A pair of Hall-of-Fame pitchers start against each other: Charles Herbert "Red" Ruffing for the Yankees, and Robert Moses "Lefty" Grove for the Red Sox, formerly the ace of the Philadelphia Athletics. Between them, these 2 men appeared on 10 of the 14 American League Pennant-winners from 1929 to 1942. Grove won 300 games, Ruffing 273 -- 231 of them with the Yankees, still the most of any Yankee righthanded pitcher.
In fact, this game was loaded with Hall-of-Famers. The Yankees had center fielder Joe DiMaggio, catcher Bill Dickey, and 2nd baseman Joe Gordon. while another pitcher, who did not get into the game, was Vernon "Lefty" Gomez.
The Red Sox had 1st baseman Jimmie Foxx, who would eventually reach 534 career home runs, making him, at the time, 2nd on the all-time list behind Babe Ruth. They also had 2nd baseman Bobby Doerr, and their shortstop, also their manager at the time, Joe Cronin.
But the game would be more notable for 2 other future members of the Hall of Fame. And while one was fading, another debuted.
Lou Gehrig had a difficult Spring Training, and opened the season by going 0-for-4. He was noticeably slower with swinging the bat and playing 1st base. He would end up playing only 8 games that season, going 4-for-33, a batting average of .143. On May 2, he told manager Joe McCarthy that he wanted to be taken out of the lineup, ending his consecutive games played streak at 2,130. Until the 1990s, nobody even thought that record was approachable.
Gehrig soon went to the Mayo Clinic, and found out he had amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, a nerve-and-muscle disease that now bears his name. He died 2 years later.
But in this April 20, 1939 game, a 20-year-old left fielder from San Diego made his major league debut: Theodore Samuel Williams. He played right field, not the left field by which he would be remembered, and wore Number 9, which he would wear throughout his career. He struck out against Ruffing in the 2nd inning. But in the 4th, he hit a double to right-center field. He struck out again in the 6th, and popped up to 2nd in the 9th.
Dickey led off the bottom of the 2nd with a home run off Grove. With 1 out in the 5th, Rolfe reached 1st on an error by Foxx, and was driven in on a triple by Jake Powell. In spite of Williams' debut, the Yankees win, 2-0, and go on to win the World Series.
From 1938 to 1949, the Red Sox would finish 2nd to the Yankees 6 times, and would finish 3rd an additional 3 times in the 1950s. But only twice did they finish ahead of the Yankees in any season from 1919 to 1965: In 1946 and 1948.
There was no Rookie of the Year award in 1939. If there had been, Ted would have won it easily, batting .327, hitting 31 home runs, and leading the American League with 344 total bases and 145 runs batted in -- the 1st rookie ever to lead the AL in RBIs.
He soon developed nicknames. He seemed really young, so they called him "The Kid." He was thin, but could hit, so they called him "The Splendid Splinter." He hit hard, so they called him "The Thumper." And, at some point in his career, he became so much the symbol of baseball in New England, that he was known as "Teddy Ballgame."
Sometimes, he would call himself "Ol' TSW" for his initials. Sometimes, he called himself "Ted Fucking Williams." Or "Teddy Ballgame of the MFL." Asked to explain, he said, "That's the Major Fucking Leagues."
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April 20, 1939 was a Thursday. This was also the day on which Billie Holiday recorded the anti-lynching song "Strange Fruit." I have a separate entry for that event.
Football was out of season. The NBA hadn't been founded yet. The NHL season ended 4 days earlier, when the Boston Bruins won the Stanley Cup, defeating the Toronto Maple Leafs in 5 games.
There were 4 other games played in baseball that day:
* The Brooklyn Dodgers beat their arch-rivals, the New York Giants, 5-3 at Ebbets Field. Mel Ott hit a home run in defeat for the Giants.
* The Boston Bees beat the Philadelphia Phillies, 2-0 at National League Park in Boston. Lou Fette pitched a 3-hit shutout. This was the 4th of 5 seasons in which the Boston team of the NL used "Bees" instead of "Braves," and had Braves Field renamed. In 1941, they switched back.
* The Philadelphia Athletics beat the Washington Senators, 2-0 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. George Caster pitched a 4-hit shutout.
* And the Detroit Tigers beat the Chicago White Sox, 8-7 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit. (It was renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961.) Dixie Walker and Hank Greenberg hit home runs for the Tigers, Greenberg's being what would now be called a walkoff in the bottom of the 14th.
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