High-Flying Birds: The 1942 St. Louis Cardinals

In his last season as team general manager, Branch Rickey’s farm system produced perhaps the greatest Cardinal team ever! Just about all the players came up through St. Louis minor league teams. Author Jerome M. Mileur seamlessly chronicles the baseball season with America’s first year in World War II. With President Roosevelt “green light” to keep playing ball, the game helps to distract fans from the early losses in the war. The fleet of foot Redbirds battle the Bums from Brooklyn for the pennant in one of the most memorable pennant-race in baseball history.

Jerome M. Mileur hits a home run with his account of the "high-flying birds" from the summer of '42; the team that surprised and surpassed the talented Brooklyn Dodgers with a remarkable late season surge, and then polished off the mighty Yankees in the World Series so efficiently, they almost seemed bored by it all. This book was anything but boring for this diehard Cardinals fan and baseball historian. It's also a fascinating case history about the remarkable accomplishments that transpired when a bunch of hardworking, blue-collar ballplayers got together and defined what the essence of "teamwork" is all about. It's a story that makes you believe once again, that just about anything can be accomplished if a group of individuals work in perfect harmony with each other and collectively, rise above any reasonable expectation level.

What a terrific team; what a great baseball season! While the Cardinals had been competitive throughout the latter part of the1930s, they had not won a championship since 1934. They had challenged for the pennant in 1941 while losing to the Brooklyn Dodgers, but in 1942 the Cardinals enjoyed their winningest season up to that time with 106 victories. They then went on to take the World Series against the New York Yankees in five games. This book offers a fine discussion of a dramatic season, in no small part because the Brooklyn Dodgers also won 104 games and barely lost to the Cards. The Dodgers had a 10 game lead as late as early August but St. Louis caught fire in the last two months of the season, winning 43 of their final 51 games--and 12 of their final 13--to catch and surpass the Dodgers. When the dust settled, the Cardinals had finished two games ahead. This team also enjoyed several standout performances; pitchers Mort Cooper and Johnny Beazley finished one-two in National League wins and ERA. Cooper, the league's MVP, was 22-7 with a league best 1.77 ERA. Beazley finished 21-6 and had a 2.14 ERA. Most important, this was the first full season of Stan Musial, and he made an immediate impact with a .315 batting average. He was joined in the outfield by Terry Moore and Enos Slaughter. Slaughter also had a standout year, batting .318, leading the league in hits, and ranking among the league's leaders in RBIs and runs scored. There is more to this story than the stunning victory of the Cardinals in the 1942 baseball season. First, it represented the beginning of a dynasty in which the Cards won three more pennants and two World Series championships in the 1940s, taking the flags in 1943, 1944, and 1946, and triumphing in the World Series in 1944 and 1946. Second, 1942 represented the last year of Major League Baseball in which a majority of the players were not lost to military service in World War II. This is an important story and deserving of full discussion. Third, this was also the last year of Branch Rickey's reign in St. Louis. He departed the Cardinals thereafter for Brooklyn where he went on to lead the Dodgers and build it into one of the powerhouses of the National League. Finally, the success of the Cardinals in St. Louis in the 1940s finally drove the Browns, the American League entry in St. Louis, from the city. It demonstrated that the city was not big enough for both of them. The author deals with each of these issues to some degree but concentrates on the day-to-day story of the season. "High-Flying Birds" is an enjoyable, sometimes insightful history of the rise of the Stan Musial Cardinals. I was pleased to recommend it for publication and to give it a five-star rating. Enjoy.