The Greatest Decade

Tom Brokaw's superb award-winning 1998 book The Greatest Generation talks about the stories of a generation, about what "this generation of Americans meant to history."

He said, "It is, I believe, the greatest generation any society has ever produced."

I grew up in that generation and some 65 years later as I look back, Tom's assessment couldn't be more accurate. That generation's greatest time of struggle and triumph was the 1940s, and there is no decade that explains modern baseball in America better than the 1940s. It is the birthplace of the game — and much of the society — we see today.

In 2012 the venerable Baseball Digest — the oldest, continuously published baseball magazine in the United States — celebrated its 70th anniversary. It honored that occasion by commissioning a group of national baseball writers to chronicle the events of seven decades, each defined by historic events in the sport.

In the 1950s, after the color barrier was broken in 1947, integration opened the door for great players. The 1960s brought historic moments, including Bill Mazeroski's World Series–winning homer and Roger Maris passing Babe Ruth's fabled home run record of 60. The designated hitter "experiment" came in the 1970s. Pete Rose shattered Ty Cobb's career hits record in the 1980s. Baseball returned from the devastating 1994–95 strike and Cal Ripken Jr. surpassed Lou Gehrig's consecutive-games record in the 1990s. And sadly, steroids, which helped inflate long-standing records, dominated the 2000s.

No period, however, equaled the 1940s.

During an unsettled decade when America was at war, baseball was a desperately needed antidote.

"What's so remarkable is that the players who were part of the Greatest Generation fought in World War II and before and after gave us baseball's greatest decade," Brokaw told me.

In our country's darkest moments, baseball has been an escape, preserving and helping us get through difficult times.

The events of this decade, with so many players going off to war, are firmly etched in the fabric of the greatest game ever invented. You cannot tell about baseball without the 1940s.

A sampling:

• The closest anyone has come to Joe DiMaggio's enduring 56-game hitting streak was Pete Rose in 1978, who was stopped after 44 games.

• Ted Williams batted .406 in 1941, the last player to hit .400 or better during a season.

• The Yankees won five American League pennants and four World Series during the decade.

• The St. Louis Cardinals won four National League pennants and three World Series. They were the last NL team to play in three consecutive (1942–44) World Series.

• Judge Kenesaw Mountain Landis, baseball's first commissioner, died on November 25, 1944.

• On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson broke baseball's color barrier, starting for the Brooklyn Dodgers.

• Babe Ruth died on August 16, 1948.

Players the likes of Williams, DiMaggio, Bob Feller, Jerry Coleman, et al, all went off to World War II. Regardless, baseball was, yes, our national pastime — America's game — in that decade.

"The war was interspersed with all of this," Jerry Coleman told me before his death in January 2014. Coleman's entrance into professional baseball was delayed because of World War II. When he finally made it to the Yankees he became Rookie of the Year in 1949.

"Yes, it was a decade that had enormous impact on the game," said Coleman, who was a Marine Corps aviator and after serving in the Korean War became the only major league player to have seen combat in two wars.

Nicknamed "The Colonel," Jerry flew in 120 combat missions and received many honors, including two Distinguished Flying Crosses.

"So much happened in that decade," he said. "When you went to Spring Training with the Yankees, they gave you a number. If you were over 38 you were in the minor leagues. I didn't think I was going to make the club in 1949 because they gave me 42.

"The late Howard Cosell introduced me once: 'Gerald Francis Coleman, number 42 — the wrong 42!' I almost punched him."

Jackie Robinson, of course, also wore No. 42, which in 1997 was retired throughout the major leagues.

I'm often reminded of moments in our home in 1941 when the old AM radio crackled each morning with news that The Streak was still alive.

DiMaggio got another hit.

My mom and dad would switch the wooden Philco on and twist the dial up and down, searching for an audible New York station that would tell us, even with all the static, if the Yankee Clipper had extended his amazing streak.

It was that way for much of June and half of July in 1941. Between May 15 and July 16, DiMaggio hit in 56 consecutive games.

More than 70 years have passed since an uneasy America was obsessed with this baseball feat that is yet to be surpassed.

To suggest DiMaggio's hitting streak defined the decade of the 1940s is obviously an exaggeration. But is there a better place to start? It was undoubtedly the signature achievement of DiMaggio's Hall of Fame career.

He was as much an American icon as a ballplayer.

"DiMaggio was the greatest all-around player I ever saw," Ted Williams once told me.

Regardless, baseball was, yes, our national pastime — America's game — in that decade.

"Baseball's greatest decade?" John Thorn, Major League Baseball's official historian, repeated the question. "Some will say the '20s, with the Yankees of Murderers' Row. Others will pipe up for the '60s, with Mantle and Maris, Mays and McCovey, Koufax and Drysdale," he said. "But give me the 1940s, baseball's most tumultuous decade, in which so many things ended and so much began."

Thorn believes nothing during the decade was more important than Jackie Robinson opening a new era in the game while closing a long span of institutionalized bigotry.

"That's the great, enduring legacy of the 1940s," he said. "But in this time we also saw the last .400 hitter, the unchallenged 56-game hit streak, the peak of minor league baseball, the dawn of televised ballgames, and more.

"I agree that at no time in the game's history was baseball so unquestionably seen as America's Game. By that I mean in the years of struggle during World War II, and then the glorious burst of relief and optimism in the last years of the decade. American had prevailed, and with it baseball and its promise of a better tomorrow."

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Dr. Bobby Brown, now 89 (turning 90 on October 25, 2014), was a third baseman for the Yankees for eight seasons beginning in 1946. He served with the...