This Week in Baseball: 1938

This is part of a weekly series in which I describe what was happening in Major League Baseball each week of a randomly chosen year. This week’s article chronicles the goings on during the week of April 1-7, 1938.

April 1:

• Yankees star center fielder Joe DiMaggio tells reporters, “I won’t play ball for the Yanks until they meet my demands for more money…the contract for $25,000 they sent me is gone with the wind. Just say I’ve lost it. They’re going to pay me my price or else.” DiMaggio’s statement is in response to Yankee manager Joe McCarthy’s insistence that the Yankees’ offer is final and that if DiMaggio doesn’t want to play for the Yankees, the team “can get along” without him. “If DiMaggio isn’t out there, we have Hoag for center field,” McCarthy said. “He’s a fighting ball player. He’s a good fielder and he hits alright. We’ll get along.”

DiMaggio was demanding $40,000, an absurd amount to most who couldn’t believe a 22-year-old with all of two years of major league experience was demanding to be paid more than Lou Gehrig, who was awarded a $39,000 contract prior to the ‘38 season. But DiMaggio had a point—he’d batted .323 with 29 homers and 125 RBIs in his rookie season, then followed that up with a 1937 campaign during which he hit .346 with 46 homers and 167 RBIs and finished second in A.L. MVP voting.

Yankees’ owner Jacob Ruppert refused to budge, however, and DiMaggio finally caved after missing all of spring training and the first few days of the season. Ruppert then put the screws to his star outfielder, insisting that DiMaggio wouldn’t get a cent until he got in shape and that he’d have to pay all his own expenses, including train fare, hotel accommodations, and meals. Ruppert’s decree cost DiMaggio $1,850 in lost wages and his holdout rankled fans, who booed him incessantly upon his return to the Yankees’ line-up. He batted .324 with 32 homers and 140 RBIs, finished sixth in MVP voting, earned an All-Star berth and led the Yankees to another championship. Hoag, DiMaggio’s supposed replacement, hit .277 with no homers and 48 RBIs in 267 at-bats.

• The Christian Science Monitor reports that former major league pitcher and knuckleballer, Eddie Rommel, has joined the ranks of American League umpires.

Rommel, a 13-year veteran with a career record of 171-119, was released by A’s owner Connie Mack in 1932 after finishing just 1-2 with a 5.51 ERA in 65 1/3 innings. He coached with the Athletics for a few years, before being offered a chance to umpire in the New York-Pennsylvania League in 1936. He became one of the International League’s better arbiters in 1937 and was promoted to the American League in 1938 where he served for 21 years before retiring in 1959.

• Alan Gould reports in the Christian Science Monitor that although the American League has produced more “Super” teams and have won more World Series over the years, the numbers have been skewed by the Yankees and the law of averages demands that the National League will soon enjoy a cycle of success.

Gould proved to be right about the Yankees and wrong about the law of averages. The American League won nine of the next 13 World Series with the Yankees taking seven crowns. Of the four National League titles, the St. Louis Cardinals won three. Only the Cincinnati Reds (1940), Detroit Tigers (1945) and Cleveland Indians (1948) were able to break the Yankees’ and Cardinals’ dominance from 1938 to 1950.

• Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis declares pitcher Charles Stanceu and outfielder Myron McCormick free agents after he rules that Buffalo of the International League “covered up” the players for the Cleveland Indians during the 1937 season. Landis also rules that neither could sign with Cleveland, Buffalo, or any of their affiliates for three years.

A quick glance at SABR’s Minor League Database shows that Stanceu had been buried in the Indians’ organization for three years from 1934 to 1936, but that he’d played for the Wilkes-Barre Barons of the New York-Pennsylvania League in 1937, which had no affiliation with the Indians. His minor league record shows he never played for Buffalo and he didn’t play in the IL until 1939 when he was a member of the Newark Bears, the Yankees’ Double-A affiliate. McCormick, on the other hand, did, in fact, play for Buffalo in 1937 after spending three years in Cleveland’s farm system.

Stanceu eventually made it to the majors in 1941, but pitched only briefly for the Yankees and Phillies in parts of two seasons (’41 and ‘46), compiling a record of 5-7 with a 4.93 ERA. McCormick earned a major league berth with Cincinnati in 1940 and spent 10 seasons in the majors, hitting .275 in 748 games.

• Bob Ray of the Los Angeles Times reports that a poll of over 500 writers shows most think the Yankees and Cubs will face off in the 1938 World Series. Ray questions that wisdom due to the Cubs’ lack of a standout pitcher.

The majority was right, although their prediction wasn’t exactly a stretch. The Yankees had won three AL pennants, hadn’t finished lower than second since 1930, and were coming off back-to-back World Series titles in ‘36 and ‘37; the Cubs had two pennants over that same span and hadn’t finished lower than third since 1927, and they were coming off a 1937 season in which they won 93 games and finished only three games out of first place. Chicago did end up with a standout pitcher in ‘38—Bill Lee went 22-9 with a 2.66 ERA—and finished two games ahead of the Pirates in the race for the NL pennant, but the 99-win Yankees were too strong for them and swept the Cubs in the Series.

April 2:

• The Hartford Courant starts calling Yankee second baseman Joe Gordon the “rookie-of-the-year” even though he has yet to play in an official major league game. “‘Flash’ has fielded like a flash. His bat has helped win several Grapefruit League contests. The Yankees have taken to him quickly. They think he has class, class enough even for the world champions.”

Gordon batted only .255 in 1938, but he slugged .502, belting 25 homers and driving in 97 runs. He showed good range at second base, but he was erratic with the glove. Still, he finished 12th in MVP balloting and enjoyed an 11-year career with New York and Cleveland during which he received MVP votes in all but three seasons. He won the award in 1942, edging Boston’s Ted Williams in what amounted to a popularity contest in which the acerbic Williams was snubbed by writers he’d been feuding with. Gordon became a solid second baseman and finished his career with 253 homers in just over 5,700 at-bats.

• For the second straight day, Commissioner Landis grants free agency to players in a team’s farm system, this time targeting the St. Louis Cardinals. Seventy three of St. Louis’ farm hands are freed from their contracts and $2,176 in fines are levied.

Landis ruled that St. Louis had “secret understandings” with Cedar Rapids that “violated rules covering competitive opportunity.” Players from 22 different teams, including those on the Crookston, Minnesota, Mitchell, South Dakota and Fayetteville and Newport, Arkansas squads, were declared free agents as well and forbidden from signing with the Cardinals or any of their affiliates for three years. Among the players lost to the Cards were Pete Reiser, who would become a three-time All-Star with the Dodgers, and infielder Skeeter Webb, who won a World Series title as a member of the 1945 Tigers.

• Pitcher Ed “The Wild Elk of the Wasatch” Heusser parlays his new free agent status into a contract with the Phillies.

Heusser sported a career 12-8 record with a 4.07 ERA in 227 2/3 major league innings with the Cardinals (1935-36) and was 77-62 with a 4.37 ERA in over 1,200 minor league innings at the time of the deal. He appeared in only one game with the Phillies in 1938, allowing three runs on two hits and a walk, and spent most of the season with Memphis of the South Atlantic League. He eventually made it back to the majors and finished with a 56-67 career record, but posted a respectable 3.69 ERA in just under 1,100 career innings.

April 3:

• The Washington Post runs a story about six-year-old Kal Segrist Jr., son of former minor leagur Kal Segrist Sr., in which it explains that Jr. had been prepping for a career as a major league baseball player since he was only two years old. At six, Segrist Jr. batted .340 for his sandlot team, played a nearly flawless second base and went 8-3 as a pitcher.

Segrist actually turned out to be a pretty good ball player, although his major league career consisted of only 32 at-bats. He batted .291 with 17 homers for the Yankees’ Kansas City affiliate in the Triple-A American Association at the age of 20 and earned a promotion mid way through the 1952 season. He went 1-for-23 (.043) in 13 games with the Yanks before being sent back to the minors where he batted .308 with 25 homers. He slumped in 1953, but rebounded in ‘54 and hit .291 with 15 homers for K.C. He was involved in a massive 17-player deal between the Yankees and Orioles that began on November 17, 1954 but wasn’t completed until December 1. He earned a nine at-bat cup of coffee with the Orioles in 1955 and went 3-for-9 with two walks and a run scored, but spent the rest of his career in the minors where he continued to enjoy success, especially in 1960 when he batted .325 with 25 homers for Victoria of the Texas League.

• Washington Post columnist Shirley Povich reports that future NFL Hall of Fame quarterback, “Slingin’ Sammy” Baugh, has a chance to make the St. Louis Cardinals’ roster out of spring training.

Cardinals general manager Branch Rickey signed Baugh out of Texas Christian University, hoping he would become nothing more than a Class-A infielder whom Rickey could send to St. Louis’ Houston farm team as a drawing card. Baugh surprised everyone, however, and outplayed the other third base candidates. But he wasn’t good enough for the bigs and he was eventually sent to the minors where he stunk for two different teams, batting .200 in 130 at-bats. Fortunately for Baugh, he already had a job to fall back on, starring for the Washington Redskins at the same time he was attempting to play major league baseball. He became one of the greatest quarterbacks in NFL history and was inducted into the NFL Hall of fame in 1963.

April 4:

• Dillon Graham warns writers not to be hasty in tabbing Joe Gordon the AL’s best rookie and predicts success for Red Sox pitcher Jim Bagby Jr., son of former major league hurler Jim Bagby Sr. “Jim Jr. has something that many baseball sons didn’t have—competitive spirit,” Dillon writes. “Other lads went into baseball because their dads wanted them to, but Jim charged in without any urging. He likes the game.”

Bagby was almost as good as advertised, going 15-11 with a 4.21 ERA (the league mark was 4.93), but his K/BB ratio was awful and his rookie season proved to be his best (at least in terms of ERA+). He walked 90 batters in 198 2/3 innings and fanned only 73 in 1938, and over his 10-year career he never struck out more batters in a season than he walked, finishing with a career K/BB ratio of 0.71. He went 17-9 with a 2.96 ERA in 1942 while pitching for Cleveland and followed that with a 17-14 mark and a 3.10 ERA in 1943, but his ERA+ in both seasons (116 and 100) ranked second and third, respectively, to his 117 in 1938. He finished his career with a record of 97-96 and a 3.96 ERA (97 ERA+).

• 37-year-old Goose Goslin returns to the Washington Senators after spending the previous four seasons with the Detroit Tigers. “If he looks better than Al Simmons or either of the other regular outfielders, we’ll stick him in the lineup,” Clark Griffith tells reporters.

The trio of Senators outfielders (Simmons, George Case and Max West) all played well, while Goslin struggled. Goslin began his career with the Senators as a 20-year-old in 1921 and enjoyed nine mostly outstanding seasons with Washington before being traded to the St. Louis Browns in 1930. He spent 2 1/2 seasons with the Browns, returned to Washington in 1933, went to Detroit for four years, then landed with Washington for one final season. He batted only .158 in 38 games in 1938, then hung up his spikes for good with a career average of .316, over 2,700 hits, and more than 1,600 RBIs.

“Fact is, I deserve a lot of credit for that .330 lifetime batting average of mine. The way I stand up there to the plate—almost sideways—I’m only watching the pitch with one eye. My nose is in the way of the other eye. If I could use both eyes up there at the plate, I’d probably hit .800″—Goose Goslin

• The New York Times reports that the St. Louis Browns’ defeat of the Toledo Mud Hens is their 14th straight Grapefruit League victory. Third baseman Harlond Clift leads the way with a homer and a double in the 8-3 win.

Proving that spring training records mean nothing, the Browns went on to post a 55-97 regular season record and finished in seventh place. Clift, on the other hand, enjoyed a career year, belting a career best 34 homers, tying his career mark with 118 RBIs, and setting a new high in OPS+ with a mark of 143.

• Former major league pitcher (and clown), Al Schacht, tells reporters that the Dodgers are the most improved team he’s seen during spring training and that they “have the class to go places.”

The Dodgers actually did improve on their 1937 record (62-91), but they still finished in seventh place in ‘38 with a record of 69-80. Schacht wasn’t far off his assessment, however. Brooklyn won 84 games in 1939, 88 games in 1940, 100 games in 1941 and 104 games in 1942 and won the National League pennant in ‘41.

April 5:

• Despite reports of Sammy Baugh’s surprising success, Baugh reports that he’s on his way to the minors and that Cardinals manager Frankie Frisch has given him his choice of locales—Columbus or Houston. The Washington Post reports that Baugh’s demotion was due to two factors (1) “his failure to connect solidly with pitching” and (2) “his inexperience.”

Although Baugh is a Texas native, he chooses Columbus, for whom he bats .220 in 16 games.

• Arch Ward writes in the Chicago Tribune that White Sox vice president Harry Grabiner “leans to the belief that Zeke Bonura will find a lot of the drives he intends to be home runs falling into the clutches of the outfielders…Griffith Stadium is the only American League park in which fewer than 100 homers were hit last summer.”

Bonura, a 6 foot, 210-pound slugger, played for the White Sox from 1934 to 1937 before he was traded to the Washington Senators on March 18, 1938. He averaged almost 20 homers a year for the White Sox, belting a career high 27 as a rookie in 1934. He hit 19 round-trippers in 116 games in 1937 in a park (Comiskey) that had a ballpark factor of 129 for right-handed home run hitters. Griffith Stadium’s RH/HR factor in 1937 was only 29. It climbed to 46 in 1938. Bonura was largely unfazed by his new spacious surroundings as he hit 22 homers in his lone season with the Senators (his slugging percentage did drop more than 100 points, though) before being traded to the Giants in December 1938.

• Shirley Povich reports that the Yankees are worried about not having Joe DiMaggio in the fold. “Not until Joe DiMaggio and Col. Ruppert settle their contract difficulties will the New York athletes be completely at ease. With DiMaggio, the Yankees believe that they are a sure thing. Without DiMaggio, well, they are not the New York Yankees.”

April 6:

• A day after announcing that Sammy Baugh will be released to either Columbus or Houston, the Cardinals announce that pitcher Paul “Daffy” Dean, brother of Dizzy Dean, has been sent to Houston of the Texas League.

Dean’s once promising career was all but over at that point. His demotion came after he allowed nine runs in an inning to Boston in an exhibition game, but he hadn’t been worth a damn since he won 38 games from 1934 to ‘35. He succumbed to a sore arm in 1936, faced all of three batters in 1937 and eventually made it back to the majors in 1938, going 3-1 with a nifty 2.61 ERA. But he won only four games over the next four seasons before retiring in 1943 at the age of 30. He finished his career with a 50-34 mark and a 3.72 ERA.

• Shirley Povich opines that Senators hurler Monte Weaver deserves to start on Opening Day over Wes Ferrell who is only so-so in exhibition games. “The fact is that the angular fellow [Weaver] is the best pitcher on the Washington staff as we go to press.”

Ferrell got the Opening Day start and eked out a win in a 12-8 slugfest with the Athletics. He went on to lead the Senators in wins with 13, but he also had the highest ERA (5.92) among Washington’s starters before he was released by the team in August. The Yankees picked Ferrell up and he was even worse in New York. At season’s end, he had the highest ERA among qualifiers in the American League. Weaver pitched the second game and beat the A’s 9-2, but he mostly struggled on the year, going 7-6 with a 5.24 ERA. He appeared in only nine more games in his career and retired in 1939 with a career record of 71-50 and a 4.36 ERA.

• The Christian Science Monitor reports that Yankees owner Jacob Ruppert intends on presenting a plan at the next American League meeting that would eliminate contract holdouts or, at least, financially penalize players who do hold out for more money. Ruppert’s plan would have players signed to contracts from March 1 to March 1 and would pay them each month of the year instead of only during the season. Therefore players who miss spring training while holding out for a new contract would not be paid and would think twice about using that tactic.

April 7:

• George “Kiddo” Davis explains that he quit the Cincinnati Reds because he’s tired of sitting on the bench and that he doesn’t “relish another season” of bench-warming.

Davis ended up playing five games with Cincinnati in 1938 and went 5-for-18 (.278) with a double, a walk, and three runs scored. He played his last major league game on May 7, 1938 and retired from his eight-year career with a .282 career AVG in 1,824 at-bats.

• The Hartford Courant reports that a handful of friendly wagers between players took place during spring training, including one in which a box of cigars goes to the winner of a bet between Frankie Frisch and Burleigh Grimes. Frisch promises Grimes a box of 10-cent cigars if Cardinals third baseman, Art Garibaldi, doesn’t outhit all other NL third basemen during the season.

Not only did Grimes win the bet, but Garibaldi didn’t even make the Cardinals’ roster in 1938. He spent the season in Columbus of the American Association and batted only .264. In fact, after impressive seasons in 1936 and ‘37 in the Pacific Coast League in which he hit .326 and .327, Garibaldi never batted higher than .292 in any of his final five seasons in the minors.

Cubs third sacker Stan Hack paced all senior circuit third basemen in AVG in 1938, batting .320. Had Garibaldi hit .264 in the majors instead of the minors, he would have placed ninth among NL third basemen, but would have bettered the man who earned the Cards’ third base job, Don Gutteridge, who batted only .255.

• The Los Angeles Times reports that Pirates manager Pie Traynor fined several of his players after a wrestling match between six of them during a train trip from Barstow, California to Clovis, New Mexico got out of hand and resulted in a knee injury to pitcher Russ Bauers.

Bauers was scheduled to start on Opening Day against the Cardinals but his 1938 debut had to be pushed back a week. He started against the Cubs on April 25 and earned a no-decision in an 8-6 Pittsburgh win. The knee injury apparently had little effect on him as he won a career high 13 games and posted a very good 3.07 ERA in 243 innings. The 1938 campaign would prove to be Bauers’ most productive, however. A sore arm derailed his career in 1939 and he never pitched in more than 15 games or threw more than 54 innings in a season in his last five years in the majors. He finished his career at 31-30 with a 3.53 ERA.