A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939
Reviewed by Duncan R. Jamieson, Department of History, Ashland University
MAY 28, 2004 archive
I grew up in the New York of three baseball teams. As an adolescent, despite a father and an older brother who were Brooklyn Dodger fans, and a best friend who rooted for the Giants, I was and remain a New York Yankees fan. My Yankees were the 1950s Bronx Bombers who won pennant after pennant along with most of the World Series they played. My Yankees were the teams led by DiMaggio, followed by the teams of Mantle and Maris. While I never enjoyed mathematics or statistics enough to become interested in that aspect of baseball, I could follow a box score.
Richard Tofel writes of an epic before my time, yet in such an engaging style that he made me feel, as the reader, as if I were at the games. He organizes the book into innings, which correspond to the baseball season. The first inning begins in January, 1939, with the funeral of Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert. Tofel uses this chapter to sketch in some early history of the team, which moved to New York from Baltimore in 1903. Known at that time as the Highlanders, their only serious run for a pennant came in 1904. Ten years later Ruppert bought them, intending to name them after his beer, the Knickerbockers; however, on the advice of local news people, he changed the name to Yankees. Under Ruppert’s leadership, the team began to win, including their first and second pennants in 1921 and 1922; in part, at least because Ruppert capitalized on the financial woes of the Boston Red Sox, buying several of their players, including Babe Ruth. In 1923 the Yankees moved into their own stadium, the biggest major league park at the time. Ruppert hired Miller Huggins to manage the team. Huggins won a third consecutive pennant and then the World Series. He went on to win three more consecutive pennants in 1926, 1927 and 1928, as well as the 1926 and 1927 World Series. Through the 1930’s at least, people considered the 1927 Yankees the best team in baseball.
Following Huggins' death in 1929, Ruppert named Joe McCarthy as manager. By 1939 he had won the previous three American League pennants, a feat accomplished by only one previous manager. If McCarthy’s Yankees could win the pennant in 1939, along with the World Series, McCarthy would tie Connie Mack for a record five World Series wins. With this background information, Tofel sets the stage for the body of his book, the second through ninth innings, or the months of March through October.
The bulk of Tofel’s monograph deals with the 1939 season, including the Yankees winning campaign against the National League champion Cincinnati Reds for the World Series. Tofel focuses on the Yankees dominant players (Dickey, DiMaggio, Keller and Selkirk, who grace the book’s dust jacket), as well as Lou Gehrig, the Iron Horse. When Gerhig’s health began to fail, and he saw himself as a liability rather than an asset, he took himself out of the lineup, thus ending his 2,130 consecutive game streak. One of the strengths of Tofel’s work is these biographies, which he scatters through the book
While 1939 was obviously an entirely different time, Tofel is clear to explore the way of life in the last years of the depression. Teams traveled by train, and played most of their games during the day. But night baseball had been introduced, and playing under the lights became more important as the teams looked for ways to expand their revenue. Player salaries were significantly lower than the astronomical figures paid today, and Tofel is good about including the inflation factor to make readers aware of how those salaries would compare today. He also includes interesting tidbits along the way, such as Joe Dimaggio’s eight thousand dollar salary in 1932, which made him the highest paid rookie.
Tofel examines in detail the important games in the 1939, weaving them into the culture of the era. The reader is made aware that World War Two is on the horizon, while at the same time young people engage in goldfish swallowing. The excitement surrounding the opening of the New York World’s Fair helps to place the baseball season in perspective, especially since Tofel notes that the three New York teams wore a patch on their sleeve celebrating the Fair. The Yankees end the season with the pennant, and went to the World Series with great confidence—no player on the Yankee roster had played for a team that lost a World Series. The Yankees won the first two games at home and then traveled to Crosley Field in Cincinnati. The first two games had been pitching duels, but the third turned into a slugfest, with New York the winner, 7-3. No team had ever come back from a three game deficit, but the Yankees hoped for a shutout. Tied at the end of nine, the game went into broke it open in the top of the tenth when Charlie Keller charged into catcher Ernie Lombardi, knocking the ball loose and scoring the go-ahead run. With the ball loose, DiMaggio slid into the plate, adding an extra run. While others blame Lombardi for losing the ball and allowing DiMaggio to score, Tofel succinctly points out that no one was backing Lombardi up, and that Keller’s run was the game winner, not DiMaggio’s. Thus, Tofel creates an exciting end to an exciting book as the Yankees sweep Cincinnati, the seventh in World Series history and the second in a row for New York.
Were the New York Yankees of 1939 better than the 1927 Yankees, according to some the best team in baseball? Along with “some careful students of the game” (p. 217), and the New York Times, Tofel concludes they were. Whether or not baseball historians will find anything new in this book, they will enjoy it. Casual followers of the sport and Yankees fans will find it fascinating. It would be excellent for supplemental reading in a sport history class. This is an enjoyable book to read, written in an engaging style. Tofel places baseball in society, and society in historical perspective.
Richard J. Tofel. A Legend in the Making: The New York Yankees in 1939. Chicago: Ivan R. Dee, 2002. xi + 271pp. Illustrations, notes, appendices, bibliography, index. $24.95 (cloth), ISBN 1-56663-411-3.