Heroes: Baseball and the Cardinals Provided them During the Great Depression

As the 1930s began, the country was suffering through the worst crisis since the Civil War, one out of every four Americans were without work, and it was affecting baseball too.

Ted Leavengood of the Society for American Baseball Research summed it up perfectly:

“Baseball was a powerful antidote to the bad economic news that beset the nation and the sport was still in relatively robust financial condition, but the effects of the worst fiscal downturn in American history were being felt even by the National Pastime as Americans curtailed their attendance at games, and those that could afford a trip to the ballpark had far less money to spend.”

Throughout the decade, attendance dropped 13 percent compared to the 1920s, reaching an all-time low in 1933, where the average crowd of a baseball game was less than 5,000, and very few teams were profitable.

One of those teams though were the Cardinals.

They began the decade by winning the pennant in 1930 but lost the World Series to the Philadelphia Athletics.

They returned to the top of the National League again in 1931, and got another crack at the A’s, despite being the decided underdog. Although the Cardinals won 101 games that year, the A’s had compiled 107, and were expected to win their third-consecutive championship.

The A’s were led by their manager Connie Mack, who went on to manage for 50 years and is the winningest manager in baseball history (3,731). He built his dynasties with rising young players, won championships with the stars he developed, and then of course sold off all his players for as much money as he could get once he couldn’t afford them anymore.

Although this time around, the Cardinals had a little more seasoning.

A man by the name of Pepper Martin joined the club and propelled them back to the top of the National League for the fourth time in six years.

Bob Broeg, a St. Louis sportswriter said that Pepper Martin was what the country needed in 1931, they needed a hero. The US was in depression, it was an ugly time. When the country needed heroes the most, baseball still provided them.

In the series opener at Sportsman’s Park, the Cardinals lost the first game 6-2, but battled back to win game two 2-0, and took the road to Philadelphia where they rattled off two wins in the three games played, to take a three games to two lead coming home to St. Louis.

The A’s dominated the sixth game 8-1 and sent the series to a seventh game.

Like they did in 1926, the Cardinals got stellar pitching and timely hits, as the won the game 4-2, ended the portent of an A’s dynasty, and brought St. Louis its second world championship in five years.

The big difference in the series was Pepper Martin who batted .500 in the series and set a then World Series record of 12 hits in the seven-game contest.

Branch Rickey’s farm system was paying big dividends, and the Cardinals had officially become St. Louis’ most beloved team.

With the Cardinals enjoying a decade of success, just across the state in Kansas City, the Monarchs were doing the same thing. They had reclaimed glory at the top of the league once again in 1937 and 1939 for a Negro League-leading six titles in the past 17 years.

They were considered to be the New York Yankees of the Negro National League. It would only be a matter of time before they would be playing alongside great players on the Yankees, Cardinals, and Browns.

Meanwhile, on June 12, 1939, the alleged centennial of baseball’s founding, the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum held its first ever induction ceremony in Cooperstown New York to honor the greatest individuals the game had seen and enshrine them forever as baseball’s best.

Included in the ceremony were George Sisler, the star first baseman for the Browns for 13 seasons and batter over .400 twice, Grover Cleveland Alexander, who had helped propel the Cardinals to their first world championship, and Babe Ruth, who many still consider to be the greatest ballplayer who ever lived.

Bill Francis, a writer for the Baseball Hall of Fame, wrote about the day that took place in June 1939 and mentioned how one of baseball’s all-time greats reflected on that day, and the future of the game. 

Although he never played for St. Louis, Babe Ruth said at the ceremony, “I hope someday that some of the young fellows coming into the game will know how it feels to be picked in the Hall of Fame. I know the old boys back in there were just talking it over, some have been here long before my time. They got on it, I worked hard, and I got on it. And I hope that the coming generation, the young boys today, that they’ll work hard and also be on it. As my old friend Cy Young says, I hope it goes another hundred years and the next hundred years will be the greatest.”

Numerous players, who would one day be enshrined in Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame that had played for the Monarchs were Jose Mendez, Bill Foster, Cool Papa Bell, Bullet Rogan, Andy Cooper, its founder J.L. Wilkinson, and two others: a right-handed pitcher whose days in Kansas City were just beginning named LeRoy Satchel Paige, and a first baseman who was perhaps baseball’s greatest ambassador, John Jordan ‘Buck’ O’Neil.

From the late 19th Century into the early years of the 20th Century, Missouri had witnessed the establishment of greatness, opportunity, change, and a determination to succeed ranging from the east side of St. Louis all the way across state to Kansas City.

Think about it, the legal forward pass in football was initiated in Missouri, The Show Me State bore witness to the first female owner in Major League Baseball history, the Farm System, the Negro National League, and Hollywood even drew attention towards the city of St. Louis.

Lasting impacts that continue to affect professional sports to this day.