NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture

NINE: A Journal of Baseball History and Culture 10.2 (2002) 161-162

Book Review

Baseball and Other Matters in 1941

Originally published in 1991, journalist RobertW. Creamer's memoir of baseball during the 1941 season remains an exciting read for baseball fans and has been attractively repackaged in a paperback edition by the University of Nebraska Press. Written in a lively fashion reflective of a journalist long associated with Sports Illustrated, Baseball and Other Matters in 1941 focuses upon Joe DiMaggio's 56-game hitting streak, the quest of Ted Williams to hit .400, and the dogfight between the Brooklyn Dodgers and the St.Louis Cardinals for the National League pennant--all set against the backdrop of a nation on the brink of entering a world war.

Unlike Michael Seidel's Streak: Joe DiMaggio and the Summer of 1941, Creamer chooses not to examine with hindsight that last summer before America entered the war. Rather, Creamer seeks to recapture the memories of 1941 through the eyes of an eighteen-year-old young man who was graduating from high school and entering college, unaware of the toll that international events would soon inflict upon his generation. Creamer makes it apparent that, at eighteen, his priorities were girls and baseball rather than world affairs, writing, "For me and my generation 1941 was not a year of Pearl Harbor and war, but of peace, the last year of peace, a shaky, fraying, disintegrating peace, but nonetheless peace" (p. 4). He also observes that the lily white structure of Major League Baseball was lost upon him in his youthful naiveté.

Young Creamer was a Yankee fan, thrilled by the exploits of his hero DiMaggio [End Page 161] and the Yankee capture of the American League pennant. Dismissing the DiMaggio streak as a manifestation of luck, Creamer observed, "He hit in fifty-six games, and seventy-two of seventy-three--and luck went the other way in the one game he missed" (p. 238). But Creamer was not too much of a Yankee partisan to acknowledge the accomplishments of the Red Sox's Williams, who was too proud to be excused from the lineup during the Boston club's season-ending series in Philadelphia. Playing in a doubleheader on the season's last day, Williams had 6 hits in 8 at bats, raising his average to .406, hitting above .400 on his own terms.

Creamer also devotes considerable attention to the dramatic pennant race between the Dodgers and the Cardinals, during which the teams were tied seven times and on eighteen different occasions were separated by mere percentage points. The Dodgers eventually prevailed, and Creamer bestows much of the credit upon Brooklyn executive Lee McPhail, who brought market savvy and talented players to the long-downtrodden franchise. But Cinderella lost her golden slipper when Dodger catcher Mickey Owen was unable to handle Hugh Casey's third strike of Tommy Henrich in game 4 of the World Series, and the Yankees cruised to another world championship, much to the delight of college student Creamer.

The historical context of war is not totally missing from the narrative. Creamer makes some effort to discuss the domestic political debate regarding intervention in the war, and he describes Detroit slugger Hank Greenberg's travails with the Motor City draft board. But the heart of Creamer's account belongs to baseball between the lines and the exploits of DiMaggio, Williams, and the Dodgers.

Not wanting to be overly nostalgic, Creamer confesses in the conclusion of his memoir that he has remained a lifelong fan of the national pastime. However, he maintains that none of his postwar baseball memories measures up to the events of 1941. While most of us are prone to recall the days and seasons during our coming of age as the most memorable of our lives, Creamer has a point. For while the home run records of Ruth and Maris have fallen, DiMaggio's...