July 18, 1939: Once upon a time, there were 2 shortstops, who were also their teams' managers. One had accepted that his time as a player was coming to an end, and that his replacement needed to be found. The other refused to accept this.
The Boston Red Sox had Joe Cronin, who had managed the Washington Senators to the 1933 American League Pennant, despite being only 27 years old and being the best shortstop in baseball. He was also the owner's son-in-law, having married Mildred Robertson, the niece and adopted daughter of Senators owner Clark Griffith. Just 1 year later, Tom Yawkey, owner of the Boston Red Sox, made Griffith an offer he couldn't refuse, and brought Griffith to Boston.
Yawkey tried to buy a championship, he really did. He bought Jimmie Foxx, the great slugging 1st baseman, and Lefty Grove, the great lefthanded pitcher, both from the Philadelphia Athletics. He was also one of the earliest team owners to bring in good players from the Pacific Coast League, probably due to the influence of Cronin, a San Francisco native. Among these players were Dom DiMaggio, the younger and pretty good brother of New York Yankees superstar Joe DiMaggio, both from San Francisco; and the man who would, eventually, succeed Cronin as the Red Sox' starting shortstop, Johnny Pesky of Portland, Oregon.
The Red Sox finished 2nd in the American League in 1938, their best finish in 20 years, although far behind the Yankees. This was repeated in 1939. Until the end of that season, Cronin was 32 years old. He batted .308, hit 19 home runs, and had 107 RBIs. Baseball held its All-Star Game for the 7th time, and he was named to it for the 6th. He was still one of the best players, never mind shortstops, in the game. There was no reason to believe that his productive service was coming to an end.
The Brooklyn Dodgers had Leo Durocher, who had been a reserve rookie infielder on the Yankees' 1928 World Series winners, and the starting shortstop on another World Series winner, the 1934 St. Louis Cardinals, the scrappy bunch known as "The Gashouse Gang." Durocher took that mentality with him to the Brooklyn Dodgers, who traded for him in 1938, and made him their manager. In 1939, he guided them to a 3rd-place finish, their best in 15 years.
Durocher was only a year and a half older than Cronin, and, like Cronin, was still a good fielder. But he was never as good a hitter, and, having a big ego, he knew that winning as a manager would be more satisfying than losing as a player. So he and the team's general manager, Larry MacPhail, began to look for the next good Dodger shortstop.
Harold Henry Reese was from Louisville, Kentucky, and was nicknamed "Pee Wee," not because he was small (hardly, he was 5-foot-10), but because he was a champion marbles player, and marbles were often called "pee wees" back then. He was playing for his hometown team, the Louisville Colonels. They were the top farm team for the Red Sox, and it looked like Reese, then 21, was ready for the major leagues. But Cronin, thinking he was still the Boston shortstop of, at the least, the immediate future, refused to promote him.
So, on July 18, 1939, he convinced Yawkey to trade Reese to the Dodgers for 4 players and $35,000. Those 4 players didn't amount to much. Reese did: In 1940, Durocher made him the starting shortstop. In 1941, the Dodgers won their 1st Pennant in 21 years, as Durocher could concentrate on managing while Reese became the best shortstop in the National League.
Cronin put together strong seasons in 1940 and '41. But while he could still hit, his defensive skills eroded. In 1942, Pesky was called up, and, as a rookie, led the AL in hits with 205. World War II intervened, the Red Sox' main shortstop was Lamar "Skeeter" Newsome, a decent hitter for contact but with no power, and not as good a shortstop as Pesky was or Cronin used to be. And Cronin was no longer even that good.
Having Reese on the roster wouldn't have mattered, anyway, as he also served in The War. And in 1946, while the Dodgers just missed the Pennant, the Red Sox, with Cronin as manager and Pesky as shortstop, won their 1st Pennant in 28 years. But a key play in Game 7 of the World Series against the St. Louis Cardinals made Sox fans blame Pesky for the defeat. They didn't win another Pennant for 21 years.
In contrast, from 1947 to 1956, with Reese as shortstop and team Captain, the Dodgers won 6 Pennants and just missed 2 others; while the Yankees won 8 Pennants, and the Red Sox lost out on the last day of the season in 1948, thanks to a player-manager shortstop in Lou Boudreau of the Cleveland Indians, who won the AL's Most Valuable Player; and '49, with Yankee shortstop Phil Rizzuto probably deserving the MVP more than the Sox' Ted Williams, who got it. The Yankees also won the World Series in 1950, with Rizzuto deservedly winning the MVP.
Pesky was a very good player. But Williams said, "If we'd had Rizzuto at shortstop, we would have won all those Pennants, not the Yankees." Williams never said that Yawkey and Cronin should have held onto Reese. But, as a member of the Baseball Hall of Fame's Committee on Veterans, he advocated for both Reese and Rizzuto to get elected to the Hall. Reese made it in 1984, Rizzuto in 1994. Pesky has never been elected.
It's also worth noting that, as a Southerner, Reese was instrumental in his Dodger teammates accepting Jackie Robinson as the 1st black player in modern baseball. In contrast, Cronin, first as manager, then as general manager, may have been part of the reason why the Red Sox were the last MLB team to integrate, not doing so until 1959, the year Cronin left the Boston GM job to become President of the AL, a post he hendl until 1973.
Cronin was elected to the Hall in 1956, and died in 1984. Durocher managed the New York Giants to a Pennant in 1951 and the World Series in 1954, but was so controversial that he wasn't elected to the Hall until 1994, 3 years after he died. It has been speculated that no one wanted to elect him while he was still alive because they didn't want to hear a self-serving acceptance speech.
Nevertheless, when the time came to admit that his successor needed to be found, before it was too later, Durocher admitted it, and Cronin didn't. The Dodgers benefited tremendously from this, while the Red Sox did not.
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July 18, 1939 was a Tuesday. This was the day that Dion DiMucci was born in The Bronx. He became the king of rock and roll's doo-wop singers in the late 1950s and the early 1960s, with hits like "I Wonder Why," "A Teenager In Love," "Runaround Sue" and "The Wanderer." In 1968, he returned to the high reaches of the charts with "Abraham, Martin and John," before turning to Christian music and the occasional rock and roll comeback. Still alive and occasionally performing as of July 18, 2022, and living in Miami, Dion remains an unabashed Yankee fan.
These baseball games were played that day:
* The New York Yankees swept a doubleheader from the St. Louis Browns, 9-0 and 4-3 at Sportsman's Park in St. Louis. In the opener, Atley Donald pitched a 3-hit shutout, backed by a home run from Joe Gordon.
In the nightcap, Oral Hildebrand outpitched Jack Kramer (no relation to the tennis star of the same name, who was a contemporary). Hildebrand was backed by home runs from George Selkirk (who had replaced Babe Ruth as the Yankees' starting right fielder in 1935) and Babe Dahlgren (who had replaced Lou Gehrig as the Yankees' starting 1st baseman earlier in 1939). Over the 2 games, Joe DiMaggio went 3-for-6 with 2 walks and 2 RBIs.
* The New York Giants lost to the St. Louis Cardinals, 5-3 at the Polo Grounds. Mel Ott hit a solo home run for the Jints.
* The Brooklyn Dodgers lost to the Chicago Cubs, 4-2 at Ebbets Field. Leo Durocher went 1-for-4.
* The Cincinnati Reds beat the Boston Bees, 12-3 at National League Park in Boston. After a disastrous 1935 season, the Boston Braves "rebranded" (as we would say today), changing their name to the Bees, and renaming Braves Field "National League Park." The changes were never accepted, and in 1941, the names were switched back.
* The Philadelphia Phillies beat the Pittsburgh Pirates, 8-3 at Shibe Park in Philadelphia. Lloyd Waner went 1-for-4, and Paul Waner only appeared as a pinch-hitter, not reaching base.
* The Cleveland Indians beat the Philadelphia Athletics, 6-3 at Cleveland Municipal Stadium.
* The Washington Senators beat the Detroit Tigers, 10-2 at Briggs Stadium in Detroit (renamed Tiger Stadium in 1961). Senators right fielder Taft Shedron "Taffy" Wright went 5-for-5 with an RBI. Tigers 1st baseman Hank Greenberg went 1-for-4 with 2 RBIs.
* A doubleheader was split at Comiskey Park in Chicago. The Boston Red Sox won the 1st game, 13-10. The Chicago White Sox won the 2nd game, 8-5. Over the 2 games, Joe Cronin went 2-for-7 with a walk and an RBI, Jimmie Foxx went 4-for-9 with a home run, a walk and 3 RBIs, and rookie Ted Williams went 6-for-10 with a home run and 4 RBIs.
