1944 World Series

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The 1944 World Series featured a crosstown matchup between the St. Louis Cardinals and the St. Louis Browns, with the Cardinals winning the Series in six games for their second championship in three years and their fifth overall.

This war year saw perhaps the nadir of 20th-century baseball, as the long-moribund St. Louis Browns won their only American League pennant. The pool of talent was depleted by the draft to the point that in 1945 (but not 1944), as the military scraped deeper and deeper into the ranks of the possibly eligible, the Browns actually used a one-armed player, Pete Gray. Some of the players were 4-Fs, physical rejects whose defects precluded duty in the trenches but not limping around the bases of ballparks.^{[citation needed]} Others divided their time between factory work in defense industries and baseball, some being able to play ball only on weekends. Some just plain got lucky.

Stan Musial of the Cardinals was one. Musial, enlisting in early 1945 but never called, was able to stay with his team throughout the war. The Browns, on the other hand, were not so fortunate, and their 1944 team was a patched together fabric of those ineligible for military service, virtual misfits, alcoholics and retreads who somehow managed to win games.^{[citation needed]}

As both teams called Sportsman's Park home, the 2-3-2 home field assignment was preserved. The Junior World Series of that same year, partly hosted in Baltimore's converted football stadium, easily outdrew the "real" Series and attracted attention to Baltimore as a potential major league city. Ten years later, the Browns transferred there and became the Orioles. Another all-Missouri World Series was played 41 years later, with the Kansas City Royals defeating the Cardinals in seven games.

The Series was also known as the "Streetcar Series", or the "St. Louis Showdown."

Records: St Louis Cardinals (W: 105, L: 49, Pct: .682, GA: 14 ½) - St Louis Browns (W: 89, L: 65, Pct: .682, GA: 1)

Managers: Luke Sewell (Browns), Billy Southworth (Cardinals)

Umpires: Ziggy Sears (NL), Bill McGowan (AL), Tom Dunn (NL), George Pipgras (AL)
Note: George Pipgras became the fourth person to appear in the World Series both as a player and as an umpire.

[edit] Getting There

Many of the games' best players were called away for the war, and the result was a seriously depleted pool of talent. The top team in the American League was the St. Louis Browns, who collectively batted .252 in route to their only pennant. They only had one .300 hitter in outfielder Mike Kreevich (who barely made it at .301), one man with twenty home runs, shortstop Vern Stephens (who hit exactly twenty); and one player over the eighty-five runs batted in mark, Stephens, who knocked in one-hundred nine runs. On the mound, the Browns boasted Nelson Potter and Jack Kramer who combined for a mediocre thirty-six victories. The Browns squeaked into first place by winning eleven out of their final twelve games, including the last four in a row over the defending champion New York Yankees. The victory, combined with Detroit's loss to Washington, enabled St. Louis to finish one game ahead of the Tigers in the American League.

Across town, the other Major League team from St. Louis was doing business as usual. In making off with their third straight National League pennant (leading by 14½ games over Pittsburgh), manager Billy Southworth's Cardinals had won one-hundred five games and ran their three-year victory total to three-hundred sixteen.

[edit] Summary

NL St. Louis Cardinals (4) vs. AL St. Louis Browns (2)

Year League Record Place Manager
1944  National Lg  105-49 (.682)  WS 1  Billy Southworth
1943  National Lg  105-49 (.682)  NL 1  Billy Southworth
1942  National Lg  106-48 (.688)  WS 1  Billy Southworth