History of the World Series – 1934

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 3 1/2 weeks later, the Cardinals were NL pennant winners by two games.

The American League champion Detroit Tigers then led St. Louis, three games to two, in the World Series and felt relatively comfortable as they headed home for the conclusion of the fall classic, but Manager Mickey Cochrane’s club also was bowled over by the hell-bent-for-leather Redbirds. You just couldn’t feel too comfortable around this gang. This Gas House Gang.

Sure, Detroit had the home-field advantage for the final two games of the 1934 Series. And, needing only one victory to clinch their first Series championship, the Tigers were sending Schoolboy Rowe to the mound for Game 6. A second-year major leaguer, Rowe had won 16 consecutive games in a June-to-August stretch and pitched masterfully in Game 2 against the Cardinals. St. Louis was banking on a rookie pitcher to keep it alive. But this was no typical first-year man. This was Paul Dean, who in the heat of the pennant race had thrown a no-hitter against Brooklyn.

Paul Dean prevailed over Rowe with his arm and bat. He held the Tigers to seven hits and, with the score 3-3 in the seventh inning, delivered a game-winning single. Now, after the Cards’ 4-3 victory, it was up to brother Dizzy Dean, who had given credence to his “it-ain’t-bragging-if-you-can-do-it” claim by winning 30 games for the National League champions. Diz was matched against Eldon Auker in the Series finale.

As matchups go, this one was found wanting.

The Cardinals struck for seven runs in the third inning, an outburst touched off by Diz’s double. The big blow in the Cardinals’ rally, which was waged against four Detroit pitchers, was Frisch’s three-run double. In the sixth, Medwick knocked in a run with a triple — he slid hard into Tigers third baseman Marv Owen — and scored on first baseman Rip Collins’ fourth hit of the game. It was now 9-0.

The mood among Detroit fans, festive at the start of Game 7, was changing with every new entry to the Cardinals’ half of the scoreboard. In fact, when Medwick turned to his left-field station during the middle of the sixth inning, Tiger boosters couldn’t contain themselves. Nor their containers. Bottles started flying in Medwick’s direction. Plus fruit, vegetables and other debris. A 9-0 deficit and a hard slide had added up to trouble, which Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis quelled by ordering Medwick from the game. The commissioner apparently thought the Cards hardly needed Joe’s services at this point. Landis was right. Out came Medwick and in went Chick Fullis. And on St. Louis went to a Series-clinching 11-0 victory, with Diz permitting only six hits and the Cardinals collecting 17 overall.

Medwick, 22, been a pain to the Tigers and their fans right from the start. In the Series opener, he collected four hits — including a home run — as the Cardinals, behind Dizzy Dean’s steady pitching, rolled to an 8-3 triumph. To say the Tigers had early-Series jitters may be understating the point; with one out in the St. Louis third, Detroit already had been charged with five errors.

Rowe put on an amazing pitching demonstration in the 12-inning second game, limiting the Cardinals to one hit over the final nine innings of a game Detroit won, 3-2. To pull out the victory, Cochrane’s Tigers needed a game-tying pinch single in the ninth by Gee Walker and two 12th-inning walks and a single by Goose Goslin, who had played for Washington in the previous year’s Series.

Martin, the center fielder-turned-third baseman and star of the Cardinals’ Series triumph over the Philadelphia Athletics in 1931, was up to his old tricks in Game 3. He doubled, tripled and scored two runs in support of Paul Dean, who shut out Detroit for 8 2/3 innings and wound up a 4-1 winner.

Detroit then seized the Series lead with 10-4 and 3-1 victories, with Billy Rogell and Hank Greenberg combining for seven RBIs and Auker going the distance in Game 4 and Tommy Bridges pitching a seven-hitter in Game 5.

Then came the Deans. Again.

After winning 49 games in the regular season, Dizzy and Paul combined for all four St. Louis victories in the 1934 Series. Diz even overcame being struck in the head with a thrown ball while serving as a pinch-runner in Game 4. A day later, he yielded only two earned runs in eight innings while losing to Bridges. Then, in Game 7, he fired a shutout and collected two hits of his own.

Medwick batted .379 against Detroit pitching and drove in five runs, while Collins hit .367 and Martin finished at .355. Center fielder Ernie Orsatti proved a pesky Cardinal with a .318 mark, and right fielder Jack Rothrock — while batting only .233 — led St. Louis with six RBIs.

Second baseman Charlie Gehringer paced Detroit with a .379 average and Greenberg hit .321 with a Series-leading seven RBIs. Cochrane, named the Tigers’ manager after being acquired in December 1933 from the Athletics, struggled in the Series with a .214 average and one RBI after helping the upstart Detroit club win the pennant with his field leadership and .320 average.

That the Cardinals’ all-out style of play would result in the ever-descriptive nickname of Gas House Gang — a label that really wasn’t bandied about until the 1935 season — was hardly surprising. That 0l’ Diz and company had the talent to back up their bombast proved, in the end, even less surprising.