When St. Louis was One: The Trolley Car Series of 1944
In 1944, the same year as D-Day, Major League baseball continued to pull through as a source of entertainment for a struggling country at war, and St. Louis was right in the thick of it.
The Cardinals continued their reign at the top of the National League, winning 105 games for the second straight season, and tallied three straight seasons with 100 wins or more, a franchise record that still stands. They were loaded with star players whose professionalism and character were exemplary to the rest of the league.
Several players who led the team that season were shortstop Marty Marion who was voted the National League’s Most Valuable Player and the Sporting News Player of the Year Award, starting pitcher Mort Cooper who anchored the pitching staff with a 22-7 record with a 2.46 ERA, catcher Walker Cooper who despite being injured for part of the year, mustered 126 hits and 25 doubles while batting .317, and Stan Musial who continued his tear at hitting with a team-leading .347 batting average with 51 doubles, and a league-leading 14 triples.
The Cardinals had the making of a dynasty, and they did not disappoint, winning their third straight pennant by 14 and a half games.
There was no competition in the National League in 1944, but remember the Cardinals had lost star players too, like right-fielder and Hall of Famer Enos Slaughter.
After winning back-to-back pennants and exchanging five-game series victories with the Yankees, the Cardinals came into 1944 ready for more glory, but had no idea who their opponents in the Fall Classic would be this year.
Meanwhile, in the American League, their cross-town rivals the St. Louis Browns, were the talk of the league that year.
The Browns had finished in the bottom half of the American League for nine of the past 10 seasons. While they were not greatly impacted by the military draft, the Browns began the 1944 season by winning nine straight games.
Nine of their players were 34 years of age or older, but they had a healthy blend of young talent as well, including 23-year-old shortstop Vern Stephens, who led his league in RBIs with 109 and was second in home runs with 20 in just his third full season in the majors.
Their general manager was Bill DeWitt, whose career as a baseball executive and owner ran for over 60 years.
On August 8, the Browns had been in first place for 70 days, clipping the franchise record of 69 held back in 1922, and their fans loved it.
A story, that was typical during wartime baseball, the Browns brought up a man working in a shipyard who was 35-years old but wanted to have him pitch.
35-year-old righty Sig Jakuckim who hadn’t played ball since 1938, won 13 games for the Browns that season.
How about that?
“A player who had been with us, and was working in the Galveston shipyards, sent me word that a pitched named Jakucki down there was showing enough stuff to warrant the belief that he could win in the American League that year,” Bill DeWitt said in a midseason interview.
With six games left to go in the season, the Browns found themselves tied for first place with the Detroit Tigers. Their final six games were against the Boston Red Sox, and the New York Yankees, two teams that had contended for much of the season.
The Browns had pulled all the strings they could to ensure their contention for the pennant.
On the final day of the regular season, the Browns earned their 89th win, edged the Tigers by one game, and won the first pennant in franchise history.
Mike Whiteman of the Society for American Baseball Research quotes the Sporting News, “After McQuinn clutched Oscar Grimes’ foul for the last out, the crowd was dazed for the moment. Then it let out a terrific shout. St. Louisans, along with all Americans were becoming wearily accustomed to the daily news of deaths of young men in the defense of their country. Today was a little brighter.”
The Browns met the heavily favored Cardinals in the World Series. It was the first and only time that both St. Louis teams, each playing in Sportsman’s Park, would face off in the fall classic.
It came to be known as “The Trolley Car Series” given that no travel was necessary, all games were played in the same place, and all you needed if you were a baseball fan living in St. Louis was to board the trolley and get to the game!
In Game One, Mort Cooper started for the Cardinals and pitched well, but Browns starter Denny Galehouse was that much better, and he threw a complete game victory as the Browns won the opener 2-1.
The Cardinals were clinging to a 2-0 lead in the seventh inning of Game Two, but three consecutive hits by the Browns tied the score and sent the game into extra innings, where in the bottom of the 11th, pinch hitter Ken O’Dea singled to right to score first baseman Ray Sanders as the Cardinals evened the series with a 3-2 win.
The Browns dominated the third game, hitting Cardinals starter Ted Wilks early and often, while Browns starter Jack Kramer went the distance in a 6-2 win, to give the Browns the edge in the series.
But in Game Four, the tide turned.
A two-run home run by Stan Musial in the top of the first inning gave the Cardinals an early 2-0 lead, and that was all the run support that Cardinals starter Harry Brecheen needed as he threw all nine innings while propelling the Cardinals to a 5-1 win tying the series back up.
Mort Cooper took the mound again in Game Five in his series rematch against Denny Galehouse, and once again both pitcher’s threw gems with each pitching all nine innings, but a run in the sixth and the eighth for the Cardinals was enough to take their first lead of the series, ahead three games to two. Cooper struck out 12 batters for his first complete-game shutout in his World Series career.
In the sixth game, pitching dominated the show again, but a costly Browns error in the bottom of the fourth inning led to three Cardinal runs. The Cardinals bullpen took over in the sixth and held the Browns down, as the Cardinals won the sixth game 3-1 to capture the Trolley Car Series.
The series victory in 1944 was the fifth World Series crown for the Cardinals, which was then a National League record. Since then, for 80 years, the Cardinals have had the most World Series titles of all teams in the National League.
The Cardinals would lose their star player Stan Musial to a year of wartime service in 1945 but would return the year after when the war ended. Nonetheless, the Cardinals now had five World Series titles, a National League record that stands to this day.
How about that? A team deprived of talent, money, and resources, finishing last or next to last for nearly 30 years, just hoping to one day win a championship while playing in perhaps the smallest city in the major leagues at the time. Then, it all came together, Branch Rickey’s Farm System revolutionized the game and the fortunes of the Cardinals franchise, and they now are on top of the pact.
1944 would be the last trip to the World Series for the St. Louis Browns.
Later that winter, MGM’s classic “Meet Me in St. Louis” was released in theaters.
