1940s: The War Years and A Young "Man"
In the early 1940s, the Cardinals dominated the National League, thanks to a deep farm system constructed by general manager Branch Rickey. The 1942 "St. Louis Swifties" won 106 games, the most in franchise history, and are widely regarded as among the greatest baseball teams of all time, defeating the Yankees in the World Series in five games. Outfielder Stan Musial played his first full season with the 1942 Cardinals. Known to loyal fans as "The Man", Musial spent 22 years in a Cardinals uniform, 1941–1944, 1946–1963. He won seven batting titles and three MVP awards, and his 3,630 hits remain the 4th highest in baseball history. In August 1968, a statue of Musial was dedicated outside Busch Memorial Stadium. In 1943 and again in 1944 they posted the second-best records in team history at 105–49. The Yankees got revenge in the 1943 World Series, beating the Cardinals in five games. The 1944 World Series was particularly memorable as they met their crosstown rivals, the St. Louis Browns, in the "Streetcar Series". The Cardinals won four games to two. All six games were played in Sportsman's Park, which the two teams shared. Billy Southworth, the manager for all three of those seasons, remains the only Cardinal manager to guide his team to three straight pennants.
The Cardinals finished 3 games behind the Cubs in 1945 without Musial, who was in the U.S. Navy serving in World War II. After the season, Southworth left the Cardinals to manage the Boston Braves. Eddie Dyer was hired to replace him, and St. Louis came back to tie for the pennant in 1946, ousting the Brooklyn Dodgers in a playoff series to get to the World Series. They faced a powerful Boston Red Sox team and defeated them in 7 games, the eventual winning run in Game 7 coming in the eighth inning on Enos Slaughter's famous "mad dash" around the bases on a hit to shallow left center field. The latest in a resounding series of dominating seasons by the Cardinals, the 1946 Series would prove to be the Cardinals' last for 18 years, and leadership of the National League gradually passed to the Brooklyn Dodgers, now helmed by none other than Rickey, fired in 1942 after disputes with team ownership.
This job-switch between league powerhouses set the stage for a more profound upheaval in the game — breaking of the color barrier. In 1947, the Cardinals (who were effectively the southernmost major league team until the 1960s) gained notoriety by allegedly (the accusation is disputed) threatening to boycott games against the Brooklyn Dodgers to protest the Dodgers' signing of a black player, Jackie Robinson, by Rickey, who was now building the Dodgers into a perpetual contender as he had previously done with the Cardinals. The alleged ringleader of the boycott was Enos Slaughter. National League president Ford Frick threatened to ban any players who boycotted any games, and the boycott never materialized. The Cardinals did not sign a black player until 1954 with part-timer Tom Alston and did not sign a black regular until Curt Flood in 1958. The Cardinals' resistance to the trend of hiring minority talent contributed to a team slump that ran from the late 1940s until the early 1960s. However, the organization was also the first Major League team to integrate spring training housing a decade later.
Read more about this topic: History Of The St. Louis Cardinals
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