Notes
• 259 • Notes Preface 1. The success of the Cardinals in the 1940s also made them the National League’s team of the quarter century. In the twenty-five years from 1926 through 1950, they finished first or second eighteen times and won six of the nine World’s Series in which they played, half again as many as all other National League teams combined. Introduction 1. See Baldassaro and Johnson, American Game. 2. Sporting News, May 25, 1945, 5. 3. St. Louis Globe-Democrat, October 24, 1945, 3C. 4. On press reaction to the signing of Jackie Robinson, see Oakley, Baseball’s Last Golden Age. 5. Tygiel, Baseball’s Great Experiment. 1. From Foxhole to Dugout 1. The war years in baseball are well chronicled. See Goldstein, Spartan Seasons; Mead, Baseball Goes to War; Finoli, For the Good of the Country; Gilbert, They Also Served; Anton, No Greater Love. 2. While encouraging baseball to continue, President Roosevelt made it clear that players were not to be given any special consideration by draft boards. Players with deferments were repeatedly reexamined, as many in the public found it difficult to believe that men capable of competing in a demanding sport were physically unfit for military service; in 1945, married players with families were taken into the armed forces in part to appease public opinion. The Cardinals lost Musial, Cooper, and Lanier that year, most likely costing the team the pennant. 3. Red Sox pitcher Earl Johnson and Senators shortstop Cecil Travis were among players who fought in the Battle of the Bulge. Travis’s feet were frozen, and he never regained his prewar abilities. Athletics pitcher Phil Marchildon was shot down over Denmark, spent a year in a German POW camp, and returned to have a few good years after the war, but Senators pitcher Bert Shepard was not so lucky. He was shot • 260 • Notes to Pages 8–10 down over Germany, one of his legs so badly injured that it had to be amputated. Several players won medals for their heroism: Senators outfielder Buddy Lewis received the Distinguished Flying Cross; Cardinals outfielder Harry Walker was awarded a Purple Heart and Bronze Star. Only two big leaguers lost their lives—Elmer Gedeon and Harry O’Neill—both of whom had played only briefly in the majors. 4. No fewer than eighty players from the St. Louis farm system were on major league rosters in the spring of 1946, enough to stock three teams in addition to the Cardinals. Every National League team had at least seven former Redbirds; three of them had ten, including Brooklyn. Twenty-eight former Cardinals were on American League rosters, nine of them with the St. Louis Browns. In addition to players, five National League managers, in addition to Dyer, had worn the Cardinal uniform (Durocher at Brooklyn, Southworth at Boston, Grimm at Chicago, Bill McKechnie at Cincinnati, and Frisch at Pittsburgh), as had seven National League coaches. Sporting News, May 2, 1946, 3. 5. Sporting News, December 20, 1945, 1. Elimination of the federal wartime excess profits tax reduced the basic levy from 80 or even 95 percent to 40. The federal income tax was also reduced by 10 percent, easing pressure on owners in contract negotiations with players. Sporting News, January 10, 1946, 12. 6. Red Sox owner Tom Yawkey purchased shortstop Cronin from the Washington Senators for $250,000, and Breadon sold Dizzy Dean to the Chicago Cubs for $185,000. 7. St. Louis Post-Dispatch, January 6, 1946, 14A. 8. Two federal laws secured the rights of military veterans to their prewar jobs and salaries, the Selective Service Training and Services Act of 1940 and the Servicemen ’s Readjustment Act of 1944. The latter became popularly known as the GI Bill of Rights, but both were in effect and important in 1946. 9. On the GI Bill requirements, see Sporting News, November 15, 1945, 8. 10. The Cardinals’ Breadon argued unsuccessfully that the waiver rule would hurt a lot of younger players, like the Redbird’s Vernal “Nippy” Jones, whose teams would keep them sitting on the bench in the major leagues, rather than risk losing them for the waiver price, when the youngster should be playing every day in the minors. Sporting News, April 1, 1946, 1. 11. In 1946, major league teams had 170 working agreements with minor league clubs. National League teams had one hundred affiliations with fifty-five of the minor league clubs owned by the big league teams...
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