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Remembering Yankee Stadium: Forties!
(As the games at Yankee Stadium dwindle to a precious
few - -for your reading pleasure adapted from REMEMBERING YANKE
STADIUUM: AN ORAL AND NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE HOUSE THAT RUTH
BUILT)
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"Yankee Stadium was a home away from home without a doubt. Those
were really the best years of my life." - Ralph Houk
As the new decade dawned, America was still at peace in a world at
war, and baseball retained its hold on the nation's consciousness.
The Yanks had won 106 games in 1939; they'd notched their fourth
straight world championship and were favored to do it again.
RED FOLEY: Prior to the Second World War, box seats at the Stadium
were regular wooden chairs that went back two or three rows from
third to first base. They cost about $2.50. You had the low fences
in left and right field only about three feet high. Players could
lean in and make a catch. On the other hand, there were a lot of
pillars. People sat behind them and couldn't see very well. It was
called 'an obstructed view.'
The 1940 season would be one of the tightest American
League races ever. As it got underway reverence for the past was
displayed at the Stadium on April 16th when a plaque in Jake
Ruppert's memory was placed on the centerfield wall close to the
flagpole.
Jake Ruppert had passed, Lou Gehrig was no longer on
the scene. Joe DiMaggio, victim of a sprained knee in an exhibition
game just before the season started, was ailing. The Bombers lost
five of their first eight games and all season long played catch-up
in the American League pennant race.
BOO FERRIS: In 1941, I played summer baseball in a
college league, the Northern League in Brattleboro, Vermont. After
the season ended the Red Sox gave me a uniform and had me pitch some
batting practice at Fenway Park. Then Boston player-manager Joe
Cronin invited me to come along to a weekend series with the Yankees
at the Stadium. I stayed with the team at the Hotel Commodore.
I rode out on the subway with Mr. Cronin. It was the
first time I had ever been on a subway. We came right up on the
track right above Yankee Stadium looking down on the field and I
will never forget that sight I saw.
I pitched batting practice at the Stadium. I got to see Lefty Gomez
pitch that first game for the Yankees and battle with Ted Williams
who was to hit over .400 that season. Ted got three hits off Lefty.
I never dreamed that in a few years I would be pitching for Boston
against the Yankees at the Stadium in a real game.
The 1941 season was the 39th for the New York Yankees, their 18th
at Yankee Stadium. It would be the last season before the United
States entered that world at war. Anticipating the conflict that was
to come, Yankee president Ed Barrow offered Civil Defense the use of
the Yankee Stadium as a bomb shelter, indicating the area under the
stands could provide protection in case of attack.
It was a season 23-year-old Phil Rizzuto broke in as
Yankee shortstop. As the story goes, Lefty Gomez called him over and
asked: "Kid, is your mother in the stands?"
"Yes," said Rizzuto.
"Well," the fun-loving hurler told him, "stay here
and talk to me a little, and she'll think you're giving advice to
the great Lefty Gomez."
Joe DiMaggio did not get off to quick start in 1941;
there were those who claimed he was in a bit of a slump. On May 15,
before a small crowd at the Stadium in a game against Chicago, he
batted four times and managed a single off stubby southpaw Edgar
Smith. The hit was little noticed. More was made of the fact that
the home team now had lost eight of its last ten games with this
13-1 drubbing by the White Sox.
Over the next two months, however, the Yankee centerfielder notched
at least a hit a game. Joe DiMaggio was in a hot groove. And his
fire added fuel to the Yankee engine. The team began winning.
"I became conscious of the streak when the writers started talking
about the records I could break," the Yankee Clipper said.
Newspaper stories and radio commentary dramatized
what Joe DiMaggio was doing. Since virtually all games in that era
were played in the afternoon, radio announcers would routinely
interrupt programs with the news of the Yankee Clipper's progress.
Day and night, radio disc jockeys played the Les Brown band
recording:
Who started baseball's famous streak?
That's got us all aglow
He's just a man and not a freak,
Jolting Joe DiMaggio.
Joe...Joe...DiMaggio.......
we want you on our side.
From Coast to Coast, that's all you hear
Of Joe the One-Man Show.
He' s glorified the horsehide sphere,
Jolting Joe DiMaggio.
Joe...Joe...DiMaggio.....
we want you on our side.
He'll live in baseball's Hall of Fame,
He got there blow-by-blow
Our kids will tell their kids his name,
Jolting Joe DiMaggio.
(copyright 1941 by Alan Courtney)
At Yankee Stadium on June 17th, official scorer Dan Daniel of the
New York World-Telegram credited DiMaggio with a hit on a ground
ball to short that bounced up hitting Chicago's Luke Appling on the
shoulder. It was a call that would be questioned - one of several
during the streak where scorers strove to be as diligent as
possible. The questioning did not matter - DiMag later slapped a
single. . . .
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You can reach
Harvey Frommer at:
Email: harvey.frommer@Dartmouth.EDU
About the Author:
Harvey Frommer is in his 34th
consecutive year of writing sports books. A noted oral historian and
sports journalist, the author of 40 sports books including the classics:
"New York City Baseball,1947-1957" and "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime
Baseball," his acclaimed REMEMBERING YANKEE STADIUM, an oral/narrative
history (Abrams, Stewart, Tabori and Chang) was published in 2008 as
well as a reprint version of his classic "Shoeless Joe and Ragtime
Baseball." Frommer's newest work CELEBRATING FENWAY PARK: AN ORAL AND
NARRATIVE HISTORY OF THE HOME OF RED SOX NATION is next.
Frommer sports books are available direct from the
author - discounted and autographed.
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Harvey
Frommer along with his wife, Myrna Katz Frommer are the authors of
five critically acclaimed oral/cultural histories, professors at Dartmouth
College, and travel writers who specialize in cultural history, food, wine, and Jewish history and heritage
in the United States, Europe, and the Caribbean.
This Article is Copyright
© 1995 - 2010 by Harvey Frommer.
All rights reserved worldwide.
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