The golden years of baseball
By 1940, baseball was known as America’s favorite game and national pastime. There were sixteen major league teams, all in the Northeast and Midwest, each at most an overnight train ride from everyone else. The teams had been around for two generations; and each had its own traditions, legends, its own loyal following base, its own pantheon of heroes,
Admission prices were low and average people could afford to go to the games: bleacher seats were fifty cents, bleachers a dollar, reserved seats $1.75, and as I recall (I never sat in one) boxes, $2.25. When the war started they added a ten percent entertainment tax and I seem to recall a special box office where uniformed servicemen paid thirty-five cents for grandstand seats.
There were no corporate boxes or luxury suites then, and artificial turf had not yet been invented. Men in baggy flannel uniforms played on the old-fashioned grass and if you got hungry during a game, you could choose between Harry Stevens Boiled Sausages (they got the name “hot dog” at the Polo Grounds), Peanuts in the Shell, Crackerjacks and small blocks of vanilla, chocolate and strawberry ice cream. If I was thirsty, it was soda, beer, and coffee.
There were three teams in New York City, the Giants and Dodgers in the National League, the Yankees in the American League. Boston, Philadelphia, Chicago and St. Louis had teams in both leagues, Cincinnati and Pittsburgh had National League teams, Cleveland, Detroit and Washington American League teams.
Most of the kids in New York were Yankees fans. Babe Ruth had made the Yankees the most popular team in baseball even before they moved to Yankee Stadium in 1923. (John McGraw of the Giants kicked them out of the Polo Grounds because, with Ruth in their lineup, they drew larger crowds than the Giants at the Giants’ own ballpark.)
From 1936 to 1943, the Yankees won the American League pennant seven times, the World Series six times. Ten Yankees from those years were inducted into the Hall of Fame: manager Joe McCarthy, general manager Ed Barrow, and players Lou Gehrig, Tony Lazzeri, Red Ruffing, Lefty Gomez, Bill Dickey, Joe Gordon, Phil Rizzuto, and Joe DiMaggio. . DiMaggio, in his first six years had a .340 batting average, a .600-plus slugging percentage and hit more than 200 home runs. He was paid $43,750 at the time and he left the Yankees for three seasons to enlist in the Army Air Force. After the Yankees, the Dodgers were next in popularity and my New York Giants were last.
The Giants had the richest early history. My father had watched Amos Rusie, who pitched more than 500 innings in three seasons and had four seasons in which he won more than 30 games. My father remembered John McGraw as player-manager and Frank Bowerman, the first catcher to wear shin guards, and he had seen Roger Bresnahan, ‘Iron Man’ Joe McGinnity, ‘Dummy’ Taylor and Christy Mathewson. Mathewson, along with Walter Johnson, Babe Ruth, Hans Wagner and Ty Cobb were considered the five greatest players in baseball history and became the first five to be elected to the Hall of Fame in 1936.
The Giants lost the World Series to the Yankees in 1936 and 1937, then went into a decline that lasted until 1950. It was easy to be a fan of the Yankees or the Dodgers in the 1940s, but being a Giants fan took strength. of character, or maybe just sheer stubbornness.
Baseball was America’s secular religion in those days and the ballparks, each one different from the next, were its cathedrals. When you first went through the turnstile as a child and had half your ticket ripped out, you knew your grandfather had taken your father there before you were born and you felt something bordering on the sacramental that now your father was taking you. .
Traditions had grown around each of the sixteen teams, around each of their stadiums, and around the game itself. Each new season was unique, but at the same time, each one was a link in the chain of everything that had happened and everything that was to come as far as the eye could see. The players, the club owners, the fans, the sportswriters and the radio announcers who described each game, step by step, were part of that tradition and each felt a personal responsibility to help carry it into the future.
