Baseball's pivotal era, 1945-1951 / William Marshall.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Marshall, William, 1944-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Baseball--United States--History--20th century.

Baseball.

United States.

History.

Physical Description:

xii, 513 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Lexington, Ky. : University Press of Kentucky, [1999]

Summary:

At the end of World War II, soldiers returning from overseas hungered to resume their love affair with baseball. Spectators still identified with players, whose salaries and off-season employment as postmen, plumbers, farmers, and insurance salesmen resembled their own. It was a time when kids played baseball on sandlots and in pastures, fans followed the game on the radio, and tickets were affordable.

Most assumed that after the war baseball would continue the way it had always been played. Few could see that the physical, economic, and social makeup of the national pastime was already changing. baseball, like America, would never be the same.

Following the war, the outstanding play of Joe DiMaggio, Stan Musial, Ted Williams, Bob Feller, Don Newcombe, Warren Spahn, and many others dominated the field. But perhaps no performance was more important than that of Jackie Robinson, whose entrance into the game broke the color barrier, won him the respect of millions of Americans, and helped set the stage for the civil rights movement.

Baseball's Pivotal Era also records the attempt to unionize the Pittsburgh Pirates and the Mexican League's success in luring players south of the border. The resulting lawsuits almost undermined baseball's reserve clause and antitrust exemption, and led to spring training pay, uniform contracts, minimum salary levels, player representation, and a pension plan--the very issues that would divide players and owners almost fifty years later.

During these years, the game was led by A.B. "Happy" Chandler--a handshaking, speech-making, singing Kentucky politician. Most owners thought he would be easily manipulated, unlike baseball's first commissioner, the autocratic Judge Kennesaw Mountain Landis. Instead, Chandler's style led one owner to complain that he was the "player's commissioner, the fan's commissioner, the press and radio commissioner--everybody's commissioner but the men who pay him."

Through personal interviews with players and owners and more than two decades of research in newspapers and archives, William Marshall tells the full story of one of the most memorable periods in American sports history.

Contents:

1945

1. Winds of Change 3

2. "No One Is Qualified" 14

3. 1945: Season of Hope 28

1946

4. The Mexican Baseball Revolution 45

5. Murphy Money and More 64

6. 1946: Season of Tumult 83

1947

7. Durocher Finishes Last 101

8. Jackie Robinson's America 120

9. 1947: Season of Fury 151

1948

10. Miracle on Lake Erie 169

11. Ownership Has Its Privileges 185

12. 1948: Indian Summer 210

1949

13. Gardella's Folly 231

14. A Stepchild in Peril, The Minors 250

15. 1949: Pinstripes Prevail 270

1950

16. "Who Were Those Guys?" 291

17. The Great Triumvirate and Other Stars 319

18. 1950: Year of the Whiz Kids 351

1951

19. Chandler's Waterloo 375

20. 1951: "The Shot Heard 'Round the World" 397

21. Baseball Then and Now 426

Sources 490.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 441-489) and index.

ISBN:

0813120411

OCLC:

39678808