1942: Americans suddenly found themselves at war but were not
about to be distracted from the National Pastime. The Brooklyn
Dodgers and New York Yankees were looking to continue their World
Series rivalry from the 1941 season, and a youthful team from St.
Louis was determined to stop them.
With only one player older than thirty, the St. Louis Cardinals
were the youngest team to win the National League pennant and World
Series. Built on good pitching and tremendous speed on the base
paths and in the field, the team featured rookie Stan Musial,
future Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter, and ace pitcher Mort Cooper,
the National League's Most Valuable Player of 1942. With their
winningest season ever, posting 106 victories, the 1942 Redbirds
have been called the greatest Cardinal team of all time.
Jerome Mileur was just a kid from downstate Illinois, but he
well remembers his view of one game from the left-field
grandstand--and the thrill of attending the second game of the
World Series. In this book, he brings a sure and loving grasp of
his subject to reconstructing one of the most remarkable pennant
drives in modern baseball history, with the Cards winning
forty-three of their last fifty-one games and clinching first place
on the last day of the season.
Mileur provides a game-by-game account of the season with
play-by-play action, not only capturing all the thrills on the
Cards' way to the top but also conveying the physical and mental
demands that the players endured. Counted out by nearly everyone
but themselves in August, the Redbirds caught fire in the season's
final weeks to pass the seemingly unbeatable Dodgers. And by
winning four games out of five to defeat the New York Yankees for
the championship, they handed Joe DiMaggio his only World Series
defeat.
More than a recapitulation of a thrilling season, Mileur's book
is a reminder of how major-league baseball in 1942 differed in so
many ways from today's game--one startling example is Mileur's
account of how the absence of outfield warning tracks contributed
to a devastating injury to Brooklyn's star outfielder, Pete Reiser.
The tenor of the times is reflected as well in the juxtaposition of
the baseball season with the United States' first year in the
Second World War.
The 1942 Cardinals were not only a remarkable team unto
themselves but also the beginning of a new baseball dynasty--1942's
pennant was the first of three in a row for the Cards, as well as
the first of three World Series victories in a space of five
seasons. This account of that tremendous season is a page-turner
for anyone who loves the game and a must-read for Cardinals
fans.
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