1938 World Series: Cubs Were No Match in Four-Game Sweep

One week before the start of the World Series, the Yankees were in a relaxed state, playing out the end of the schedule without an ounce of pressure as they had long ago wrapped up another American League pennant.

Who they were going to play in the Fall Classic was still an issue yet to be decided. The Cubs and Pirates were locked in a furious duel, and as fate would have it, they were lined up face-to-face for a three-game series at Wrigley Field that would ultimately decide the National League champion.

Chicago took the opener for its eighth win in a row, and the next day, with the score tied at 5-5 and darkness enveloping the Windy City, player/manager Gabby Hartnett slammed Mace Brown’s two-strike pitch for a game-winning bottom-of-the-ninth home run, vaulting the Cubs into first place. It became known as the Homer in the Gloamin’ and when the Cubs finally clinched the pennant, Hartnett’s home run took on a life of its own. To this day, it is considered one of baseball’s greatest moments.

Hartnett’s euphoria didn’t last long, though. There was no gloamin’ during the Yankees systematic four-game sweep of the Cubs, but there was plenty of gloatin’ for Yankee manager Joe McCarthy. The man who Cubs owner William Wrigley had fired back in 1930 now owned two Series victories over the Cubs without the loss of a single game.

As was the case in 1932, the Cubs were no match for the Yankees. They had expended too much energy in the final month of the season trying to catch Pittsburgh, and after winning 21 of 25 games to qualify for the Series, they were simply incapable of giving Hartnett anymore. And anything less than 100 percent was never good enough to beat the Yankees.

With Red Ruffing hurling complete game gems to open and close the Series, and light-hitting shortstop Frank Crosetti driving in six runs, the Yankees rolled to their seventh world championship, which also happened to be their third in a row, an unprecedented feat.

“The National League should feel very happy,” said Washington Senators manager and future Yankee skipper Bucky Harris. “All its pennant winner has to do is face those Yanks in one series a year. How about us in the American League who have to see ‘em around all year?”

As Cubs first baseman Rip Collins surmised when it was over, “We came, we saw, and now we go home. Thank God none of us was hurt.”

At the conclusion of the fourth and final game, Ruffing bounded joyfully off the mound, his teammates clapping him on the back as a Yankee Stadium throng roared its approval. I couldn’t imagine the glee he felt considering the way his life, and his baseball career, had begun.

Ruffing was 15 years old when his father told him to quit school and come to work with him in the coal mines of Nokomis, Ill. While underground, Ruffing caught his left foot between two mining cars, and the result was the loss of four toes.

He had been playing the outfield for the company baseball team which his father managed, but the injury sidelined him for a year and there were many days when he thought he’d never play baseball again. But he did return, as a pitcher, despite playing with constant pain. “The foot bothered me the rest of my career and I had to land on the side of my left foot in my follow-through,” he said.

Ruffing caught the eye of the manager of the local semi-pro team, and after a brief stint, he signed his first pro contract with Danville of the 3-I League in 1923, and by 1924 he was pitching for the Boston Red Sox, though not very impressively. In his first three full major league seasons he walked more batters than he struck out, and he was a perpetual loser thanks to the lousy Boston teams that played behind him.

Ruffing was enduring a typically horrific season in 1929 as Boston was in the midst of finishing last in the American League for the fifth year in a row. Ruffing had lost a league-worst 25 games in 1928 and he would lead the league in that dubious category again in 1929 with 22. Remarkably, his batting average exceeded his winning percentage in both those years, which prompted Red Sox manager Bill Carrigan to experiment with Ruffing in the outfield. Alas, Ruffing’s fielding couldn’t match his hitting, and he went back to pitching full-time, seemingly doomed to a lifetime of losing.

Yankees manager Miller Huggins saw something in Ruffing that his gloomy statistics overshadowed: He had a strong arm and a bulldog mentality on the mound. One day, Huggins told Ruffing, “I never talk to players from other clubs, but in this case I think I should open my mouth. You never will be more than a fair outfielder, but you could be a great pitcher. I mean, a real pitcher. Now the Yanks need pitchers and I’m going after you. Keep pitching, don’t let them kill you in the outfield.”

Huggins died a few months later, but he had told Bob Shawkey about Ruffing, and when Shawkey was managing the club in 1930, the Yankees acquired Ruffing in exchange for Cedric Durst and $50,000 cash. Once again, the Yankees had fleeced the Red Sox.

“The Red Sox of my time weren’t even a good double-A team,” Ruffing said. “I wasn’t a better pitcher (once he came to New York). The year I lost 25 for the Sox, I would have won 25 with the Yankees behind me.”

When Ruffing joined the Yankees his major league record stood at 39-96. By the time he retired in 1946, after nearly 16 years in New York, his mark was 273-225. Among all-time Yankees starting pitchers Ruffing ranks third in games pitched (426), and second in innings (3,168.2), wins (231) and shutouts (40).

During the Yankees’ run to four straight championships in the late 1930s, Ruffing topped 20 victories each year, and his lifetime Series record was a sparkling 7-2.

Equally as impressive was his skill as a batter. A career .269 hitter, he drove in more runs than any modern pitcher in major league history (273), he batted .300 in eight seasons (six with the Yankees) and his 36 lifetime homers rank third among pitchers behind only Wes Ferrell and Bob Lemon.

“When I started out, I was like most pitchers at the plate, scared,” he said. “I’d jump back from a tight pitch and hit with a foot in the bucket. Then one day it happened. I got hit by a pitched ball and I was amazed, it didn’t hurt me at all. From that day on I dug in at the plate and became a hitter.”

At the age of 38, a husband and father of two children, a man with four toes missing on his left foot, Ruffing was drafted into the Army in 1942. He never fought in combat, but still, he was part of the war effort for two years.

“Money isn’t everything in baseball, though it helps,” he once said. “Baseball is a great game, it’s been marvelous to me and I never will be able to repay the debt. It took me out of the coal mines. Baseball put me on the lift, out of the shafts and into the sunshine, into a grand game among grand guys, into a way of life that’s remarkable. That’s the good old USA for you.”

Ruffing dominated Game 1 at Wrigley Field. The Yankees led 2-1 in the sixth when Tommy Henrich, like Joe Gordon playing in his first Series game, lined a double to left and scored on Bill Dickey’s RBI single. With that two-run cushion, Ruffing was home free. He allowed nine hits, but didn’t walk a batter, struck out five, and benefited from a couple superb plays in the field by shortstop Frank Crosetti. The Cubs had baserunners in each of the last four innings, including Hartnett who tripled with two out in the seventh, but couldn’t score another run.

“What the hell,” Hartnett said. “Those guys better look better tomorrow than they did today or they had better look out. They were just lucky, that’s all. We’ll battle them silly tomorrow. They’re more scared than we are.”

The massive press corps would have loved to hear McCarthy’s response to that one, but he closed the clubhouse and did not speak to reporters, nor did his players. Instead, he urged his team to do its talking on the field the next day.

In Game 2 Lefty Gomez opposed the longtime great, Dizzy Dean, and the two future Hall of Famers struggled early before settling into a classic duel. The Cubs took a 3-2 lead into the eighth before Crosetti, whose nine homers during the season were the fewest of any Yankee regular, jacked a go-ahead two-run blast to left, and Joe DiMaggio’s two-run homer in the ninth finished off a 6-3 Yankee victory.

Dean, who had begun to tire, was pushed to the limit by Crosetti and was forced to throw 10 pitches during the at-bat. “I throwed myself out,” Dean would say afterward. “I had them beat until Crosetti hit his homer. The Yankees were the luckiest ballclub in the last two days that I ever saw. I can understand how the Yankees won the American League pennant. They’re lucky.”

On the train ride back to New York, McCarthy held court with some of the reporters and while he praised Dean for a gutsy performance, he did not hesitate to add, “I think ‘ol Diz was getting just a little bit cocky along about the eighth inning.”

Two games up and going home, the Yankees were in a playful mood during that trip. As they pulled into Fort Wayne, Indiana, a photographer, grossly overweight, panting breathlessly and obviously assigned to get a shot of the world-famous Yankees passing through town, asked Gomez where the ballplayers were. Gomez, sensing a priceless moment, pointed in the direction of batboy Timmy Sullivan and said, “There’s DiMaggio.” Taking his cue, the photographer got all set to shoot pictures of Sullivan before he realized he was being duped, and the entire club car erupted in laughter.

A little later, Crosetti came in crawling on his hands and knees, lit a match, and set one of the waiter’s shoes on fire, a classic hot foot that had the young man dancing like a chorus girl. More laughter from these giddy Yankees, and no one was laughing harder than the usually crusty Crosetti.

Crosetti’s stellar defensive play had been a key to the Game 1 victory, and his home run had won Game 2. That was the thing about the Yankees in those years; they won all the time, and it seemed like there was a different hero every day. So whose turn would it be in Game 3? Monte Pearson and Gordon.

Pearson improved his career Series record to 3-0 with a smooth five-hitter while Gordon delivered a solo home run and a two-run single during a 5-2 victory that put the Yankees in complete command.

Clay Bryant had held the Yankees hitless for 4.2 innings and was leading 1-0 when he tried to slip a two-strike changeup past Gordon, only to see the ball sail into the lower left-field seats. In the sixth Gordon roped a bases-loaded single that sent DiMaggio and Lou Gehrig scurrying home for a 4-1 lead which Pearson had little trouble protecting.

It was now hopeless for the Cubs, and with Ruffing going the distance the next day, it soon was over. Ruffing’s RBI single and Crosetti’s two-run triple made it 3-0 in the second, and Henrich’s home run in the sixth made it 4-1 before Chicago stirred in the eighth when Ken O’Dea hit a two-run homer.

Just as the Cubs were feeling their oats and entertaining thoughts of living to see another day, the Yankees went for the jugular in the bottom half, scoring four runs while two were out, the key hit a two-run bloop double by Crosetti.

In the clubhouse, there was madness all around him, but the stoic one, Lou Gehrig, sat in front of his locker dragging on a cigarette, sipping a beer, smiling, taking it all in. This was the sixth time he’d won a World Series, and while it was still exciting, it was old hat, too.

Gehrig was tired, and he looked it throughout 1938. Though for the 13th straight season he scored 100 runs and drove in 100, the Iron Horse had not been the same player. His 114 RBI were his fewest since 1926, his .295 batting average his lowest since 1925, and he’d been lethargic in the field and on the base paths. In the Series, he managed four singles in 14 at-bats and this was the first time in his postseason career that he’d failed to drive in a run.

“I think I’ll do fine,” Gehrig said, referring to the 1939 season. “This was just a bad year for me.”

With that he stood up and joined his teammates in singing “The Sidewalks of New York” not knowing the sadness that would await him in 1939.