This Month
Michael Street Reviews Robert W. Creamer's Baseball in '41
Tuesday April 18, 2007 11:30am
If you asked most fans today what they consider the best baseball season ever, they might pick Sosa and McGwire assaulting the hallowed "61" in 1998, George Brett chasing .400 into September of 1980, or even (if they're old enough) the closest AL pennant race ever, when the Red Sox beat out three other contenders to take the 1967 crown. Very few fans will remember a season that had three such amazing races, all set against the dramatic background of World War II: the season of 1941.
Fortunately, we have Robert Creamer to recall it for us, with the classic Baseball in '41, a blow-by-blow account of the year that brought us Ted Williams' .406 average, Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hit streak, and the Brooklyn Dodgers' scrappy squad finally overcoming the St. Louis Cardinals in the final week of the season, in a pennant race that had been hotly contested all season long. Creamer, a former Sports Illustrated writer and editor whose other must-read classics include Babe: The Legend Come to Life, tells the 1941 season from the perspective of a wide-eyed nineteen-year-old Yankee fan. That's right: a die-hard Yanks fan so swept away by the emotions of the season that he managed to feel deeply for both a Red Sox hitter and the crosstown rival Dodgers.
1941 was also the year America entered World War II, but deciding to fight against the Axis didn't happen suddenly. The shadow of another Great War had been falling long and cold across the United States for some time before Pearl Harbor made the choice for us. Did this Damoclean threat hanging over major league ballplayers—of prime age and in top physical condition, already aware that baseball would offer them no draft exemption - make them play that much harder? Or did the extraordinary events of that season leave a lasting mark because of the grim war that followed? Likely it was both, or maybe neither, but Creamer doesn't scrutinize causes, touching on questions like these without straining to answer them.
Instead, it is Creamer's deft touch with the four stories of 1941 that makes this book such an unbridled pleasure. He bounces from historical lesson to cultural commentary to private recollection, without ever losing track of the main storyline or losing his reader. This skill is the envy of any fiction writer, and reminiscent of the curlicued plotlines of writers like John Barth—just when you think he's on a meaningless tangent, Creamer brings you back to the main plot, and you realize that the sidestory you’ve just heard is vital to your understanding of the narrative as a whole.
While the temptation for Creamer to wax nostalgic is inevitable (and, given the vagaries of memory, somewhat unavoidable), this is not a candy-coated tale of a legendary year. Creamer discusses the anti-Italian prejudices faced by DiMaggio, as well as anti-Semitic feelings against Hank Greenberg, the best player in baseball and the first superstar to be drafted. Speculation about his draft eligibility, along with his anticipated response, reached a fever pitch during the '41 season. And even the war itself was not beyond controversy, as protectionists and interventionists angrily debated the necessity of fighting Hitler, Mussolini and Hirohito.
Creamer turns his unblinking eye on all of this, but the heart of this book is still the tripartite miracle of DiMaggio, Williams, and the Dodgers. DiMaggio was in his early years, still third banana behind the legends of Ruth and Gehrig, Williams had yet to win a batting title, and the Dodgers were the team everyone loved to disparage as "Dem Bums." Even though the ascendance of Williams and DiMaggio may seem inevitable today, at the time they were merely very good ballplayers, and the miracle of 1941 helped catapult them into the mythical realm they now occupy.
DiMaggio's hit streak was at the heart of a Yankee revival, after they missed the pennant in 1940 for the first time in five seasons. But his streak also unified a nation, and Creamer tells of driving cross-country during that June; wherever he stopped, he could ask, "He get one today?" No matter who or where Creamer asked, they knew he meant Joltin' Joe, and they always knew the answer.
Williams' chase of .400 didn't really grab everyone's attention until the last few months of the season, when it became apparent that he had a chance to reach that time-honored mark. Williams was still a stripling youngster with a sweet swing but no batting title, and even Red Sox fans had only an inkling of the heights he would one day reach. Just as legendary as Williams' .406 mark is his decision to play the final day of the season. Though his average sat at .39955 and would be rounded up to .400, Williams elected to play in the doubleheader that day, going 6-for-8, to finish with a tidy .406. "The record's no good unless it's made in all the games," Williams explained, a decision that any fan can enthusiastically support.
The Brooklyn Dodgers were perennial cellar-dwellers and redheaded stepchild to New York's fair-haired favorites, the Yankees and Giants. In the 1930's they slowly began to rise from the depths, mostly due to the management team of Leo Durocher and Larry MacPhail. MacPhail shrewdly brought on new talent, and Leo "The Lip" began his legendary career by injecting fire into the moribund Dodgers dugout. The Dodgers battled it out with St. Louis throughout the season, finally overcoming the Cards in a dramatic final week that riveted the nation in a way that today's everyone's-invited wildcard playoffs never will.
The Dodgers would face the Yankees in the 1941 World Series, one which culminated in one of the more famous chokes in history: Dodger Mickey Owen dropping Tommy Heinrich's game-clinching third strike in the last out of Game Four. The Dodgers would have evened the series with a victory; instead Heinrich ran safely to first, the Yankees went on to win that game and then Game Five and, with it, the Series. This would be the only wrinkle in an otherwise flawless story of three separate amazing feats, all occurring in a single season, one that is unlikely to ever be repeated. It's almost enough to make a true baseball fan wish he were eighty years old, so that he could have witnessed such a once-in-a-lifetime confluence of events. Instead, we've got Robert Creamer to do it for us, and baseball fans of any age will be delighted with Baseball in '41, an incredible book about an incredible season.
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