Entering the last of the ninth inning of the Series opener, Ruffing and the Yankees led, 7-0. The Cardinals had managed one base hit off the 37-year-old Ruffing, and it had taken them until the eighth inning — until there were two out in the eighth, in fact — to get that measly hit, a…

Owen, you see, had erred grievously in the ninth inning of Game 4 of the 1941 World Series. With two out, no New York Yankees on base and Brooklyn leading 4-3, a third strike on the Yanks’ Henrich got past Dodgers catcher Owen. And instead of salting away a victory that would have tied the…

  Cincinnati, of course, had a chance to win an unsoiled Series in 1939. Instead, the Reds hung out their own dirty linen as the powerful New York Yankees zapped them in four games. Plainly, this World Series evoked few pleasant memories for the Reds. Hopes that 1940 might be different rose when Bill McKechnie’s…

Manager Bill McKechnie’s Reds out-hit the Yankees by more than a 2-to-1 margin in Game 3, but all 10 of Cincinnati’s hits were singles. New York, meanwhile, got two-run homers from rookie Charlie Keller in the first and fifth innings, a two-run blast from Joe DiMaggio (who batted a career-high .381 in the regular season)…

  Six years earlier, the Cubs copped the NL championship after dismissing Rogers Hornsby as manager in early August and replacing him with Charley Grimm. The Yanks, with McCarthy in command in ’32, coasted to the pennant by a 13-game margin. Fortunately for the Yankees and unfortunately for the Cubs, the similarities didn’t end there….

  Joe McCarthy’s 1937 Yankees fell short of the 1936 club’s exploits in a couple areas. AL champions by 19 1/2 games in ’36, the Yanks had to settle for a mere 13-game margin in ’37. And whereas the Yanks boasted five 100-RBIs men in ’36 — Lou Gehrig, Joe DiMaggio, Tony Lazzeri, Bill Dickey…

  Accordingly, 1936 was notable as a period of transition. But before long, the year also would prove notable because it marked the beginning of unprecedented World Series dominance. To the surprise of few, it would be the Yankees who would do the dominating. Babe Ruth had played the last of his 15 seasons with…

  The fortunes of one of these teams would change in 1935, a year in which the fall classic matched Charley Grimm’s Cubs — winners of 21 consecutive games in September — against a Detroit team that had won the American League pennant for the second straight year. By the time the late stages of…

  The New York Giants, National League leaders most of the year and seven games ahead of Manager Frankie Frisch’s roisterous group of Cardinals on the morning of September 5, found out only too well how effectively the fun-loving Cards could kick, scratch, claw and, most important, hustle their way to victory. By season’s end…

  Cronin had plenty of help offensively. Outfielder Heinie Manush hit .336 and knocked in 95 runs, first baseman Joe Kuhel finished at .322 and drove in 107 runs and second baseman Buddy Myer contributed a .302 mark. And outfielders Goose Goslin and Fred Schulte, obtained after the 1932 season from the St. Louis Browns,…