray, Americans fought for various principles and institutions, one of which, for many, included the national pastime.1 From the turn of the twentieth century to the beginning of World War II, the American people enjoyed an unusual and unprecedented fascination with the game of baseball. To some, baseball was “America’s anchor”; it personified the nation’s values and helped to unify an increasingly diverse population. Historian Benjamin Rader has correctly stated that “until the 1950s no other team or individual sport seriously challenged baseball’s supremacy ” in the sporting consciousness of the American people.2 Early in the war, the revelation that the Japanese also maintained a rabid fascination with baseball threatened to undermine to some extent the assertion that the game embodied America’s essence. Editors at The Sporting News, the premier baseball publication of the day, attempted to resolve the issue in the inflamed rhetoric typical of the time: “[The Japanese] may have acquired a little skill at the game, but the soul of our national game never touched them. No nation which had as intimate contact with baseball as the Japanese could have committed the vicious, infamous deed of the early morning of December 7, 1941, if the spirit of the game ever had penetrated their yellow hides.”3 Because the war years were such a unique time, not only for the United States, but also for professional...