1940s

The 1940s were a time of significant change for baseball. The decade began with the starring performance of players like Joe DiMaggio and the emerging Ted Williams, who had Major League Baseball's last .400 batting average season in 1941. From 1942 to 1945, baseball was shaken by World War II. Over 150 players from the Japanese Professional Baseball League and the minor leagues lost their lives during the conflict. Many leagues shut down operations during the War, though Franklin D. Roosevelt encouraged the major leagues to continue functioning, which they did throughout the period. One unique league did start up during this period, the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, founded in 1943, as women filled a professional baseball gap in the Midwest when so many male players went to War. In order to keep playing, major league teams had to look far and wide for ballplayers who were not engaged in the war effort. Those included players too young for the draft (Joe Nuxhall, Carl Scheib and Tommy Brown) or who were ineligible because of various physical ailments (one-armed outfielder Pete Gray was the symbol of that era, but many others had medical deferments). As a result, baseball's hierarchy was upset for a time, with the St. Louis Browns making the only World Series appearance in their history in 1944, the Washington Senators having a rare competitive season, and the Chicago Cubs reaching the Fall Classic for the last time in the 20th Century in 1945. Things returned to normal after players were released from their military obligations late in the 1945 season and came back en masse beginning in 1946.

After the War, there were a couple of major events. Jorge Pasquel and other Mexican League owners signed major league players like Max Lanier, Sal Maglie and Bobby Estalella, the top Cuban players of the era and some Negro League stars (the latter two groups had been active in Mexico for some time) to form a strong challenge to MLB supremacy. Legal entanglements arose and those white players who jumped contracts were blacklisted and barred from returning for a couple of years. The talent level was not as high as Mexico had seen in 1940-1941, when people like Josh Gibson and Cool Papa Bell were playing, but it has been the most-discussed era of the Liga.

Another key event was the signing by Branch Rickey of Jackie Robinson of the Kansas City Monarchs, a move that integrated baseball. Robinson debuted with the Montreal Royals in 1946 and four other ex-Negro Leaguers played in the Brooklyn Dodgers chain, most notably Roy Campanella. The move was opposed by many Southern fans and some leagues in the region never integrated, eventually leading to their collapse, most notably the Southern Association in the early 1960s. After leading Montreal to the International League title in 1946, Robinson made his Major League debut on Opening Day of 1947. While he encountered significant hostility, Robinson won the support of teammates and of Commissioner Happy Chandler, and by the end of the season, the American League had also integrated, with Larry Doby being the ground-breaker, while a number of other black players had made their Major League debut. The movement was so rapid that by the end of the decade, the Negro Leagues were on the verge of collapse, as all of its prominent players had been signed to contracts in organized baseball.

The 1940s is the only decade during which no new stadiums were built. After the Cleveland Indians opened Cleveland Stadium in 1932, no new ballpark would be opened until Milwaukee County Stadium was unveiled by the Milwaukee Braves in 1953 - but it was the result of relocation and not construction. All but the St. Louis Browns, Chicago Cubs, and Cincinnati Reds set attendance records during the decade, as there was a large attendance boom after the end of the War. There were 81 scheduled night games in 1940 and 384 in 1949. The change to playing under the lights was underscored by the release of the 1950 schedule: the St. Louis Cardinals received permission to open the season with the Pittsburgh Pirates in a night game, indicating that what was once a novelty was now part of the fabric of baseball. Night games had actually been a key to baseball continuing through World War II: essential workers could not take time off to attend afternoon games, so more night games were scheduled to give them some badly-needed entertainment options.

Many minor leagues were started and re-started after the War, creating a brief golden age for the minors which would be cut short in the dark age 1950s due in large part to television changing Americans' entertainment habits.

The Caribbean Series got its start with the 1949 Caribbean Series in Gran Stadium. The Series matched the top teams from the top four winter leagues.

Years	American League	National League	Postseason	Japan	Negro Leagues
1940	1940 AL	1940 NL	1940 WS	1940 in Japan	1940 in the Negro Leagues
1941	1941 AL	1941 NL	1941 WS	1941 in Japan	1941 in the Negro Leagues
1942	1942 AL	1942 NL	1942 WS	1942 in Japan	1942 in the Negro Leagues
1943	1943 AL	1943 NL	1943 WS	1943 in Japan	1943 in the Negro Leagues
1944	1944 AL	1944 NL	1944 WS	1944 in Japan	1944 in the Negro Leagues
1945	1945 AL	1945 NL	1945 WS	1945 in Japan	1945 in the Negro Leagues
1946	1946 AL	1946 NL	1946 WS	1946 in Japan	1946 in the Negro Leagues
1947	1947 AL	1947 NL	1947 WS	1947 in Japan	1947 in the Negro Leagues
1948	1948 AL	1948 NL	1948 WS	1948 in Japan	1948 in the Negro Leagues
1949	1949 AL	1949 NL	1949 WS	1949 in Japan	1949 in the Negro Leagues

Further Reading

• Mark Z. Aaron and Bill Nowlin, eds.: Who's on First: Replacement Players in World War II, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2015. ISBN 978-1-933599-91-5
• Gary Bedingfield: Baseball in World War II Europe, Arcadia Publishing, Charleston, SC, 2000. ISBN 978-0738503219
• Steven R. Bullock: Playing for Their Nation: Baseball and the American Military during World War II, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2004.
• Gene Fehler: Tales From Baseball's Golden Age, Sports Publishing LLC, Champaign, IL, 2000. ISBN 978-1582612478
• David Finoli: For the Good of the Country: World War II Baseball in the Major and Minor Leagues, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2002.
• Peter Golenbock: Whispers of the Gods: Tales from Baseball’s Golden Age, Told by the Men Who Played It, Rowman & Littlefield, Lanham, MD, 2022. ISBN 978-1-5381-5487-8
• Donald Honig: Baseball When the Grass Was Real: Baseball from the '20s to the '40s Told by the Men Who Played It, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1993 (originally published in 1975). ISBN 0803272677
• Donald Honig: Baseball Between the Lines: Baseball in the '40s and '50s as Told by the Men Who Played It, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 1993 (originally published in 1976). ISBN 0803272685
• Bill James: "The 1940s", in The New Bill James Historical Baseball Abstract, The Free Press, New York, NY, 2001, pp. 197-219.
• Andy Jurinko and Christopher Jennison: Golden Boys: Baseball Portraits, 1946-1960, Skyhorse Publishing, New York, NY, 2012. ISBN 978-1616084509
• Roger Kahn: The Era, 1947-1957: When the Yankees, the Giants, and the Dodgers Ruled the World, Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, Lincoln, NE, 2002 (originally published in 1993). ISBN 0803278055
• Anne R. Keene: The Cloudbuster Nine: The Untold Story of Ted Williams and the Baseball Team that Helped Win World War II, Sports Publishing LLC, New York, NY, 2018. ISBN 978-1-68358-207-6
• Brent Kelley: The Pastime in Turbulence: Interviews with Baseball Players of the 1940s, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2001. ISBN 978-0-7864-0975-4
• John Klima: The Game Must Go On: Hank Greenberg, Pete Gray, and the Great Days of Baseball on the Home Front in WWII, Thomas Dunne Books, New York, NY, 2015. ISBN 978-1-2500-6479-0
• Bill Marshall: Baseball's Pivotal Era, 1945-1951, The University Press of Kentucky, Lexington, KY, 1999.
• William B. Mead: Even the Browns: Baseball During World War II, Dover Publications, Mineola, NY, 2010 (originally published in 1978).
• Bill Nowlin, ed.: Van Lingle Mungo: The Man, The Song, The Players, SABR, Phoenix, AZ, 2014, pp. 8-12. ISBN 978-1-933599-76-2
• Jeff Obermeyer: Baseball and the Bottom Line in World War II: Gunning for Profits on the Home Front, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2013. ISBN 978-0-7864-7043-3
• Philip Roth: The Great American Novel, Vintage Books, New York, NY, 1995 (originally published in 1973) ISBN 978-0679749066
• Bryan Soderholm-Difatte: The Golden Era of Major League Baseball: A Time of Transition and Integration, Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Lanham, MD, 2015. ISBN 978-1-4422-5221-9
• Rick Swaine: The Black Stars Who Made Baseball Whole: The Jackie Robinson Generation in the Major Leagues, 1947–1959, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2006. ISBN978-0-7864-2316-3
• James D. Szalontai: Teenager on First, Geezer at Bat, 4-F on Deck: Major League Baseball in 1945, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2009.
• G. Scott Thomas: A Brand New Ballgame: Branch Rickey, Bill Veeck, Walter O’Malley and the Transformation of Baseball, 1945–1962, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2022. ISBN 978-1-4766-8656-1
• Donald R. Wells: Baseball's Western Front: the Pacific Coast League during World War II, McFarland, Jefferson, NC, 2004. ISBN 978-0-7864-1998-2

Related Sites

• [1] Article on the effect of World War II on star batters' statistics in The Hardball Times.