No matter what you may have heard to the contrary. I did not cover the World Series in 1945, the last year until now that the Chicago Cubs represented the National League in baseball’s grandest even.
To the contrary, I was a toddler many years from penning his first column for a daily newspaper. Apparently I didn’t miss much, according to the ink-stained wretches of day.
When the season began, many of the sport’s finest players were wearing the uniforms of the United States military instead of the cotton flannels of the 16 major-league teams (none located west of St. Louis).
It had been that way since 1942, the first season after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor that brought the U.S. into World War II.
At first, Judge Kenesaw “Mountain” Landis, the baseball commissioner, had thought about canceling the season. But he was overruled by President Franklin D. Roosevelt, who felt that baseball was integral to the national morale.
So the game went on, although many teams were forced to use players who were either too young or too old (Joe Nuxhall was 15 when he had a cup of coffee – or glass of milk, in his case – with the 1944 Cincinnati Reds.)
But now it was 1945, and the times were changing again. The European theater ended in May, shortly after the baseball season was under way, and the Pacific theater ended abruptly in August, when President Harry Truman ordered the Atomic Bomb dropped on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Throughout the summer, players discharged from the service began returning to their teams. For example, Detroit slugger Hank Greenberg rejoined the Tigers in mid-season, providing the team the impetus it needed to win the American League.
Nevertheless, the World Series teams were so devoid of stars – Greenberg and teammate Hal “The Prince” Newhouser were the only future Hall of Famers on either side – that my ancestors in the press box typed up all sorts of uncomplimentary stuff about the Series.
One dashing knight of the keyboard wrote that the teams were so bad that neither could win. Another said it was more like a company softball game, the “Fat Guys” playing the “Tall Guys.” Blessedly, such cynicism was mostly ignored because Americans were still in a festive mood over the end of World War II and the bright future that beckoned.
A few facts about the 1945 World Series.
Although the War was over, the tradition of playing the National Anthem before each game, which began in 1942, was continued in the World Series.
There was no network TV so fans around the country followed the action by tuning their radios to the Mutual Network.
Neither team had an African-American or Hispanic player.
In six of the seven games, at least one pitcher threw a complete game, the best being the one-hitter thrown by the Cubs’ Claude Passeau in Game Three.
All the games were played in the daytime and four lasted two hours or less.
Yes, you read that correctly. A nine-inning game in two hours or less. Today hitters take up that much time stepping out of the batter’s box to adjust their helmets and Velcro wristbands.
The printed ticket price on the best seats was less than $10. Today scalpers in Chicago are getting $1,100 for one standing room only ticket.
The Tigers won the Series, four games to three, and it wasn’t nearly as uninteresting as my ancestors in the press box had feared and predicted.
Although the War was over, major-league baseball stuck with the format of three games at one site and four in the other, to cut down on travel, instead of the traditional 2-3-2 format that’s still in use today.
The Cubs won the opener, 9-0, in Detroit’s Briggs Stadium, but the Tigers found back to tie with a 4-1 victory that featured Greenberg’s three-run homer and Virgil “Fire” Trucks’ seven-hit complete game.
Thanks to Passeau’s masterpiece in Game Three, the Cubs went home to Wrigley Field with a 2-1 lead in games. But consecutive outstanding pitching performances by Newhouser and Trucks pushed the Tigers in front, three games to two, heading into Game Six.
The Cubs had the lead heading into the top of the eighth inning, but a Greenberg homer tied it and sent it into extra innings. The Tigers scored what proved to be the winning run in the top of the 12th when Stan Hack doubled down the line past Greenberg.
Now it was 3-3 in games. The Tigers went with their ace, Newhouser, and the Cubs countered with Hank Borowy, a mid-season pickup from the Yankees. The selection of Borowy was something of a gamble, since he had been the starting pitcher in Game One and Game Five, in addition to pitching two innings of relief in Game Six.
To say the Cubs lost the gamble would be an understatement. Borowy gave up three consecutive singles in the first and left the game. The Tigers scored five times in the inning and coasted to a 9-3 victory.
The next year baseball was back to normal. All the pre-war stars who joined the military – Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Stan Musial, etc. – were back with their respective teams.
On Nov. 1, 1945, Landis retired as commissioner and was succeeded by A.B. “Happy” Chandler, a U.S. Senator from Kentucky. Unlike Landis, Chandler was open to the idea of integrating the National Pastime, much to the delight of Brooklyn impresario Branch Rickey.
“If those boys can fight for us and get killed at places like Iwo Jima and Guadalcanal,” Chandler said, “I don’t see any good reason why they can’t play big-league baseball.”
Billy Reed is a member of the U.S. Basketball Writers Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Journalism Hall of Fame, the Kentucky Athletic Hall of Fame and the Transylvania University Hall of Fame. He has been named Kentucky Sports Writer of the Year eight times and has won the Eclipse Award twice. Reed has written about a multitude of sports events for over four decades, but he is perhaps one of media’s most knowledgeable writers on the Kentucky Derby