Baseball in 1939: The Watershed Season of the National Pastime Book

The pivotal 1939 season was the year baseball's past ran headlong into its future. It was a year in which players who had been credited with saving the game after the Black Sox scandal were playing alongside future stars poised to usher in the Golden Age of the game. It was the year when Yankee "Iron Horse" Lou Gehrig was stricken and forced to retire, and the year rookie Ted Williams introduced a new offensive approach to the game. And as the game was celebrating its 100th anniversary with the opening of the Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, New York, it was learned that the story of the sport's origins in that town was purely a myth. This work chronicles every aspect of America's pastime in the year 1939: the dawning of the new era, the Hall of Fame and the origins of baseball, the teams, the players, the media and the minor leagues. Through extensive research, augmented by interviews with such Hall of Famers as Bob Feller, Ernie Harwell, Charlie Gehringer and Monte Irvin, the story of the game's watershed season is fully told. An appendix provides statistical summaries of the year.