The 1940s Sports: Topics in the News

AUTOMOBILE RACING REVIVES AFTER THE WAR

Two types of auto racing dominated the 1940s. Indy racing featured specially built race cars and took place on paved speedways and racetracks. The most famous of these races was the Indianapolis 500. Stock car racing, by contrast, was quite different. Usually run on dirt tracks of compacted clay, stock car races featured modified road cars that often had been rescued from junkyards. Many of the stock car drivers of the 1940s had learned their skills while smuggling illegal liquor, a job in which a talent for high-speed driving was essential for escaping the police.

In 1940 and 1941, Wilbur Shaw (1902–1954) was the star driver of the Indianapolis series. With his third victory in 1940, he became the first driver to win two Indianapolis 500 races in a row. But in 1941, while leading the race in the closing stages, Shaw's car lost a tire and spun into a concrete barrier, ending his driving career. The race was won by future star Mauri Rose (1906–1981). The Indianapolis speedway lay idle from 1942 to 1945, when it was bought by Tony Hulman (1901–1977). Along with his manager, the ex-driver Shaw, Hulman is credited with saving the Indianapolis Motor Speedway after World War II.

The second half of the decade belonged to Rose, Bill Holland (1907–1984), and their Blue Crown Special team. In 1947, Holland was leading Rose with eight laps to go. The two drivers were told to hold their positions, but Holland, thinking he was a lap ahead, waved Rose through to win the race. Rose and Holland split the winnings of $137,425. The Rose-Holland duel was repeated in the next two years, with Rose winning again in 1948, and Holland setting a new track record of four hours and ten minutes to take his only Indianapolis 500 victory in 1949. By then, the Indy 500 was America's top auto race.

The other main form of auto racing in the 1940s was stock car racing. In 1946, a competitive Indianapolis 500 race car cost around $30,000. A stock car, by contrast, could go from junkyard to racetrack for $2,500. They were called stock cars because they looked like normal road cars. Bill France (1909–1992) made stock car racing more respectable when he founded the National Association for Stock Car Racing (NASCAR) in 1948. The inaugural race was held at the Charlotte (North Carolina) Speedway on June 19, 1949. Moving away from the traditional stock car image, the idea was to race late-model cars less than three years old. Fans enjoyed watching cars similar to those they saw on the street battling it out on the track. Soon companies such as Ford realized that NASCAR was an important marketing opportunity, and they supplied cars for the races. As with other sports in the 1940s, auto racing was becoming part of both the entertainment industry and the advertising industry.

BASEBALL GOES TO WAR

America's favorite sport began the 1940s with outstanding performances from future Hall-of-Famers Bob Feller (1918–), Joe DiMaggio (1914–1999), and Ted Williams (1918–2002). Feller won twenty-seven games for the Cleveland Indians in 1940. In their final game of the season, the Indians lost to the Detroit Tigers, who went on to lose the World Series to the Cincinnati Reds. It was the Reds' first world championship in over two decades. The 1941 season was even more spectacular. Williams, of the Boston Red Sox, became the first player in history to crack the .400 batting average barrier for the season, finishing with a batting average of.406. But his achievement was overshadowed by DiMaggio's record breaking hitting streak. Between May 15 and July 17, DiMaggio reached base safely for a record fifty-six consecutive games, breaking a mark set back in 1897. He won the American League's Most Valuable Player award, and his team, the New York Yankees, went on to win the World Series. It was the first of four World Series wins for the Yankees in the 1940s.

Indianapolis 500 Winners

After the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, large numbers of ball players volunteered for, or were drafted into, military service. By 1942, 328 out of 607 major leaguers had signed up. Baseball commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis (1866–1944) considered closing down the major leagues for the duration of the war. But President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) urged him to keep the game going as long as no players tried to avoid the draft. The shortage of younger talent during the

war meant that older and less-capable players enjoyed fleeting fame. For example, Pete Gray (1917–) signed with the St. Louis Browns in 1945 at age twenty-eight and played seventy-seven games, finishing the season with a mediocre batting average of .218. What made Gray unusual was that he had only one arm. When he caught the ball in the outfield he would throw it in the air, throw the glove off his left and only hand, catch the ball, and throw it back into play.

After 1945, baseball was shaken up again when African American Jackie Robinson (1919–1972) was signed by the Brooklyn Dodgers. Robinson was an extraordinary athlete, and Dodgers manager Branch Rickey (1881–1965) was keen to have him in the lineup. But he knew Robinson would face tough times as the only black player in the major leagues. On April 15, 1947, Robinson played first base for the Dodgers in a game against the Boston Braves at Ebbets Field. Robinson did all that his manager asked of him and more. Many white players threatened to strike if they had to play against Robinson, but the fans did not support them. Robinson kept his cool when taunted with racist comments and was voted Rookie of the Year, finishing the season with a batting average of .297. In 1949, he won Most Valuable Player honors, closing with a .342 average. Robinson finished his career batting .311 over ten seasons.

Stars like DiMaggio, Feller, Williams, and Stan Musial (1920–) returned from military service to resume their careers in the late 1940s. DiMaggio beat Ted Williams (1918–) to the Most Valuable Player award in 1947. In 1948 the Cleveland Indians, with star pitchers Feller and Satchel Paige (C.1907–1982), won their first American League pennant since 1920; the Boston Braves took the National League title for the first time since 1914. The Indians went on to win the World Series. In 1948, the New York Yankees went up against traditional rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers in the World Series. The Yankees won in a year when twenty million Americans paid to attend major and minor league baseball games. Since 1947, many fans had also watched the games on television. At the end of the 1940s, baseball was booming.

BASKETBALL PLAYS BY NEW RULES

At the start of the 1940s, basketball was still adapting to a 1938 rule change that ended the need for a jump ball after every basket. The game had speeded up as a result, and a new shot, the jump shot, had become the major offensive weapon for most teams. Basketball was generally less affected by World War II than other sports. But the draft did have one strange effect. Many basketball players were rejected by the military because they were too tall! Because of this, the average height of teams crept up as the war went on. By 1945, Oklahoma A&M coach Hank Iba (1904–1993) could announce the "tallest team on earth." Built around seven-footer Bob "Foothills" Kurland (1925–), Iba's team was so tall that it forced new goaltending rules.

The Kentucky Wildcats dominated the postwar collegiate game. They took the National Conference of Collegiate Athletics (NCAA) title four times between 1945 and 1954. In 1949, Kentucky established twenty-two NCAA individual and team records. After the war, black athletes attending college after military service also transformed college basketball. In 1946, for example, Charles "Chuck" Cooper (1926–1984) began playing for Duquesne University. Many southern teams refused to play Duquesne when Cooper was in the lineup. The National Basketball Association (NBA) was formed in 1949 when the Basketball Association of America (BAA) and the National Basketball League (NBL) merged under the leadership of Maurice Podoloff (1890–1985). Cooper later became the first black player in the NBA.

Women's Baseball

In 1943, half of all major league baseball players were overseas serving in the armed forces. The game was in crisis. President Franklin D. Roosevelt (1882–1945) urged baseball franchise owners to keep the game going. Chicago Cubs owner and chewing gum millionaire Philip K. Wrigley (1894–1977), and Brooklyn Dodgers general manager Branch Rickey (1881–1965) came up with the idea of the All-American Girls Baseball League (AAGBL). Taking players from amateur softball leagues, they set up a four-team league and offered the players excellent pay. The players' background in softball meant they did not pitch overhand until 1948. The league's first star was Dorothy "Dottie" Kamenshek (1926–). Kamenshek could hit the ball all over the field. She struck out only 81 times out of 3,736 at-bats. The AAGBL was very popular, but as male baseball stars returned from the war after 1945, it began to fade. The AAGBL folded in 1954. It was remembered in the 1992 movie A League of Their Own.

Although mixed-race teams were unknown in the professional game during the 1940s, the all-black Harlem Globetrotters were one of the few professional teams to be financially secure. They won the world professional championship in 1940. The Globetrotters were so skillful that coach Abe Saperstein (1903–1966) instructed them to play hard for the

first ten minutes, build a lead, and then relax and put on a show. They soon became international stars, touring the world and even performing for Pope Pius XII (1876–1958). The Globetrotters often distracted their opponents by making them laugh, but their skills were as impressive as

their humor. Many of their trick shots, such as the no-look pass, became standard plays in basketball.

Rule changes in the 1940s turned basketball into a high-speed, exciting game. Stars such as the Philadelphia Warriors' Joe Fulks (1921–1976) averaged over twenty points per game, a high scoring average at the time. Fulks actually managed to score over thirty points on twelve occasions, and he scored forty-one in one memorable game. Six-foot-ten-inch George Mikan (1924–) also boosted the game's appeal. Playing for the Minneapolis Lakers for six years, Mikan led the league in scoring three times. His career scoring average on his retirement in 1954 was 22.4 points per game. Before he retired, Mikan forced yet another rule change. His incredible control inside the paint led the NBA to widen the lanes underneath the basket to twelve feet.

PROMOTERS TAKE OVER BOXING

One fighter dominated American boxing in the 1940s: Joe Louis (1914–1981), heavyweight champion from 1937 until 1949. Tens of thousands of fans came to see his fights, even when he faced weak opposition. Surveys showed that around fifty million radio listeners in the early 1940s tuned in to Joe Louis's fights. For a period in 1940 and 1941, Louis took on a challenger every month. Louis was sometimes criticized for fighting members of the so-called "bum-of-the-month club." Boxing promoters grew rich and powerful on his success, but they also had serious problems to worry about: keeping out the gangsters and the gamblers.

Organized crime had always been interested in boxing. As the sport became more popular, and the amount of prize money involved grew larger, crime syndicates, such as a group known as Murder Incorporated, took more of an interest. In the late 1940s, the mob's "commissioner" of boxing was Frankie "Jimmy the Wop" Carbo (1904–1976), a professional killer first arrested for murder at the age of twenty. Carbo bragged under oath that he controlled boxing. In the middleweight division, corruption was widespread. Boxers Jake La Motta (1921–), Rocky Graziano (1922–1990), one-time champion Tony Zale (1913–1997), and many others were involved in staged fights in which the outcome was predetermined. The mob made a great deal of money from illegal gambling, and many fighters were paid to lose fights intentionally in the 1940s.

Sugar Ray Robinson (1921–1989) was so dominant in the welterweight division that he seemed to be above suspicion. When he turned professional in 1940, at the age of twenty, he had won all eighty-five of his amateur fights, sixty-nine by knockout. But in 1947, Robinson changed his story over a reported bribe, and the boxing commission punished him for suspected cheating. Heavyweight Joe Louis was never seriously suspected of cheating, however. His reputation with the public rose even higher when he became Private Joe Louis of the U.S. Army on January 10, 1942. In 1946, Louis fought a rematch with Billy Conn (1917–1993), a fighter he had beaten in 1941. At $100 each, the cost of ringside seats hit a record high. Over forty-five thousand people watched Louis knock out Conn in the eighth round of a disappointing fight. Though Louis earned a record $625,916, it was not quite enough to cover his debts, back taxes, and the cost of his entourage: twenty-three minders, trainers, and managers.

By the end of the decade, boxing was a big-money sport. Live audiences alone raised $1.25 million a year for Madison Square Garden, while radio and television brought in millions more. In 1949, the Tournament of Champions promoters merged with Joe Louis Promotions to become the International Boxing Club (IBC). Louis himself retained a 20-percent share of the IBC and a salary of $20,000. By 1950 the IBC controlled half of all championship fights in America. The age of the mass media and corporate control of boxing had arrived.

The Bronx Bull

The most famous case of corruption in boxing was that of "The Bronx Bull" Jake La Motta (1921–). In June 1947 La Motta was offered $100,000 to lose a contest with Tony Janiro (1927–). He said he would do so if his next bout could be a championship fight, but the bosses refused. La Motta, weighing 155 pounds, battered Janiro for ten rounds. After being investigated and fined for cheating in another fight, La Motta was offered his chance at the title against France's Marcel Cerdan (1916–1949). To organize the bout, La Motta had to pay mobster Frankie Carbo (1904–1976) $20,000. La Motta's purse for the fight was just $19,000, but he bet $10,000 on himself to win, and he did. The rematch looked set to be La Motta's big payday, but his opponent Cerdan was killed in a plane crash on his way to the United States.

FOOTBALL ENTERS THE MODERN ERA

College football was transformed in the 1940s by one important rule change. The free-substitution rule allowed a coach to make any number of substitutions at any time during a game except in the last two minutes of the first half. Before the 1941 season, eleven players on each team had played the entire game, and could be substituted for only if they were injured. With many college players serving in the military, the new rule meant that war-weakened teams could still compete at the highest level. University of Michigan football coach Fritz Crisler (1899–1982) introduced the platoon system on October 13, 1945 in a game against Army. In Crisler's system, players specialized in a particular part of the game, such as short-yardage offense, passing offense, and the corresponding defensive plays. Before long, teams' rosters had swelled to as many as 120 men.

World War II dealt a major blow to both college and professional football. With so many players in the military, around 350 college teams closed down during the war, including the University of Chicago. The one team to benefit was Army. College players often went to West Point and played for the Army team. In 1944, Army averaged fifty-six points per game, a modern record. In the National Football League (NFL), the 1941 season belonged to the Chicago Bears. But their championship game against the New York Giants came just two weeks after Pearl Harbor and was attended by only 13,341 fans.

With 638 of its players serving in the military, the NFL used older players, draft-deferred players, and merged teams. In 1943, the league still averaged a respectable 23,644 spectators at each game, a jump of 39 percent compared to 1942. By 1944, the NFL had been reduced to eight teams. The NFL made stars of its best players, and one of the greatest during the war era was Bill Dudley (1921–). He was the last great two-way (offensive and defensive) player, and the only player voted as most valuable at the college, the armed services, and professional levels. When he returned from the war in 1945, he signed with the Detroit Lions for a record-breaking $20,000.

After 1945, college and professional football leagues enjoyed a revival. With athletes back on campus, college teams such as Notre Dame wanted to avenge recent defeats at the hands of Army. When those two teams met at the end of 1946, there were fourteen future all-American players and ten future Hall-of-Famers on the field, yet the final score was 0-0. Late in the decade, the professional All-American Football Conference (AAFC) was set up by Chicago Tribune sports editor Arch Ward (1896–1955). Player salaries rocketed from $150 a game in 1941 to an average of $5,000 for a ten-game season in 1949. The stars earned much more. In 1946, the NFL Rams moved from Cleveland to Los Angeles, and the AAFC moved teams into San Francisco and Los Angeles, making football the first major-league sport on the West Coast. But the competition for fans was too intense. By 1947 the U.S. economy would not support two high-paying leagues, and the two merged.

GOLF CLUBS ADVISED TO PLOW THE ROUGH

Around a quarter of the golf courses in the United States were closed during World War II. Members of the courses that stayed open worked hard, not only to help the war effort but also to make sure the game did not put pressure on war industries or the military. At most courses, members began carrying their own clubs when their caddies went off to fight. Other members mowed the greens and fairways themselves and refurbished old golf clubs in a recycling craze. Millions of golf balls were dredged up from the bottom of lakes to be reused. Members of the Black Rock Club in Atlanta were embarrassed when sixteen thousand lost balls were recovered from their lake. The United States Golf Association (USGA) suggested that the roughs should be plowed and planted with vegetables to boost wartime food supplies. Few clubs acted on that idea, but the Augusta National Golf Course was turned over to grazing cattle in 1943 while the Masters tournament was suspended.

An American Boy Wonder

The 1940 and 1944 Olympics were canceled because of World War II. At the 1948 Summer Olympics in London, the United States won eleven events, Sweden won five, and eight other countries won one each. American boy wonder Bob Mathias (1930–) was the outstanding athlete of the 1948 summer games. Having competed in his first decathlon only six weeks earlier, he won gold in this most grueling of Olympic challenges. But in case anyone wondered if his win was a fluke, he went on to be the American decathlon champion in 1949 and 1950. He repeated his Olympic success in 1952 at Helsinki, Finland. Interviewed after taking the gold medal in 1948, the seventeen-year-old Mathias was asked what he would do next. He replied: "Start shaving, I guess."

Between 1942 and 1945, all major USGA events were canceled, including the U.S. Open, the U.S. Amateur, and the Women's Amateur. The U.S. Open was replaced with the Hale American Open. Played in Chicago, the Hale raised $20,000 for the war effort. By 1943, there were 350 Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) members serving in the military. Among them were stars such as Sam Snead (1912–2002), Lawson Little (1910–1968), and Jimmy Demaret (1910–1983). Their Christmas gift from the Professional Golfers' Association (PGA) was a carton of cigarettes.

The golfer who dominated the game during the war years was Byron Nelson (1912–). Because competition was in short supply during the war years, it is difficult to measure Nelson's greatness in terms of the golfers he actually beat. But his consistency cannot be disputed. He won eight tournaments in 1944 and eighteen in 1945, for a total of twenty-six wins out of fifty-one starts. He collected $66,000 in war bond prizes in 1945, and finished in the money in 112 consecutive tournaments. For 120 tournament rounds, his average score for eighteen holes was 68.33. Assuming the course average par was 71, Nelson was 320-under-par for all his rounds of tournament play in 1945. It was one of the most remarkable winning streaks in golfing history.

Though the men's game was on its way to becoming a major sport in the 1940s, women's golf was hardly even organized. In 1946, the Women's Professional Golfers' Association (WPA) was formed; just three years later, a rival organization appeared: the Ladies' Professional Golfers' Association (LPGA). Funded by money from Weathervane clothing products, the LPGA helped promote Weathervane through a four-course tournament with a purse of $15,000. The tournament was dominated by Mildred "Babe" Didrikson Zaharias (1911–1956) and Patty Berg (1918–). They helped make women's golf a popular spectator sport in the 1950s.

TENNIS PLAYERS TURN PRO

By the 1940s, a small group of professional tennis players was touring the world and playing for small audiences. The Professional Lawn Tennis Association (PLTA) had been around for nearly twenty years. But the United States Lawn Tennis Association (USLTA), an amateur association, did not take the PLTA very seriously. Despite the fact that popular players, such as Great Britain's Fred Perry (1909–1995) and America's Ellsworth Vines (1911–1944), were playing as professionals in the late 1930s, professional tennis was not as popular as the amateur game. To make matters worse, professional tours and tournaments were suspended after 1942 because of the war.

Jack Kramer (1921–) was the first player to make professional tennis popular with fans. In 1946 and 1947, he won the United States Outdoor Championship, and he took the Wimbledon singles and doubles titles in 1947. A flashy player of what became known as "attack tennis," Kramer was loved by the fans. The secret of his success was an all-out offensive style. He won the first four tournaments of 1947 without losing a set and without having his serve broken. When he turned professional in 1948, going on an eighty-nine-game tour with former Wimbledon champion Bobby Riggs (1918–1995), professional tennis began a postwar revival. Traveling five thousand miles a month, the touring players earned gross revenues of $383,000. Kramer was pro champion in 1948; he lost to Riggs in 1949.

Amateur tennis also had its attractions after World War II. Gertrude Augusta Moran (1923–), better known as Gorgeous Gussie, was knocked out of the Wimbledon tournament in the third round in 1949. But although Moran had been expected to do well, it was not her poor performance that caused a stir. Moran had wanted to play in a colored dress, but court officials persuaded her not to; instead, she upset the All-England Club with a display of lace panties never before seen on court. Gorgeous Gussie and her "undignified" attire made front-page news in London. The All-England Club imposed a very strict dress code at Wimbledon from then on. In 1950, Moran took her glamorous image and her frilly knickers on the professional tennis tour with Riggs, Kramer, and other male tennis stars.